Counterfeiter and Other Stories Read online

  After the war, this backbreaking but delicate and tantalizing job again stared me in the face. Whenever I began to feel that I really had to get started on what I had committed myself to, the mere knowledge of the peculiar delicacy of this job kept me from feeling that I would now be able to apply myself to the task with ease. Besides—and this was a matter of some fundamental importance to me personally—I unexpectedly quit the newspaper after the war, went up to Tokyo, and turned my attention to literature. Completely immersed in this new kind of work, and with the chronology incomplete and full of gaps, I kept procrastinating, with the inevitable result that my work on Keigaku's biography simply remained in the form of those two or three tablets of notes.

  That's the way things went. Even so, when it turned out that the biography wouldn't even be ready by the thirteenth anniversary, and considering the fact that I had delayed so long after having undertaken the job, I couldn't face the Onuki family. With the announcement of this memorial service staring at me, I resolved that this year I would really have to do something. I would try to assemble my work on the biography and put it into some presentable even if unpolished form and finally get this thing off my back.

  So, because my own work efficiency is habitually not very great in the heat of July and August anyhow, I determined that I would spend these two summer months working on the compilation of the Keigaku biography. To that end, I took as a working place a small retreat in a mountain village at the foot of Mount Amagi in my native Izu Peninsula. There I decided to devote every morning to this job, and if I ran across some obscure points or situations, I would go to Kyoto in the fall to clear them up. At any rate, I proposed to complete a tentative draft and by some manner or means get the job done.

  I must say that work progressed rather smoothly during July. By scanning almost ten volumes of his essays and travel accounts, I was able to complete my notes on his travels and the principal works he produced at each of these locales and when he did them. Thus, I was able to finish the draft chronology, albeit only in rough outline. As a result, upon entering the month of August, I was ready to adopt a writing approach by which I could pull together those facts and data that could be confirmed and discard everything that appeared conjectural. Referring to my old notes, I completed the writing of the sections of the biography: from his infancy to his youth; how he studied successively in Kyoto under Isso Katakura, Gaho Yoshimizu, and others; how he received honorable mention for presenting his debut-work, "Lost Happiness," at the 1897 Artists' Exhibition; how, availing himself of this opportunity, he had started to build his reputation as an incomparably brilliant artistic genius; and how he successively presented the works that have been praised as the masterpieces of his early period, "White Night," "The Old Fox," "Light Snow," etc. But here, my pen suddenly came to a dead halt. In narrating the period when the young Keigaku was blossoming forth as a colorful artist, I had been interspersing here and there the unedited contents of an unpublished contemporary diary, something in his own handwriting which could be considered unique Keigaku memorabilia. That diary had been turned over to me when I first visited the Onuki family after the war. It had been discovered together with various and sundry scraps in a Chinese bag which was in the Onuki family's godown when they were evacuating during the war. It was given to me by Takuhiko, who had said, "We've found something rather rare. I wonder if you don't need it for reference." On Japanese paper, in small characters, daily events from the end of 1897 to the summer of 1899 had been chronicled in fragmentary handwritten personal memoranda. For understanding Keigaku at that time, this was material that could be termed unique, unequaled and priceless.

  What interested me most keenly in this diary was the discovery that this proud and arrogant genius of a painter, who was believed to have been without a single friend throughout his life, actually did have a friend called Shinozaki during this period. The name of this Shinozaki appears in three places, but Shinozaki is the only person except for members of the family who appears in this diary.

  "With the silver trophy in hand, visit Shinozaki at Kitano; drink sake and chat with him till the wee hours" is one passage.

  There is evidence, practically substantiated in earlier and later texts, that this refers to the time when he carried off the Special Award at the Kyoto Artists' Association Exhibition for painting "The Peacock." It would seem that in all likelihood he had taken the silver trophy with him and had gone to spend the night drinking and rejoicing with an intimate friend. Now, it is not difficult to imagine that this night was young Keigaku's most triumphant hour, and when you think about the fact that he was without restraint sharing that moment of glory with someone, you must look upon this Shinozaki person as someone who was decidedly intimate with Keigaku.

  Next, there was:

  "Am presented with a sea-bream by Shinozaki in the way of congratulations. Immediately go to visit Shinozaki at Shimotachiuri,* but he is out. Leave something in large characters on the door and return home."

  This, too, can in all probability be interpreted as meaning that after having captured the prize at some sort of exhibition and on being given a sea-bream as a congratulatory gift by this Shinozaki fellow, he had been touched by this token of friendship and had gone to call on Shinozaki at his home or boarding-house. The expression "Leave something in large characters at the door and return home" does not clearly specify what was written. But, it would seem that either in order to explain the purpose of his visit or to express his thanks, he had, as he did so often in later years, written a Chinese poem or some impromptu verse because he had been presented with something as a congratulatory gift. It may possibly seem an extremely rash thing for me to say, but that action left a deep impression on me as being one of the most truly graphic descriptions of the artistic genius Keigaku in his youth. The date is not recorded.

  Finally, the one other passage in which Shinozaki's name appears is, "Shinozaki left Shoyama this morning and came to Kyoto." This passage is in the last section of the diary and is dated August 3, Summer 1899. This statement standing by itself can only be interpolated. This one line cannot be regarded as related to anything before or after or as having any special significance. However, at that moment when I first saw the place-name Shoyama, the very fact that a certain Shinozaki appeared to have been Keigaku's most intimate friend suddenly caused an image of the counterfeiter Hosen Hara to flash across my mind.

  I had a certain amount of knowledge of this man Hosen Hara, who had spent his gloomy and miserable life painting forgeries of Keigaku's works. But when I realized that this person, who had remained dormant in my mind until that instant, was identifiable with this Shinozaki and that he could be considered Keigaku's only intimate friend during his youth, I was struck with an indescribably weird feeling.

  Of course, this is something that had not occurred to me until then, but I did recall hearing at one time that Hosen Hara, if he can be called that, was adopted. In Hosen Hara's small native hamlet, situated on the Hino River which runs through the Chugoku mountain range, there are many people who bear the surname Shinozaki. Although I had never inquired about Hara's original surname, by putting two and two together I was able very early to arrive at the indisputable fact that this Shinozaki person and Hosen Hara were one and the same.

  For two days I laid aside my pen and postponed the task of chronicling Keigaku Onuki's biography. I passed the time idly, sitting in a wicker chair on the veranda, facing south and gazing at the late-summer Amagi mountainside as the sunbeams were rapidly fading. My thoughts turned away from the image of the brilliant early days of the artistic genius Keigaku, and Hosen Hara's hapless career captured my thoughts. Then, for the first time, all my fragmentary bits of knowledge of him fell into place, and it was a composite picture of his life that now flashed into my mind. Filled with a strong impulse to think further about Hosen Hara, I turned my face toward the mountain. There was something compelling in Hosen Hara's life that forced me to think about him.

  II
r />   IN THE fall of 1943, I had set out with Takuhiko Onuki to take a look at some of Keigaku's representative early works which had been produced and still remained scattered in various villages near the artist's birthplace around the Inland Sea in Hyogo and Okayama Prefectures. This was the first time that I encountered the name of Hosen Hara.

  We had set a period of five days to visit the homes of the collectors of Keigaku's works and had scheduled our trip in this order: Akashi, Kakogawa, Takasago, Himeji, Shikama, Aioi, Wake, and Saidaiji. Since Takuhiko had generally announced in advance that we were going to make these visits, we were hospitably received at most of the houses, and we were able to inspect many works of Keigaku's second decade, hitherto known to us only by name.

  While we were quite busily getting on and off trains, the autumn sunbeams were scattered like fallen petals over the whitish sand characteristic of these places. As we got off at the small stations in the Harima-Bizen area, we had the feeling of being somewhere near the sea. We wandered about from house to house visiting the old homes and rich mansions of those who had been, in a sense, patrons of the late Keigaku, men who were written up in my notes. Because of our tight schedule, we had just one or two hours at some places. But even when we could have been more relaxed, I had to go half-galloping after the impetuous Takuhiko along the long pine-wooded roads and through the mud-walled residential areas. The late fall temperature was ideal, neither too hot nor too cold, but traveling at such a pace, our bodies were covered with a light perspiration. It had been my main purpose on this trip to see these works, and it was Takuhiko's intention to pay his respects at the homes of his late father's powerful supporters. But at each of those homes, we had to listen to one or two anecdotes about Keigaku's early days, and occasionally, if there were scrolls in unauthenticated boxes, Takuhiko was asked to autograph them.

  Takuhiko, whose resemblance to his father was manifest in the high-strung temperament that showed in his face, thick eyebrows, and crewcut hair, would say, "Fine, let's do it!"

  And he would roll up his sleeves to his big-boned shoulders, not at all like "a fellow who did as he pleased in Paris and whose charm and polish were renowned throughout the world," as he often boasted, and he would show that he could write characters surprisingly like his father's.

  From the time of our first encounter, I had taken a curiously great interest in this contemporary of mine, this Keigaku the Second, and in a short time we had built up a frank, candid, and friendly relationship. Although he had been something of a profligate abroad, playing around did not interest him after he returned to Japan. As if his personality had suddenly changed, he did not care about either his reputation or his appearance. He gave the impression of staring wide-eyed at war-ravaged Japan, like a foreigner. Coupled with his defiant nature as a second-generation genius, he had the good-natured attitude generally attributed to young men from good homes. Rumors that had reached my ears before I actually met him were incredibly far from the truth. It seemed as though he was being stereotyped through misunderstandings of the nature of a son of a well-known painter.

  He had inherited a prodigious artistic talent from his father, but gossip had it that he was lazy, shiftless, and incompetent, that he was slovenly and undignified, and he was rumored to be an offensive, despicable playboy. While it could be said that he had a profession—he was an engraver—he actually didn't do much of anything. There was nothing compelling him to do anything, because he had inherited an enormous fortune, a magnificent town house, and a villa, all bequeathed by his father. Before the war ended in defeat, producing his father's biography and collecting his father's most magnificent works had been the most compelling jobs for him.

  In the course of my five-day journey with this Takuhiko Onuki, we stumbled upon one fact of completely unanticipated interest. As if by prearrangement, one forgery of Keigaku's work had been collected at almost every house.

  The first forgery of Keigaku's work that we encountered was in Kakogawa, at the home of a Mr. M——, one of the artist's patrons, where the head of the household had passed away some time ago. In the inner drawing room, which looked out over a well-kept garden, we were shown any number of Keigaku's works, among which there was one miniature, a scroll in the Chagake style which usually adorns tea-ceremony rooms. The scroll was labelled "North Kyoto Autumn Scenery." The instant that this one was displayed, I could tell beyond question what it was. Even Takuhiko, who had been peering at it from a vantage point off on the side, immediately turned his eyes toward me. Our glances instinctively met and intertwined.

  "What do you think?" his eyes were saying.

  For my part, I knew the original of this same work, which was held by a collector in Kyoto. Although Takuhiko had never seen it before, he knew instinctively from its lack of dignity and grace that this was not Keigaku's. He explained this to me later. At any rate, by checking with photographs in exhibition catalogues and other reference works, we could tell definitely that this painting had been drawn in imitation of Keigaku's work. As an extra precaution, right then and there, we opened a book of impressions of Keigaku's seals and checked. It seemed quite clear that in place of the stone seal always used with Keigaku's professional name, Tekishintei, a counterfeit wooden seal had been substituted. At first glance, the seal impression was a perfect facsimile, but on comparison with the two together, there were distinct discrepancies. Besides, the vermillion inking-pad that was used was different from the pads used in originals. Also, while the painting was furnished with an autographed case, this too was, of course, a counterfeit. When asked, the widow of the deceased owner said that she was acquainted with the man from whom her husband had acquired it; that he was a Japanese painter who carried old curios around with him; that she didn't know what he was doing now, but at that time he had briefly been living in Kakogawa; that he was a friend of Keigaku's called Hosen Hara.

  When Takuhiko heard this, he exclaimed, "Did you say Hosen Hara! I know him too. Let's see. . . when was that? At any rate, I vaguely remember meeting him two or three times when I was small. He certainly was a friend of my father's, and he used to come around to our house, but I once heard that he later became a counterfeiter of my father's works and my father forbade him to come again. So, that really was true!"

  From then on, following upon the case of Mr. M——of Kakogawa, wherever we went, day after day, we found "Keigakus"—painted by Hosen Hara.

  "This is another Hara-Keigaku, isn't it?"

  "Beautifully done. Better than the original."

  We continually engaged in exchanges of conversation like this, and though it was rather painful to the collectors, whenever we found forgeries, we exposed them as such. Some of them revealed themselves as forgeries at just a cursory glance, but at times there were works that were counterfeited in astoundingly exquisite and accurate detail. There were ways of identifying the forgeries because Keigaku originals had an air of artistic splendor and worth, but even beyond that, when we subjected some of the forgeries to close scrutiny, we found that they contained really gross errors here and there.

  For example:

  From his middle period on, Keigaku never used any whitish green in daubing his portrayals of moss and grass or rocks and crags, so forgeries which overlooked this fact or contained errors like this could be spotted at a glance. Further, a clumsiness was detectable in the forgeries when it came to the special way of using ultramarine at the bottom part of the white snow on Mount Fuji in summer, which Keigaku loved to portray. In all cases, evidence like this was available, and so the forgeries exposed themselves as forgeries.

  All of the forgeries we saw had been acquired by the very same means and were by the brush of Hosen Hara. Apparently this Hara was a very ingenious man. There were instances in which the art work, the artist's signature, the seal, and everything up to the autographed case could, as a matter of course, be ascribed to Hosen himself. Among the ten or so forgeries which we saw during this trip, only two could be considered to have been done in a
ssociation with a bogus country art dealer.

  Hosen had been able to gain people's confidence by claiming a close personal relationship with Keigaku—and this was a trump card he always used with buyers. On top of that, there were many cases in which he would tell the buyer whether he had gotten a particular item from Keigaku or had bought it cheaply, and then proceeded to palm off a forgery. There were also cases of his saying, among other things, that he would request Keigaku to do a picture on order, and after settling on an appropriate time for delivery, he would deliver.

  The fact that he used as a middleman a dishonest art dealer whose character no one knew—and there were two definite cases of this—shows that Hosen associated with crafty art dealers, and this seemed worse than his just engaging in this kind of illicit work.

  On this trip we half-jokingly began to bestow upon Hosen Hara names like "Keigaku-Hara" and "Uncle Hosen." We had uncovered some ten forgeries that he had produced, and from the collectors' stories we had obtained some fragmentary bits of knowledge about Hosen, but all of these stories concerned Hosen at the age of forty or fifty. That was a period when he changed his residence from place to place, wandering about as an obscure local painter. But, beyond what could be conjectured from Takuhiko's faint recollections, there was no way of knowing to what extent he had really had a close friendship with Keigaku. When we tried to synthesize the stories of all the victims on whom Hosen had foisted forgeries, we gathered that he had lived for varying periods of time in the small cities that we had visited along the Inland Sea, but he had not settled down in any one place for as long as five years. Since he was the kind of fellow who went around selling forgeries at will, inevitably, after two or three years had passed, there would be some sort of incident so that he could not earn a living or remain in any one town and had to move on to another place. However, he always moved to other small cities that were very close by, because he would have had a hard time earning a living if he had left the places where the Keigaku enthusiasts were concentrated.