The Case of the Sharaku Murders by Katsuhiko Takahashi Read Free Book Online Page A

people will now be able to see his paintings and not just those of us who had the privilege of knowing him.
    December 1907
    RETURNING to his apartment in Kunitachi where he lived alone, Ryohei ate a simple dinner and brewed himself a large pot of coffee. Only after starting on his second cup did he at last unwrap the paper parcel he had brought back with him from the book fair. As he did so he caught the unmistakable musty smell of old books. It was a smell he was fond of.
    His hand went first to the painting catalogue Mizuno had given him.
    The title on the cover read: Great Paintings from the Collection of the Master of Mountain Lake Villa . The book was surprisingly heavy for its size, dried up and brittle though the pages were after the passage of so much time. This was no doubt due to the nearly one hundred over-sized photographic plates pasted inside.
    Ryohei began reading Kiyochika’s preface. At first the verbose Chinese-style prose was difficult to follow. His eyes had to pause on each Chinese character, making it hard for him to grasp the overall meaning. But as he read along haltingly in this way, the sense slowly began to sink in. Never before had he read anything quite like it. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with such an overwrought prose style to conceal the fact one was saying absolutely nothing! He recalled how once Yosuke had said much the same sort of thing.
    Mizuno was right , thought Ryohei. The preface was disappointing, but at least it mentioned the dates Kiyochika had visited Akita. That might come in useful sometime.
    Ryohei turned the page. There, staring out at him was a photograph of a distinguished-looking gentleman which had turned sepia with age.
    He was about forty, with a round face and a handlebar moustache, and was seated in a chair wearing a suite and a pinstriped tie. His lips were pursed and his clenched fist conveyed a sense of tension. The photograph had clearly been taken in a studio. Behind him hung a painted backdrop out of which a window had been cut. Through it one could see clouds floating by outside. In this era of snapshots, it seemed a bit peculiar, but Ryohei had no doubt it was nothing unusual by the standards of its time. The Western-style lamp that stood ostentatiously to the right of the chair was obviously brand new, but to Ryohei it recalled a bygone age.
    Beneath the photograph appeared a caption: The late Sato Masakichi, Master of Mountain Lake Villa—1905 . According to Kiyochika’s preface, the gentleman in question had met his untimely death two years after the photograph was taken. Of course, nothing about the photograph gave any hint of the tragic fate that awaited him.
    The paintings began on the next page. As Ryohei flipped through the pages something fell out of the book and fluttered to the ground. At first he thought one of the plates must have come unglued from the page, but when he picked it up he saw it was an old postcard. No doubt the previous owner of the book had been using it as a bookmark. Ryohei placed it on the table and turned his attention back to the book. The plates were all different sizes; some were tall and narrow while others were short and broad. But without exception all of the paintings in the photographs were mounted on Japanese scrolls.
    Each plate bore only the title of the painting and in some cases a short profile of the artist. There was no explanatory text. That in and of itself was rather odd. Perhaps after Sato died there hadn’t been anyone who knew enough about the paintings to write something about them , thought Ryohei. Or perhaps the book had been put together by someone who didn’t know anything about art catalogues and thought it was enough just to publish the paintings. Typically, books of this kind were full of commentary that went on and on ad nauseam about how the collector had acquired each work, how great the artist was, and that sort of thing. By comparison, Ryohei liked the minimalist style