The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng – July 19,2024

 

The Garden Of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, first edition Nov 2011 by Myrmidon Books

Aritomo Nakamura is the Emperor’s ex-gardener who was let go for some reason went to Malaya, and made his own garden, Yugiri, in the Cameron Highlands, a tea-growing area similar to our Munnar in Kerala. Later the heroine of the book, Yun Ling,  who was taken prisoner with her sister Yun Hong by the Japanese military in WWII, comes to live in the Cameron Highlands during the time of the Communist insurgency, and decides to build a Japanese garden in memory of her sister who suffered as a ‘comfort woman’ for the Japanese and was ultimately killed in a mine explosion.

Tea Growing in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

That leads to the unique association of Yun Ling with Nakamura Aritomo, who promises to teach her how to build a Japanese garden. They labour  with helpers daily and ultimately become emotionally close. Aritomo is not only a gardener but had established himself as a wood-block print artist, in the tradition of the great Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The Great Wave off Kanagawa by him, is among the most well-known works of Japanese art. It is one of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, a series of landscape prints made by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist.

Hokusai (c1831) 'The Great Wave' at Kanagawa – the stupendous work shows the great azure wave rising and flexing its claws over a dauntless little Fuji in the distance

Ukiyo-e is the genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as 'picture[s] of the floating world.’

The novel deals at length with the ideals and aims of garden design in Japan, as these gardens get replicated in Malaysia. There are not only religious principles like Zen Buddhism, but philosophic principles of minimalistic design that pervade the structure of Japanese gardens. Rocks are distributed to emphasise some aspect of what is being commemorated in the garden. The planted trees are placed to extend the human imagination beyond the immediate physical limits. Ponds and basins of water are strategically located so that it is only upon accessing a definite point of eminence that a sudden view emerges, combining the far distant objects with the  surroundings.

Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco

The charm of restraint is an essential aspect. Beauty must be concealed so that it surprises the onlooker. The Sakuteiki (作庭記), or A Record of Garden Making, is the oldest known Japanese text on gardening practices in the shinden-zukuri (寝殿造り) estates, and dates from the late Heian period (794-1185). Aritomo in the present novel is the exponent of that tradition and brings it to bear upon the garden Yun Ling wants to design in memory of her sister, Yun Hong who perished in the war. He takes her on as an apprentice to construct the garden.

The horimono takes shape on Yun Ling's back – from the movie

Horimono refers in this novel to the practice of traditional tattooing in Japanese culture, usually describing full-body tattoos done in the traditional style. Considerable attention is given to horimono; it deepens the association between Yun Ling and Aritomo. The details of the design may also conceal something. Many ukiyo-e artists also did horimono, and the tattoo artist of such intricate body designs was called a horoshi. The multi-talented Aritomo is not only a gardener, but a ukiyo-e artist and a horoshi. In the concluding act of the novel Aritomo completes a horimono on the back of Yun Ling. It is an act of supreme artistry as well as amorous intimacy.

The Author and the Novel

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur's leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer

The movie

Tan Twan Eng is the 52-year-old author of the novel, born in Penang in 1972. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur  (KL) and he is of Straits Chinese descent, just like Yun Ling in the story. Tan studied Law at the University of London and his postgraduate degree was from South Africa. He worked as an advocate and solicitor in intellectual property law at a leading law firm in KL before resigning to become a full-time writer.

His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was published in 2007. It was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.  The Garden of Evening Mists was published in November 2011. The other novel he wrote is called The House of Doors.

The setting for the novel is the Cameron Highlands. This is a plateau, about 700 square kilometres in extent and it's situated at 4,700 feet, something like Munnar.

Camerona Highlands is a hilly region at 4,000 feet altitude in the north of Malaysia

This area was first explored by William Cameron in 1885. He discovered this equatorial forest and noted its cool climate. But the British did not explore further at the time, and for nearly 40 years it just stayed undeveloped and only the native people lived in that forest area. Then a road was commissioned. As we know, the British colonial masters liked to take time off to live in a hill station. The road took 20 years to build and was completed in 1930.

When they found that tea could be grown there, they planted the tea estates. But just when this hill station started to grow economically, the war came and the Japanese troops landed there. The British Empire too came to an end at that time.

There is something called a cloud forest; the clouds are found at the canopy level of the forest and at the base you find moss growing. The Cameron Highlands are very touristic. It has tea plantations and fruit orchards, and vegetable growing too.

Listen to this audio interview on BBC with Tan Twan Eng who discusses his novel, The Garden of Evening Mists:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03wlptl

A shorter interview in print covers many interesting topics, including why the author did not include a glossary:

https://thebookerprizes.com/tan-twan-eng-the-garden-of-evening-mists-map-garden-archive

Many ethnic types – Japanese, South African, British, Malays, Tamils, the aboriginal people – are all found there; it is really diverse, and the different cultures thrive there.

Shoba

Yoshikawa Tatsuji is a Japanese historian who is writing a book on Nakamura Aritomo. He approaches Teoh Yun Ling to study the ukiyo-e or woodblock prints that Aritomo had done.  He tells her that Aritomo had done a horimono on his friend’s back. It was magnificent and he became obsessed with them. He had himself tattooed; a gobu which is a tattoo on the arm that stops above the elbow. Yun Ling remembers visiting a museum in Tokyo that displayed fully tattooed human skins. This was before the war.

The passage from Chapter 10 refers to two of the art forms practiced by Aritomo. He had expertise in kore-sansui (rock garden), and Japanese archery (kyudo) which uses a bow over six feet in length; he is also versed in the tea ceremony. These practices have a spiritual goal – the attainment of a state of mind with values such as goodness, purity, respect and humility. “The central purpose of kyudo was to train the mind, Aritomo said, to strengthen our focus through every ritualised movement we made in the shajo.”

The novel is also about the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers during the occupation. Ultimately Teoh Yun Ling  attains the goal of archery – in a dream she appears to shoot without an arrow and Aritomo falls!

It's difficult to understand the novel at the beginning. Shoba had to read it and  wondered why nothing was happening. But then she started to enjoy the story, as more things began to happen.

The writing is confusing, said KumKum, because it is not a linear narration in time-sequence.

We are exposed to a lot of the Japanese culture and their practices in this novel. In ukiyo-e first they draw the outline of the drawing on very thin handmade paper, and then it's placed on a block of wood face down. The drawing is carved into the wood as the inverse. Then a fresh sheet of paper is placed over this and you put ink into the wood where you have outlined it. That ink comes into contact the paper. At the beginning these prints were just black and white. Later, they started adding colours. With the water-based inks used in Japan you can get very vivid colours. You need one wood block per colour. Because each ink has to be applied by a separate block to avoid smudging. Therefore it is time-consuming and expensive to make colour prints.

Aritomo practising ukiyo-e from the movie (played by Hiroshi Abe)

The whole process is done by different persons; the one who is drawing is not the one who is doing the carving on the wood, or applying the colour.  This art form actually developed in the 1600s in Japan and flourished for almost 200 years.

Many ukiyo-e artists also did horimono, which is tattooing, and they were called horoshi, that is, an artist who does tattooing.

A number of passages selected by our readers have to do with horimono, as it turned out. Another art form is kyudo, or archery; Aritomo teaches Yun Ling how to become expert in that.

In the rock garden and archery, it's more than just the function. The aim is not merely to hit the target. It is to attain a state of mind, of peace, rest, and concentration, necessary for the practice of archery. The rock garden karesansui, for example, is unlike standard flower gardens; it is much more stark, consisting of  rocks and the pebbles and a pond. It is all meant to, to evoke peace and calm.

In the tea ceremony, it is not about drinking tea. It is about the values that the entire ceremony inculcates of order, calm, meaningful gestures and attention to the performance as a cultural value in itself. This ethos pervades a number of Japanese practices. 

Japan is a land rich in culture and we are exposed to a lot of that in the novel. This little land has much to teach.  But one thing that saddened Shoba was the cruelty that Japanese showed during the war, so much in contrast to their culture. What got hold of them to violate their own traditions so diametrically?

In the context of the cruelty meted out to prisoners of war in the Japanese concentration camp, Priya said that it is commonly believed that people with less or no body hair are more cruel than hairy people. She further added that sweeping generalisations like this, backed by no scientific data, hold no meaning. She was comparing it with the different methods of torture meted out to the Jews in the concentration camps in Germany as well as to the POWs. Joe asked wryly, what about the Americans, urging readers to think about the atrocities committed by the American military in various wars.

There is reference to a museum of skin in Tokyo by Yun Ling in conversation with Tatsuji. To see so many skins displayed in a museum sounds so weird, and even repulsive, said Devika. How can they do something like that? It might be beautiful to look at, probably, but it's human skin which is taken from a dead body and put in a museum.

Joe said there is the old practice of printing on vellum, calf-skin or the skin of other animals; animal skin printing was an accepted practice in olden days.  It’s not like tiger skins and leopard skins and so on mounted on walls in old rich houses, which is so not PC. What was vellum someone asked and Joe explained it was used in olden times as a medium upon which to write important documents. You’ll find copies of the Koran, the Magna Carta, and even some copies of the 1455 Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum.

Koran from the 7th century written on vellum

Vellum as a writing surface is very durable, and it doesn't fade. There’s a British tradition, still continuing, that calls for Acts of Parliament to be printed on vellum. See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/502342.stm

Vellum was used extensively before the invention of paper to preserve records, and even today the highest quality paper for archival printing is done on a paper called vellum paper. Paper was invented in China, but its use was not rapidly transmitted worldwide. 

Many of the ancient biblical scripts and so on are on vellum, some of the ancient Christian scriptures are on vellum also.

What about tolpava, asked Arundhaty, the art of puppet-making in South India on animal skins. That craft is also on skin only. And  leather bags made from animal skins are common, but using human skin is another matter.

Joe said we usually we think of human skin being removed as some kind of punishment, like flaying the skin, as they used to do in medieval times. You were flayed alive as a particularly cruel punishment.

But this harimono is not like that. After the person dies, the artwork is removed and kept to preserve the art. It's after the person’s death.

Priya hazarded a guess that it may be like organ donation. When Priya was reading about this, it said that tattooing was initially started as an identity of the mafia, the lawless gangster clans called yakuza in Japan. Or as a punishment meted out to them by law.

And then it became an art. KumKum said now if you're playing cricket, you better have your arms and legs tattooed.

American sailors revived the Japanese tattooing art, after the Second World War. It became fashion.

Arundhaty said in South India they had domestic servants who always wore a kind of blue tattoo on their arms. Devika said it was called pachai kuthu. She doesn't know why it was so called; it’s a traditional way of using needles to do the green art on the skin by roadside artisans; it is gradually disappearing.

Zakia said in North India,  the domestics and the menial workers often have tattoos, with their names, the name of the gods, and such like.

And of course, that famous movie, Deewar, where Amitabh Bachchan has a tattoo ‘mera baap chor hai’ graved on his forearm.

Devika

Devika chose a passage from Chapter 11 which had two things she thought important. One was the reference to the poem, The Cloud by Shelley, and the second was the name The Pavilion of Heaven, chosen by Yun Ling for the pavilion being constructed in Yugiri.

Shelley is a favourite for all of us at KRG. At every Romantic Poetry session at least one poem by Shelley is de rigeur. And the rhythmic meter of the The Cloud seems to match the march of clouds across the sky – its rolling anapaest meter and personification combine with vivid imagery to make an unforgettable poem.

In the passage Aritomo wants a name for the pavilion that he's building. Towards the end there's a chapter when Yun Ling decides to make that place a memorial for her sister. She's going to name it the Pavilion of Heaven. The name has such an ethereal feeling to it. Also at the end of the story that is the name given by Yun Ling for the pavilion in memory of her sister. Her decision to restore the garden is the correct one, she decides. The garden is ready, she will open it to the public. She will put a plaque ‘Pavilion of Heaven’ and that will describe her sister's life.

She's going to put up her a painting of her sister there and give details about it. She wants to complete the whole task before her memory goes off, so she's in a hurry to finish it at the end.

Those who have been long with KRG, with our group, will remember this poem was recited at a session when the late Prof. Betty Kuryan came by invitation  and recited Ode to the West Wind by Shelley, and KumKum read The Cloud at the same session. Prof. Betty was then 84 years old. She was Devika’s professor too at St. Theresa’s College in the city. This poem reminded KumKum of her so much.

Arundhaty nearly chose the same passage as Devika. This seems to happen all the time.

Arrundhaty

Arundhaty selected this passage from Chapter 12 because it’s a flashback story Yun Ling is telling Aritomo. The book has a few themes and one of them is about Japanese tattoo and tattoo artists. In this passage the protagonist is exposed to a proper multicoloured tattoo for the first time when she is only a young girl. This leads (toward the end of the novel) to the final act of creating a horimono  that Aritomo does on her back before he disappears. 

It also introduces the other important character of the story, Aritomo, as the gardener who was an expert in designing Japanese gardens and has been engaged to design one for Magnus, the Afrikaans tea planter. 

Some questions were raised and answered during the discussion that followed after reading of this paragraph regarding the timeline of events. Did Aritomo actually design the garden owned by Magnus? Yes. Di he also do the Tattoo on Magnus? Yes.

This paragraph also tells us that though Yun Ling’s father and Magnus were friends they had different political views and affiliations.  While Yun ling’s father was a Chinese-Malay, Magnus was a Boer. The term Boer, derived from the Afrikaans word for farmer, was used to describe the people in southern Africa who traced their ancestry to Dutch, German and French settlers who arrived in the Cape of Good Hope from 1652.

Magnus names his tea estate Majuba. Majuba Hill was the name of the main battle fought on 27 February 1881 between British and Boer forces during the First Anglo-Boer War (1880-81). It was a comprehensive victory for the Boers, who routed a 400-strong British force occupying the summit of the hill. 

The final tattoo that Aritomo does on her back is a focus of the novel. A lot of things are resolved presumably by that final tattoo because the Japanese who have hidden the gold  are supposedly leaving a clue to its location in that tattoo – not quite sure, but there’s a suspicion.

In this reading passage Yun Ling is exposed to a tattoo for the first time. It is a tattoo of Magnus when they were young girls pre-war and her sister Yun Hong was still alive and they visited his tea garden with their father.

Aritomo would have been in Malaya by then, but he was not the one who did the Magnus tattoo; that may have been done before. There was some inconclusive discussion.

Aritomo refuses to design a garden for Yun Ling at first. But it was not as if he was not designing gardens for anybody else. He did it for Magnus, and he didn't want to take it up again as he was aging (?). He was also trying to finish his own garden.

Some mystery is aded by the allegation that he may have been an advance party that planned the looting of Malayan gold and art treasures to be later sent to Japan; but it could not be done as the Japanese were defeated and the looted treasure had to be stored somewhere. Aritomo is alleged (but there is no proof) to have been involved in what was called the Golden Lily plot.

That he did it for Yun Ling finally, as a project to help her, not do it himself, may have been a sign of his falling for her romantically. The horimono on her back is similarly a confirmation of their intimacy, not any ulterior plot to give a hidden clue to where the supposed Golden Lily treasure was buried. They were confirmed lovers by the end.

Some reviewers have said there is a mystery about Aritomo which is not completely revealed. True. We do not know what happened to him. As readers we can make our own speculative continuations of the story. The author leaves it unclear and that's perfectly okay. Authors can always leave things just as they want.

We have to remember that just as a horimono is not complete because nothing is perfect or complete, so too a novel may not be complete. Aritomo did not complete the horimono and walk off into the jungle as Arundhaty thought.

About Indian cricketers’ tattoos you can see Virat Kohli having it done in Bengaluru. 

You can see all the rugby players from New Zealand coming out with striking Maori tattoo designs, all black.

Zakia

Zakia read from Chapter 18, the part where Yun Ling and Aritomo go on a walk into the mountains after they hear about the death of Tominaga. Aritomo wants to go up to the temple and asks the nuns there to pray for him.

Zakia was quite taken by those lines and then realised that the novel ends with the similar lines, and therefore there's a lot of meaning to it and she wanted to discuss the passage with the group to see what they read into these words.

The description of so many things are very beautifully done and Zakia was really impressed by the poetic nature of the writing:

“The wings of the butterflies twitched and then beat faster. In small clusters they lifted off from the rocks, hanging in the light for a few moments before dispersing into the jungle, like postage stamps scattered by the wind.” 

Comparing the butterflies to postage stamp is so elevating, said KumKum. But she thought Devika’s recent trip to that Sabarimala is a little like this climbing up.

The monk asks: ‘tell me: is it the wind that is in motion, or is it only the flag that is moving? The correct answer according to the monk is:

“…there is no wind, and the flag does not move, – It is only the hearts and minds of men that are restless.’

The novel ends citing similar thoughts: 

“it is only the hearts and minds of men that are restless. But I think that, slowly and surely, the turbulent heart will soon also come to a stillness, the quiet stillness it has been beating toward all its life.”

Zakia felt that Yun Ling was very restless, in a hurry to get the garden done and she didn't realise she was already in that garden and very little more needed to be done. But she has to go through the process and learn and then it all fell into place.

Aritomo was willing to make this Yugiri, the garden, which she wanted to dedicate to her sister eventually. He taught her how to make it beautiful, like the art of setting stones and everything she learned throughout the book, she learned from her guru, Aritomo.

But remember it is after working with Aritomo, and after Aritomo disappears into the forest, it's after that, that she goes back and qualifies to become a judge. It is after the garden creation act, that she gets to sit in judgment and punishes the guilty Japanese for war crimes they had done.

She did not really find peace in that garden and she had to return to another career and pursue it. Then the dark reality of her progressive primary aphasia intervenes, forcing her to resign and go back to the the old garden  in the Cameron Highlands to recover some solace for herself and her sister Yun Hong for whom she built the the garden. Perhaps she found some closure in late life. With Aritomo going off like that, there was no closure for her in her youth

Some may ask after having done all that peaceful stuff in the garden when young, why does she seek a judicial life, going to London to qualify in law? She finds peace only 40 years later, when she comes back.

That acceptance took so much time for her; the restlessness kept her searching. That's why she refers to the flag, which is not in motion. It's not the wind, nor the flag. It's the mind within that is restless.

The garden was built under the tutelage of Aritomo when Yun Ling was young, not when she was losing her mind after retirement. They were labouring together in the garden, which would not have been possible when she was old.

Priya

The Garden of Evening Mists describes different facets of Japanese culture like poetry, painting, archery and gardening to narrate a compelling story of Malaya that spans a period before and after WWII.

The novel, penned by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, is set in the picturesque region of the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. It follows the life of a young girl Yun Ling, who along with her sister is imprisoned in a concentration camp in Japan during the war. While her sister is used as a comfort girl for the soldiers and dies, Yun Ling manages to find freedom. She pursues a legal career and becomes a judge. Finally she takes early retirement and wishes to create a Japanese garden in the memory of her sister Yun Hong. This journey, back in time, proves to be a healing process, as she meets characters from the past who help her deal with her pain and her fast deteriorating condition of memory loss. In such a situation, she seeks the permanence and solace of eternal art and poetry, in learning archery, creating a garden and agreeing to get her body tattooed by Nakamura Aritomo, the former gardener of Emperor Hirohito and now also a horoshi artist.

The selected passage is an exchange between Yun Ling and Aritomo, when the latter expresses a wish to create a horimono, or full-body tattoo on her, confessing that he had hitherto “not found the right person.”  Surprised by the request, Yun Ling has many questions about the art.

Aritomo assuages her fears and uncertainty by telling her that “obtaining a horimono is a great honour.”

And he would be the horoshi or the creator of the horimono;

He says most horimono designs are inspired by the Suikoden or the 108 superheroes made famous in 1827 by ukiyo-e artist Kuniyoshi Utagawa.

He further explains the process of outlining the pattern and filling it with ink, of how the use of cadmium in early times caused fever and that it would take almost 30 weeks to complete the tattoo on her back. It would be an hour long session every week.

Once Aritomo satisfies Yun Ling’s doubts he asks her to show her body, the canvas for his artistry.

The passage reveals that deep intimacy existing between Artimo and Yun Ling and later in the plot it is revealed that Aritomo could possibly be a Japanese spy with his knowledge of the buried gold, looted by the Japanese government from enemy nations. It could be the intricate tattoo on Yun Ling’s back had clues to the hidden treasure. Later it is expected Yun Ling would donate her tattooed skin after death  to a collector for display in a museum.

The traditional Japanese style of tattooing called Irezumi, or Horimono or Wabori, It is is created using large scale motifs based on Japanese mythology and religious icons, historical characters and scenes from nature, the elements, and well known Japanese fables.

It has a long history in Japanese culture. While the earliest recorded history of tattoos is from the 5th century, a 3rd century Chinese account describes how the Japanese would tattoo themselves in order to demarcate social classes, or sailors would apply them as protection against sea monsters.

The reason for this cultural stigma can be traced back to the Edo period (1603-1868), where tattoos were used as a form of punishment for criminals. This practice continued until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, where Japan opened up to the Western world and outlawed tattooing.

Initially in Japanese culture, tattoos historically carried a negative connotation. For the majority of Japanese people, tattoos were often associated with yakuza members, representing the Japanese mafia; or as a macho symbol associated with the lower classes.

According to archaeologists, the Ainu people, early settlers of Japan, are believed to have used facial tattoos.

During the Edo period, Japanese tattoo art became intertwined with the ukiyo-e, the "floating world" culture. Within this context, tattoos were used by prostitutes known as yujos in the pleasure quarters to enhance their appeal to clients. Additionally, body tattoos were notably prevalent among laborers and firemen.

Around 1720, the practice of tattooing became an official punishment for criminals, replacing the former penalty of nose and ear amputation. This tattooing of criminals continued until 1870 when it was abolished by the new Meiji government under the Japanese Emperor.

In 1827, the ukiyo-e artist Kuniyoshi Utagawa unveiled the initial six designs of the 108 heroes of the Suikoden. These Suikoden heroes, akin to ancient Robin Hoods, were renowned for their valorous acts. This narrative of 108 honourable bandits gained immense popularity in Japan, sparking a widespread Suikoden fascination among the populace.

Kuniyoshi's ukiyo-e renditions of the Suikoden heroes showcased vibrant full-body tattoos. These Japanese tattoo prints significantly influenced the burgeoning tattoo art scene, earning them the label of iki – signifying "cool" – albeit predominantly embraced by the lower classes.

For a significant part of the twentieth century, horimono remained an outlawed art form until 1948 when the prohibition was officially lifted. An interesting turn of events that led to the lifting of the ban was when irezumi artists found a new clientele among sailors from foreign ships docked in Japanese harbours. This unexpected development led to the spread of Japanese tattoo art to the West.

Note: The above account is lifted from
https://www.artelino.com/articles/japanese_tattoo_art.asp

KumKum

The piece KumKum chose to read from the novel The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng is from Chapter 21, towards the end.

Invited guests have gathered at the Smokehouse Hotel to celebrate the birthday of Magnus. All the five major characters of the novel present: Teoh Yun Ling, the heroine of the book; her lover Aritomo, the Japanese gardener, tattooist, artist, a mysterious man; Frederik, nephew of Magnus, who was in charge of looking after Magnus's Tea estates and has a romantic interest in Teoh; Magnus and his wife Emily. 

In this chapter readers come to know that Aritomo had sought permission to do a horimono on Yun Ling's entire back:

"It was more than a week since I agreed to let him tattoo me. He had not mentioned the horimono since, and I did not raise the matter with him. Looking at the people on the other side of the lawn, laughing and chatting, I wondered how appalled they would be if they knew I would soon have a tattoo draped over my back." 

Horimono is a special kind of tattoo, it conveys a secret message. It is suspected that Aritomo, the protagonist of the novel, may be a spy for the invading Japanese military forces in Malaya. He is thought to have kept records of the secret hiding places of precious assets looted by the Japanese military. From the vey beginning Aritomo appeared to be mysterious, hiding behind the fog of the mountainscape, on which the story of the book is anchored, like a spider's web, thin, silken, yet strong. 

KumKum enjoyed the book. Tan Twan Eng has a charming writing style that goes well with the story and the setting of the book. But she did get lost in his narration. The book describes Yun Ling’s life in  three stages, but not chronologically. That made it a bit confusing. Passing from one stage to the other is conveyed through tenuous random narration of a patient falling victim to aphasia; it is not a time-ordered explicit chronicle. Scattered incidents of the life of Yun Ling are gathered in disjointed fashion, although they are presented in fascinating detail. But they often appear to be the isolated ramblings of an unstable mind.

When all of us attend, the whole book gets covered through the selected passages and accompanying discussions, said KumKum.

She chose this chapter 21 because all the main characters of the book are present. They're celebrating, and the garden is almost ready. Yun Ling has agreed to have the tattoo done on her back. It's a very important chapter.The celebration for Magnus' birthday is in the restaurant, called Smokehouse Hotel, not at his house. The managers of the different tea estates and other important people have been invited.

It’s a tea crowd – we are familiar with them from Fort Kochi which had plenty of them in the past decades.

Frederik, the nephew of Magnus, had a yen for Yun Ling and was upset that she was living with the artist Aritomo. The garden is almost complete, but not quite. The horimono has yet to be completed. Soon after that, she will leave to pursue her judicial career.

– Only to come back again years later after her retirement from the judiciary.

The garden is said to be beautiful but Frederik says it looks artificial. We all thought it must be such a beautiful garden and then we are left wondering when Frederik says it is ‘manipulative.’ Yes there is a written discipline on how to design such garden. The placement of various objects like rocks, trees, ponds, etc must conform to a design. The viewer is made to perceive the gardenscape in a certain way and different angles are presented to the viewer as one traipses through.

Frederik didn't like Aritomo because Yun Ling was having an affair with him. So he was frustrated.

It is true the garden views are controlled and artificial. What Frederik says about the Japanese garden, KumKum felt when she was sitting in the Emperor’s Royal Garden in Tokyo. It's a beautiful garden, really perfect. But every tree was shaped and its branches twisted with wire to grow in a certain way. KumKum told Joe  she wouldn’t want to be a tree in a Japanese garden! For a sampling of the various types of Japanese Gardens see:

https://wabisabilife.cz/en/types-of-japanese-gardens/

Arundhaty told but Kumkum: what about the bonsais? That's what they do to the bonsais. A reader said she hated bonsais because the trees are tortured. They do all sorts of things to the plants which you can’t bear to see.

What about the Chinese gardens, asked Priya? Those gardens are based on shakai, the hidden borrowed scenery which they incorporate in the garden. Aren’t they also beautiful? Our Vikram Seth has written so many poems about them:

Wistaria twigs, wistaria leaves, mauve petals 

Drift past a goldfish ripple. As it settles 

Another flower drops. Below, redly,

The fish meander through the wistaria tree.

(A Hangzhou Garden by Vikram Seth)

How are the Chinese gardens different? They are also meant for contemplation. Chinese gardens traditionally are more exotic and ornamental. They also have more architecture and structures throughout. Whereas, the Japanese gardens tend to be more minimalist and subdued. A main difference between the two gardens is that Chinese gardens are designed to be a series of concealed scenes.

KumKum said she hasn’t seen a Chinese garden as such, but has seen many Japanese gardens in America. California has quite a few to which her daughter Michal took her. They're all very sculptured. Even the stream has to flow in a certain way.

A Japanese Garden

Mention was made of English gardens, and Kumkum’s garden in Fort Cochin.

Arundhaty said she has a bonsai 40-years-old,  but she has not twisted the parts or done anything to it. It's a very natural bonsai, happens to have been planted in a smaller pot to stunt its growth. It's been there for the last 40 years. It's one of those very light-coloured jeera plants that we get in the South here. People eat the leaf also. And its trunk has become very big. It's spread out like a bonsai. Sometimes they cut the roots also, a reader added.

Joe

To resume our story, when Professor Yoshikawa Tatsuji, a historian of Japanese art comes to record the ukiyo-e found in the Cameron Highlands, Yun Ling tells him in confidence that Aritomo was also a horoshi, a maker of tattoos on human bodies. In some cases, these tattoos can cover the whole body, including the arms and legs. She had agreed to have one made on her back by Aritomo, and Tatsuji immediately suggests how invaluable it would be if it were preserved for posterity after her death, if she willed it to be so preserved.

Yun Ling and Aritomo from the movie (played by Sinje Lee and Hiroshi Abe)

The intimacy of Yun Ling and Aritomo had commenced earlier when they decided to live together. But it takes a further interesting twist when she agrees to have her entire back incised and marked with needles to form a record of the complete layout of the Garden of Evening Mists which the two of them had laboured to sculpt into the land. Now the contours of that garden have taken shape and are painted into the hollow of her back, the musculature of her shoulders, the swelling curves of her buttocks and the flutes of her flanks. We are called upon as readers to participate in an intimate examination of Yun Ling’s derrière and appreciate the physical details of the actual garden replicated on her back as Aritomo’s fingers caress them. It is lovingly described and as they go over it in a mirror she notices a blank area. That is deliberate, says the horoshi, Aritomo, signifying that nothing is ever finished or perfect — and where is the blank? It’s in a curvaceous bare area above her left gluteus maximus.

The gluteus maximus to clarify for Priya is the anatomical term for the outer muscle of the hip and buttock. It’s called the glutes sometimes, a term beloved of all physical fitness trainers.

The horimono becomes a confirmation and a strengthening of the romance that had began much earlier while jointly creating the garden. Now it takes a step forward, and forges a physical intimacy that is created between the artist and the woman on whom he is practising his art. It culminates in the last line of this reading:

‘After a few minutes of this I would turn around and pull him toward me.’

It's altogether a very satisfying novel – no matter that Aritomo goes AWOL at the end.

Priya said she thinks Aritomo loved Yun Ling. Of course he did, said Joe. And she reciprocated.

But if he loved her, why did he just disappear like that, asked Priya? Maybe he didn't really love her.

Joe said half of the poetry in this scene, and the poetic comparisons and many similes found in this book, are actually meant to be a reflection of this intimacy that exists, not only among humans but between humans and nature. The description of nature is a reflection of this male-female intimacy which undergirds the novel, though it’s never expressed in sexual terms.

There are  many themes in this. The theme of forgetfulness and decline in the all-important memory that holds a person together. The theme of a desperate act of remembrance against the odds in order to complete a memoir whose completion is paralleled by the completion of the garden. The theme of expiating the guilt of Yun Hong the elder sister who was forced into prostitution by the Japanese military; the expiation was to be achieved through the construction of this memorial garden to her.

There are many layers to this relationship and the story, because it's not direct, and straightforward, agreed Arundhaty.

Later when Tatsuji starts suggesting that Aritomo was a spy, Yun Ling’s reaction was disbelief, because she had lived closely with him. Arundhaty felt the act of tattooing helped to heal her past trauma of the war somewhat. The pain of the tattooing may have assuaged some of her own mental anguish.

It is surprising that she goes back to take up a judge’s career and deals with all those things again, prosecuting Japanese war criminals. She may have found some peace in that.

She didn't know how mysterious Aritomo was, said Arundhaty, that he was actually a spy for the Japanese government, and kept himself a little aloof. 

In Joe’s thinking the spy idea was brought forward without evidence by Tatsuji, and is just a twist. Since it is not resolved in the novel, one can just as well believe it was a false accusation.

But Arundhaty persisted that this very idea of Aritomo’s being a spy attracted Yun Ling. Would that not be a contradiction, said Joe, considering she was afterwards to dedicate herself to prosecuting the guilty Japanese? She would have been able to smell a guilty Japanese from a mile away, regardless of any masquerade by the master gardener.

The other theme, Joe said, starts from the beginning of the book, where she's old and she's losing her memory and so on. This book is about forgetfulness and how you become lost. And trying desperately to preserve a remembrance of things past in a memoir.

Myths and clouds and delicate descriptions add to the cloud of unknowing. 

The explicit mention of the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, alerts us but there is no corresponding god of forgetfulness. That's also discussed.

Arundhaty says the novel is layered in another sense because Aritomo was a Japanese. She had experienced terrible torture at their hands. There was something to reconcile. As Virgil said: Omnia vincit amor, et ne nos cedamus amori. “Love conquers all; let us all yield to love.”

There is a quote in the novel as Yun Ling muses in the company of Tatsuji:
“The palest ink will outlast the memory of men.” From out of nowhere the old Chinese proverb comes to me, and I wonder where I have heard it before.

Joe knows where he has heard it before. It's the couplet ending Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Apropos of her creeping aphasia Yun Ling says:
“I once read something about Borges,” I say. “He was blind and very old, spending his last days in Geneva. He told someone, ‘I don’t want to die in a language I cannot understand.’” I laugh bitterly. “That is what will happen to me.”

Another running theme in the novel is the (2nd) larghetto movement of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1, that Emily, the wife of Magnus the tea planter, likes to listen to before going to sleep. Here you too can listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV_x_QY1P5c

Martha Argerich plays Chopin’s Piano concerto No. 1 entire. It has 3 movements. At minute 21:10 the larghetto movement starts.

Pamela

In Pamela’’s passage from Chapter 3 Yun Ling encounters Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and plans to meet Aritomo, the Emperor's former gardener.

Yun Ling explains at the end that the Allied Powers forgave the debt of reparations that Japan had to pay to countries they had occupied in which they had committed atrocities. This was an injustice toward countries like Malaya.  The British government that had pushed the Malays to fight the war, now abandoned them when it came to making Japan pay reparations. 

Pamela liked the first part of about the goddess for forgetfulness, and found it very interesting. But there is no corresponding goddess of forgetting in the Greek pantheon, comparable to Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, said Joe. The goddess of forgetting is a fiction created in this book.

However, it made Pamela think what a blessing forgetting could be. There's so much pain in parts of our life, that if it had to remain fresh in memory throughout life, the pain would persist. Thank God for forgetfulness that it fades away. The pain reduces and subsides with time. It is such a blessing.

Pamela mentioned her father died in an accidental fall in 1992 and she has experienced it a thousand times. The fall haunted her for years. But now she does not feel that pain the same way. The intensity has reduced because of forgetting.

But that’s the effect of the passage of time; you may still remember, but the pain has abated to be replaced something else. But total forgetting of a trauma also happens as an act of healing, self-induced and unconscious.  It happens sometimes as a grace for women who are raped, and men who undergo the horrors of war.

But general forgetfulness can leave life without meaning. Just ask old people whose short term memory goes first and they become incapable of doing the ordinary things in life where a sequence of processes needs to be completed, They cannot keep that all in their minds.

Tragically, the longer-term memory also fades and you are left as a shell of the person you were. Life is has no meaning at that point because the person behind the visage has disappeared.

Devika said she is going through this on a day-to-day basis with her mother. She can no longer remember even her own children, or her grandchildren. She can't remember their names. It's so hard when dear people forget, very, very hard. When you watch them go through it, as when her great granddaughter was here and she didn't recognise it was her great granddaughter, and asked who is that child playing there? Devika’s mother went so far as to suggest that when another girl, by the name of Samaira (?) came this one could have a play companion – forgetting that this was actually her great grandchild.

Another mater, in this passage is about the Allied Powers, and a treaty of reparations.

KumKum recalled there was an Indian judge on the tribunal that sat in judgment in Tokyo on Japanese war crimes committed during WWII. There was a movie made on it called Tokyo Trial.

Radhabinod Pal (1886-1967) was the Indian judge who served on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Tribunal, during the Second World War. Actor Irfan Khan plays the role of Radhabinod Pal in the movie. The IMTFE was established to prosecute Japanese military leaders for war crimes committed between 1931 and 1945. Pal was one of three Asian judges appointed to the tribunal and the only one to find all the defendants not guilty. He believed that the trial, which was largely managed by the United States and included a few Japanese judges, was illegitimate and an instrument of victor's justice. Pal wrote a lengthy dissent, which was banned from publication in Japan by General Douglas MacArthur, the US Commander of Occupied Japan.

In 2007, on a visit to India, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe paid tribute to Pal (who died in 1967), in an address to Parliament. He then went to Kolkata to meet Pal’s son, Prosanto Pal, and prayed in front of his father’s picture. As a matter of history in 1966 Radhabinod Pal was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure First Class by the emperor of Japan, one the country’s highest honours (other awardees include the economist Milton Friedman, Sony co-founder Akio Morita and Toyota Motor Corp. chairman Soichiro Toyoda). There is a memorial dedicated to Radhabinod Pal at Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which commemorates Japanese war heroes.

Memorial dedicated to Radhabinod Pal at Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine

Essentially Radhabinod Pal averred in his 1,230 page dissent at the trial that the Allied Powers were the victors, and they were writing the condemnation of those who were defeated. But they had to search their consciences and contemplate their own actions. Consider that one of the Allied Powers, USA, committed the greatest of crimes by dropping two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Radhabinod Pal’s house at 16 F, Dover Lane in South Kolkata, will be converted into a museum to house documents, articles and photographs dating back to the historic dissenting judgment passed by Justice Radhabinod Pal in the Tokyo Trial.

The readers agreed The Garden of Evening Mists was a lovely book.

KumKum raised the question about aphasia, which is mentioned here. Aphasia, the loss of speech, when a person cannot even articulate, is usually the result of a stroke. But in this book, right at the beginning, the disease is medically labelled as primary progressive aphasia, PPA, a very rare nervous disorder that Yun Ling was diagnosed with and caused her decision to retire from the judicial service.

PPA has nothing to do with a stroke; it is caused by the myelin sheath covering nerve connections in the brain disintegrating. KumKum thought what Yun Ling was suffering from was age-related forgetfulness. But Joe alerted her to the medical diagnosis (“demyelinating disease of my nervous system”) mentioned in Chapter 9 after Yun Ling went to see a neurosurgeon.

Priya told Joe that she just recently learned that Hindus not only have the well-known goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, but her sister is the goddess of penury, Daridra. A reference to it as a kind of fable is narrated here:

https://bharathkidilse.blogspot.com/2009/12/lakshmi-and-daridra.html

Priya said it seems Vishnu and Lakshmi are together in this house and Daridra sits in the tree next to their courtyard. Readers can make what they want of this.

Passages Chosen by Readers

Pamela Ch 3 – Yun Ling encounters Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory, and plans to meet Aritomo, the Emperor’s gardener

A pair of marble statues stood on their own plinths in the center of the lawn, facing one another. On my first glance they appeared to be identical, down to the folds of their robes spilling over the plinths.

“Bought them ridiculously cheap from an old planter’s wife after the planter ran off with his fifteen-year-old lover,” said Magnus. “The one on the right is Mnemosyne. You’ve heard of her?”

“The goddess of Memory,” I said. “Who’s the other woman?”

“Her twin sister, of course. The goddess of Forgetting.”

I looked at him, wondering if he was pulling my leg. “I don’t recall there’s a

goddess for that.”

“Ah, doesn’t the fact of your not recalling prove her existence?” He grinned.

“Maybe she exists, but it’s just that we have forgotten.”

“So, what’s her name?”

He shrugged, showing me his empty palms. “You see, we don’t even remember her name anymore.”

“They’re not completely identical,” I said, going closer to them. Mnemosyne’s features were defined, her nose and cheekbones prominent, her lips full. Her sister’s face looked almost blurred; even the creases of her robe were not as clearly delineated as Mnemosyne’s.

“Which one would you say is the older twin?” asked Magnus.

“Mnemosyne, of course.”

“Really? She looks younger, don’t you think?”

“Memory must exist before there’s forgetting.” I smiled at him. “Or have you forgotten that?”

He laughed. “Come on. Let me show you something.” He stopped at the low wall running along the edge of the terrace. Pinned to the highest plateau in the estate, Majuba House had an unimpeded view of the countryside. He pointed to a row of fir trees about three-quarters of the way down a hill. “That’s where Aritomo’s property starts.”

“It doesn’t look far to walk.” I guessed it would take me about twenty minutes to get there.

“Don’t be fooled. It’s further than it looks. When are you meeting him?” “Half past nine tomorrow morning.”

“Frederik or one of my clerks will drive you there.”

“I’ll walk.”

The determination in my face silenced him for a moment. “Your letter took Aritomo by surprise . . . I don’t think he was at all happy to receive it.”

“It was your idea for me to ask him, Magnus. You didn’t tell him that I had been interned in a Japanese camp, I hope?”

“You asked me not to,” he said. “I’m glad he’s agreed to design your garden.” “He hasn’t. He’ll only decide after he’s spoken to me.”

Magnus adjusted the strap of his eye-patch. “You resigned even before he’s

made up his mind? Rather irresponsible, isn’t it? Didn’t you like prosecuting?”

“I did, at first. But in the last few months I’ve started to feel hollow . . . I felt I was wasting my time.” I paused. “And I was furious when the Japan Peace Treaty was signed.”

Magnus cocked his head at me; his black silk eye-patch had the texture of a cat’s ear. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

“One of the articles in the treaty states that the Allied Powers recognize that Japan should pay reparations for the damage and suffering caused during the war. However, because Japan could not afford to pay, the Allied Powers would waive all reparation claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals. And their nationals.” I realized that I was near to ranting, but I was unable to stop myself. It was a relief to uncork myself and let my frustrations spill out. “So you see, Magnus, the British made certain that no one—not a single man or woman or child who had been tortured and imprisoned or massacred by the Japs—none of them or their families can demand any form of financial reparation from the Japanese. Our government betrayed us!” (634 words)

Shoba Ch 10 – Tatsuji narrates the overlapping world of  world of ukiyo-e and horimono and reveals to Yun Ling he had himself been tattooed by Aritomo

The memory of a museum in Tokyo I visited ten years ago comes back to me. The museum was famous for its collection of tattoos. They were of various sizes and age, sealed and preserved inside glass frames. I had walked among the hangings on the walls, looking at the faded ink on human skin, repelled and, at the same time, fascinated.

“What made you become interested in tattoos?”

“The worlds of ukiyo-e and horimono overlap,” Tatsuji replies. “Quite a number of horoshi created woodblock prints too.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve told me that already. ‘They fill their buckets from the same well.’ Now tell me the real reason.”

He breathes in deeply and then exhales. “The first time I saw the horimono Aritomo-sensei put on my friend’s back . . . at that time I knew nothing about tattoos, but even then I realized that it was magnificent, a work of art. I thought it was wonderful that an ukiyo-e artist could also create similar drawings on the human body. Seeing that horimono started me on a lifelong obsession with them.”

“Your friend’s tattoo wasn’t preserved . . . after his death?”

Tatsuji shakes his head. “For years I have been searching for other horimono created by Aritomo-sensei, but I have never found any.” He is silent for a moment. “Tattoos created by horoshi—by masters—are very much sought after,” he continues, “but as an outsider it was difficult for me to enter their world.” His gaze drops to the ukiyo-e on the table. “To earn their respect, their trust, I had myself tattooed.”

It is an extraordinarily intimate revelation for him to make, having only met me twice. I sit down on the edge of the table and cross one leg over the other. They still look good, my legs, firm and unblemished by any liver spots, with no cobwebs of varicose veins anywhere. “You had a tattoo put on your whole body?”

“A horimono? Oh no. No, I asked for a tattoo to be put here.” He runs his right hand over his left arm, from the shoulder to about two inches above the elbow. (356 words)

Devika Ch 11 – Yun Ling provides a name for the hall Aritomo is building from the phrase Pavilion of Heaven occurring in Shelley’s poem The Cloud.

Just after midday I stopped working to return to my bungalow. I went past the empty pond. Aritomo was checking its clay bed.

“It should be hard enough for us to fill it soon,” he said, looking up at me. I continued on my way, but he called out to me. “You waste time going back for lunch. Eat here with me.” Noticing my hesitation, he added, “Ah Cheong is a good cook, I assure you.”

“All right.”

The pavilion’s roof was taking shape. Mahmood, the carpenter, and his son Rizal were unrolling their rugs on the grass next to a stack of planks. Side by side, father and son knelt to perform their prayers, prostrating themselves toward the west.

“Sometimes I wonder if they will fly away on their magic carpets when the pavilion is completed,” Aritomo said. He glanced at me. “Think of a name for it— the pavilion.”

Taken by surprise, nothing came to me. I stared at the half-finished structure, thinking furiously. “The Pavilion of Heaven,” I said finally.

Aritomo grimaced, as if I had waved a putrefying object beneath his nose. “That is the sort of phrase ignorant Europeans come up with when they think of . . . the East.”

“Actually, it’s from one of Shelley’s poems. ‘The Cloud.’”

“Really? I have not heard of it.”

“It was one of Yun Hong’s favorite poems.” I closed my eyes and opened them

again a moment later. “I am the daughter of Earth and Water, / And the nursling of the Sky; / I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; / I change, but I cannot die.”

Remembering how Yun Hong had so often spoken these lines, I stopped; I felt I was stealing something from her, something that she had treasured.

“I have heard nothing about a pavilion,” Aritomo said.

“For after the rain, when with never a stain / The pavilion of Heaven is bare, / And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams / Build up the blue dome of air, / I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, / And out of the caverns of rain, / Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, / I arise, and unbuild it again.”

My voice wandered off into the trees. By the half-finished pavilion the carpenter and his son touched their heads to the ground one last time and then began rolling up their rugs.

“The Pavilion of Heaven . . .” Aritomo looked even more doubtful about my choice of name than before. “Come,” he said. “Lunch should be ready.”

Arundhaty Ch 12 – As young girls sisters Yun Hong and Yun Ling query Magnus about the garden he  was making, and learn he has a tattoo on his body.

“Ja,” Magnus said. “The Brits tried to take our land. We fought back, but they burned our farms and put our women and children in concentration camps.” “Look here,” my father interrupted before I could ask Magnus what a concentration camp was. “I don’t want you talking any of that rubbish to my girls. You Boers were a bunch of thugs. You lost the war. Naming your tea estate

‘Majuba’ isn’t going to change history.”

“It’s my small way of honoring the battle where the Brits were soundly thrashed,” Magnus said in a silky voice. “And it gives me great pleasure to know that in Malaya and all over the East they’re taking in a bit of Majuba every time they have their tea.”

“Somebody at the Penang Club mentioned that you’re flying the Transvaal flag,” my father said.

“It’s the flag of my home, the country I fought for,” Magnus said. “You don’t begrudge me that, surely.”

“What about the garden, Mr. Pretorius?” Yun Hong asked in the silence that had hardened over our table. “Has the Japanese man started building it?”

“How on earth did you know about that?” Magnus asked.

“The girls read the feature on your estate in the Straits Times,” my mother said. “You mentioned the Japanese gardener and the garden he was making. Hong has been fascinated by Japanese gardens ever since we visited Kyoto.”

“It’s coming along nicely, Yun Hong,” Magnus said. He was sitting next to me and he turned his body to include me in the conversation. “Aritomo says it’s not quite finished yet. He’s clearing the trees at this moment. Perhaps in another year or so. You’re most welcome to visit. He won’t mind, I’m sure.”

“Will it have a pond and a bridge over it?” Yun Hong asked Magnus. “And a rock garden?”

Before Magnus could reply, a waiter walking past our table collided into one of the Chinese boys running between the tables. The waiter stumbled, tipping over the tray he was carrying. Spoons and china cups and saucers clattered onto our table, some crashing onto the tiled floor. Yun Hong shrieked a warning at me as hot liquid drenched my shoulders and arms, soaking my blouse. My mother pushed back her chair and rushed to my side, grabbing a table napkin and wiping me with it. “Are you all right? Yun Ling? Yun Ling!”

I did not hear her, nor was I paying attention to the burning on my skin. I was staring at Magnus: he had also been splashed with hot water. His shirt and tie were soaked, and I watched as a patch of blue slowly bloomed on the left side of his chest, just above his heart. Other colors were soon appearing as his shirt remained plastered to his chest: orange and red and green.

He saw me looking at it. “It’s just a tattoo, Yun Ling,” he said.

“That was the first time I had ever seen a tattoo close up,” I said, gazing down at Hokusai’s woodblock prints but not seeing them. “My parents were horrified that he had marked his body like that, like . . . a gang member.”

Aritomo closed the book and returned it to its box, pressing down the lid firmly and snapping the clasps shut. Outside, the rain had stopped falling, but water continued to taper off the eaves. (563 words)

Zakia Ch 18 – Yun Ling and Aritomo are on a walk into the mountain when Aritomo reveals a monk’s cryptic koan about wind and flag while walking in Honshu. Later they arrive at a temple.

“Do you remember me telling you of my walk across Honshu, when I was eighteen?” he said. “I spent a night in a temple. It was falling to pieces, and there was only a solitary monk still living there. He was old, very old. And he was blind. The next morning, before I left, I chopped some firewood for him. As I was leaving he stood in the center of the courtyard and pointed above us. On the edge of the roof a faded and tattered prayer flag was flapping away. ‘Young man,’ the old monk said, ‘tell me: is it the wind that is in motion, or is it only the flag that is moving?’”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said, ‘Both are moving, holy one.’

“The monk shook his head, clearly disappointed by my ignorance. ‘One day you will realize that there is no wind, and the flag does not move,’ he said. ‘It is only the hearts and minds of men that are restless.’”

For a while we did not speak, but stood there, looking into the valleys. “Come on,” he said eventually. “There is still a long way to go.”

A shower had soaked the jungle, and we had to leap over puddles of water on the track. Aritomo pulled himself lightly over the roots, moving with a determined ease, responding to a call only he could hear. Branches, riven down by previous storms, obstructed the track, smearing our hands and thighs with lichen and shreds of sodden bark when we clambered over them.

“How much further, this Temple of Clouds?” I asked after we had been climbing for an hour.

“Three-quarters of the way up the mountain,” Aritomo replied over his shoulder. “Only the very devoted ever go there.”

“I’m not surprised.” We had not met anyone else on the path. Gazing around us, I imagined that we had moved back millions of years to a time when the jungle was still young.

“There it is.”

The temple was a collection of low, drab buildings barnacled to the side of the mountain; I was disappointed, having expected more after the arduous climb. A stream ran past the temple, draining into a narrow gorge. In the sprays steaming over the drop, a small rainbow formed and wavered. Aritomo pointed to the rocks on the opposite bank. They seemed to be trembling. A second later I realized that they were covered with thousands of butterflies. I watched them for a moment but was impatient to move on.

“Wait,” Aritomo said, glancing up to the sky.

The sun hatched out from behind the clouds, transforming the surface of the rocks into a shimmer of turquoise and yellow and red and purple and green, as though the light had been passed through a prism. The wings of the butterflies twitched and then beat faster. In small clusters they lifted off from the rocks, hanging in the light for a few moments before dispersing into the jungle, like postage stamps scattered by the wind. A handful of the butterflies flew through the rainbow above the gorge, and it seemed to me that they came out looking more vibrant, their wings revived by the colors in that arc formed by light and water. (544 words)

Priya Ch 20 – Yun Ling and Aritomo discuss the horimono he will design for her body tattoo

“No,” he said. “I want to create a tattoo for you.”

Had I heard him properly over the tumult of the rain? “A tattoo? Like the one you made for Magnus?”

“You do not understand.” He closed and opened his fingers a few times. “It will be a true horimono, covering the top half of your body.”

“You’re mad, Aritomo.” I stared at him. “Have you even thought what my life would be like, if anyone knew I had something like that on me?”

“If you cared about what other people thought, you would never have come to

see me.”

“You said you had given up tattooing.”

“Lately it has been calling to me again.” He curled his fingers. Their joints seemed more swollen than I had realized. “The pain is getting worse. I want to make a horimono, Yun Ling. I never had the opportunity. Or found the right person.”

He went behind the empty bamboo birdcage and peered between its bars. I saw his face, divided into long, narrow strips. He set the cage spinning with a flick of his wrist. His face became distorted. “I have no interest in making a single, small tattoo. But a horimono . . .”

...

“What sort of designs do you have in mind?”

“The horoshi and his client discuss the matter before a decision is made.” “How do they decide?”

“Some horoshi keep drawings or photographs of the tattoos they have already created.”

“Let me see them.”

“I never kept them—they were not something I wanted to have lying around. And, anyway, I have never made a horimono.” He thought for a second or two. Then he went to kneel before a chest of drawers in a corner of the study. He took out the box of woodblock prints he had shown me before and spread them out on his table.

“Most tattoo masters are expert woodblock artists—the skills are essentially the same,” he said. “Horoshi often create pieces inspired by Suikoden.” “What are the procedures?”

He placed an ukiyo-e print on his desk. The process of tattooing would begin

with suji, drawing the outline with a brush, he explained, his fingers moving around the print light as a dragonfly skimming over a pond. The outline would then be tattooed before the next stage, bokashi—filling in the drawings with colors.

...

His slow, matter-of-fact explanation lulled me. “The horimono will be contained within a frame,” he continued. “Or it can fade away into the surrounding skin, into akebono mikiri, a ‘daybreak’ design.”

“Daybreak,” I whispered. It called to mind a border with no visible boundary, a sky fenced in only by a barrier of light. “Any adverse side effects?”

“Well . . . in the old days, when cadmium was used in red ink, clients would experience fevers and pain. Some people have complained that their tattooed skin stopped perspiring, that they felt cool even on the warmest days.”

“Like a reptile. How long would it take to complete the tattoos?”

“Most people can only endure an hour’s session a week.” He paused to do some mental calculations. “A horimono like what I have in mind will require about—oh, twenty to thirty weeks. Half a year. Perhaps less.”

“I’ll consider it,” I said, laying out my words carefully between us, “if the tattoos—the horimono,” I corrected myself, preferring the Japanese word as it did not have the same connotations, “if the horimono covers only my back.” He deliberated for a few seconds. “Let me see your body.” (587 words)

KumKum Ch 21 – Yun Ling encounters Frederik, Magnus’ son, once again – he has a yen for her. They discuss garden creation.

By a flowering rambutan tree a short way off from the crowd I found a quiet, shady spot to enjoy my drink. Aritomo had been subdued on our drive here. It was more than a week since I agreed to let him tattoo me. He had not mentioned the horimono since and I did not raise the matter with him. Looking at the people on the other side of the lawn, laughing and chatting, I wondered how appalled they would be if they knew I would soon have a tattoo draped over my back. I tried to imagine what Yun Hong would have said, but I found I could not remember her face or even the sound of her voice. I thought back to the camp, to the last time I saw her, and slowly her face formed in my mind’s eye. I had gone to see her at the window, bringing her a whole ripe mango. I had not had the chance to visit her in more than three weeks and her pale face in the dusky shadows shocked me. She refused to tell me what was wrong, but I pressed her until finally she admitted that she had become pregnant. Dr. Kanazawa had aborted the fetus two days earlier. That was the last time I saw her or spoke to her. Shortly after that Tominaga had smuggled me out of the camp.

Wiping away my tears, I saw Frederik coming toward me. “There you are,” he called out.

“Magnus didn’t tell me you’d be here.” I forced a lightness into my voice.

“I just arrived a second ago.”

I had not seen him in almost a year. He looked darker, and the air of toughness

in him was stronger than I remembered. I pointed to the cuts on his cheeks. “What happened?”

“I got caught in an ambush.”

My eyes examined him in a quick sweep. “No serious injuries, I hope?”

“A few scratches. Nothing as bad as yours.” His eyes studied my face, slid down the length of my body, paused at my thigh, then floated up to my face again. “I heard about the attack. I couldn’t get leave to see you. It’s been a mad time. Did you get my card?”

“Yes. And the lilies. They were beautiful.” I wanted to show my gratitude for his concern, and an idea came to me. “How long will you be staying?”

“I’m here for two days.”

“We’ve nearly finished the work in Yugiri. If you’re free early tomorrow, I’ll take you through the garden.”

“I’ve already seen it. That morning—when I went there to drive you back to Majuba. The first time we met.” He was clearly annoyed that I seemed to have forgotten.

“Oh yes. But the garden wasn’t ready then.”

“I don’t know how ready it was, but everything looked controlled, artificial.” “Then you’ve failed to understand what the garden is about.”

“Gardens like his are designed to manipulate your emotions. I find that dishonest.”

“Is it?” I fired back. “The same can be said of any work of art, any piece of literature or music.” I had worked extremely hard in the garden, and to hear someone denigrating it angered me. “If you weren’t so stupid you’d see that your emotions are not being manipulated—they’re being awakened to something higher, something timeless. Every step you take inside Yugiri is meant to open your mind, to lead you to the heart of a contemplative state.”

“I heard you’re living with the Jap now.”

The reason for his prickly mood had become obvious. “I’m sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me.”

“It is.”

I moved a few steps away from him, turning toward the guests on the lawn. “I first heard his name when I was seventeen. Almost half a lifetime ago,” I said, my anger dissipating, replaced by a sadness for all that I had lost.

“It’s only a name,” he said.

“It was more than that.”

To cheers and applause Emily and Magnus strode onto the platform. The band broke off from the song they were in the middle of and began to play the opening strains of “Happy Birthday.” The cheering grew louder. Frederik looked at me, then walked off into the crowd.

Joe Ch 24 – The incomplete horimono

That night, when he tattooed me, his hands felt slower, heavier. Once or twice his fingers would rest on my back, like a dragonfly poised on a leaf. It was past midnight when he stopped and sat back on his heels. Outside, frogs belched in the grass. A moment later I felt him touching me lightly on my shoulder.

“It is done,” he said.

My eyes took a second or two to focus. I pushed myself off the tatami mat and got to my feet. I looked over my shoulder and examined my body in the mirror, searching for the last tattoo he had colored in: the rounded shape of Majuba House, an ark floating on the green swells of tea. The horimono faded away into the bare skin around my neck, my upper arms, the sides of my body and just above the swell of my buttocks.

I turned my body until I could see my entire back in the mirror. I looked as though I was wearing an overly tight batik shirt. I moved one shoulder, causing the figures on it to elongate. All of a sudden I was frightened.

“You have a new skin now.” He circled me, as he had once done almost a year before, when his fingers had examined my blank skin.

“But it’s not complete—there’s still this bit here.” I touched a rectangle the size of two cigarette packs above my left hip. The emptiness looked unnatural, sickly.

“A horoshi will always leave a section of the horimono empty, as a symbol that it is never finished, never perfect,” said Aritomo, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Like the leaves you scattered on the lawn,” I said.

Even though the garden in Yugiri was completed, there was always some maintenance work to be done. Aritomo delegated most of the chores to me, telling me what he wanted done by the gardeners, elaborating on the reasons for each instruction.

Walking past the archery hall one evening after the workers had left, I saw him there, dressed in his kyudo clothes. Since I had known him he had never practiced archery this late in the day; there was also something strange in the way he stood that made me stop and watch. My puzzlement increased when I saw him pretend to nock an arrow in the bowstring. He drew the bowstring back, and then released it. There was no arrow, but still I thought I heard the faint sound of paper being ripped, as though something forceful had pierced the target.

He remained unmoving, one arm still stretched out, holding the bow level with his eyes. Finally, he lowered it, bringing a note of completion to the entire movement. He continued to stare at the target, and then he nodded his head once in satisfaction.

I walked along the edge of the gravel bed to stand below him. “Did you hit the bull’s-eye?” I asked.

He looked back at the target. “Yes, I did.”

“It couldn’t have been too difficult, since you didn’t use an arrow,” I said, masking my confusion in a gently mocking tone.

“But you are wrong. It takes years of practice. When I first started, I always missed,” he said. “And there was an arrow.”

“There was no arrow,” I replied, restraining myself from turning to look at the target to be certain.

“There was.” He touched the side of his head. “In here.”

He began to spend more of his time in the shajo, shooting invisible arrows. And every night he would ask me to let him look at the horimono. I lay on the sheets as he studied my skin, his fingers stroking the pictures he had painted on my back: the temple in the mountains, the cave of the swiftlets, the archer shooting down the sun. After a few minutes of this I would turn around and pull him toward me. (653 words)