“Do I want to know what happened?”
“Many people died.” Mr. Oniji’s voice was flat. He glanced at Kit, considering. “They were not good times.”
“You make it sound like history.”
Mr. Oniji tapped the photograph. “Maybe it is,” he said. “At least, maybe it should be. But, you know…one member of that family took something belonging to me.”
“A case,” said Kit.
Mr. Oniji went very still indeed.
Looking from Mr. Oniji to Mrs. Oniji’s card, Kit smiled. “It might be worth trying the station lockers at Shinjuku Sanchome,” he said, reaching into his pajama pocket for a key. “I believe you have three days.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Hayato Kato and Masato Inoue for translating lines from Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure Kikigaki. Without these, writing this book would have been much harder. Also my thanks for their help in coming up with a suitable Japanese term for “floating rope world.” (All of the suggestions were excellent, but the final one caught exactly the right combination of history and artistic subversion.)
Timothy Gowers, Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. I stole his four-dice analogy from a brief interview he gave to New Scientist.
Everyone at the Akasaka Prince Hotel, the Akasaka Tokyu, and the Hilton Hotel, Shinjuku. All of whom let me use them as office space and clog up their bars and lounges with my papers, laptops, and general mess.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship, JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD grew up in Britain, the Far East, and Scandinavia. Currently working as a freelance journalist and living in London and Winchester, he writes for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian. He is married to the journalist Sam Baker, editor-in-chief of the British magazine Red. Visit his website at www.j-cg.co.uk.