“Ideally, I’d like an image that was the same size as these photocopies of rubbings. I think the blades fit together to form a map, and I’d like to be able to manipulate the rubbings and images to see if I can fit them together.”
“How will you know what it’s a map of?” Kiyohara said. “Is there some reference point so you know what you’ll be looking at?”
I sighed. “No, and I’m actually missing a piece of the map because I don’t have a rubbing or picture of one of the blades. I think there are six of them, but as you can see I only have five represented with what I have. In fact, I don’t even know in what order they fit together, but I figure that I’ll just approach things one step at a time. With only a week until the next show I have to keep moving, even if I’m not always making progress.”
“Well, we can help you with movement and hopefully it will also be progress. Are you familiar with the technique of photo enhancing?”
“I know a little bit about it, but if you have the time I wouldn’t mind having an explanation about what you are going to do with the faxes.”
“Well, in concept it’s really quite simple, although it’s part art as well as part science. It does take a lot of programming and computer power to accomplish it on a large scale, but we have big computers at our data center to do all sorts of design and engineering tasks; photo enhancement is just one of them.
“What we do is divide the photograph, such as the photographs on these two faxes, into a series of tiny squares. With photographs of this size, the squares will be about one-tenth the diameter of a hair: very, very small. Then we take the section of the photograph that we are interested in and digitize it. That is, we give a number to the square, based on its color value.
“In a good black-and-white photograph you should have all sorts of tones, ranging from almost a pure white to a pure black. You can measure these tones and apply a number to each tone, let’s say from one to ten. One is white and ten is black. The gray values in the middle would have numbers like two, four, or six. This way we can number, or digitize, each spot on the photograph.
“The actual numbers we use are much more complex. They go up to 1,024 for the shade and over sixteen thousand for the hue, or color. Still, the process is the same as the one-through-ten example I gave you. By scanning the photograph and taking a reading at each of the tiny squares that we have marked out on the photograph, we can apply a value to how light or dark that square is.
“After we have digitized the photograph, we can keep the values for each point on the photo in computer memory and save them for later manipulation. Let’s say that on one small portion of the photograph we end up with a pattern like this.”
Kiyohara took out a pencil and drew a diagram on a pad of paper.
777777777
777577777
333333333
333333333
“Remember, this pattern represents a very small section of the photograph, perhaps the size of the head of a pin. You’ll see that we have a row of darker colors here, represented by sevens, right next to a row of lighter colors, represented by threes. We have computer programs that look through the patterns and find situations such as this. Our assumption here is we are looking at the edge of something, a straight edge against a lighter background. Based on that assumption, we would adjust the one dot which is out of place, here.”
He put his pencil down on the 5 that broke up the string of 7s.
“Our working assumption is that this five is a flaw, a problem with the photograph and that what is really represented here is a straight line, so that all these values should be seven. Therefore, we would darken this single dot to a seven. We would go through the entire photograph looking for these types of flaws and make the dots lighter or darker, depending on what the surrounding values look like.”
Kiyohara smiled. “That is the science portion of it. Now the art comes in. We have someone sit in front of a screen and look at these patterns. He can look at the entire photograph or he can zoom a section up, to look at the individual dots that make up a section. Using a light pen and a keyboard, he can lighten or darken dots to enhance a particular section of the photograph. The computer programs do surprisingly well in enhancing the photographs on their own, but sometimes you also need a human eye to look at the patterns to see if they make sense. Some things, such as vegetation, don’t have regular, sharp-edged forms, and it’s hard to program the computer to do a completely accurate job.”
He placed his finger on one of the faxes. “This, however, is a steel sword. Fine geometric shapes, hard edges. It should come through photo enhancement very nicely.”
“How long will this take?” I asked.
“I don’t think it will take too long. Perhaps one hour, perhaps two hours. Would you like to wait or would you like to come back?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait. I’m quite anxious to see what the results are.”
I spent a pleasant hour sipping green tea and looking at car brochures until Kiyohara returned. He handed over an enhanced photograph of one of my faxes and said, “Is it good enough for your purposes?”
I looked at the enhanced photograph and smiled. “Perfect.”
20
By the end of the morning I had two enhanced prints of the blades from Rotterdam and New York. A Nissan stockholder might think the computer power burned up to get me those prints might be better spent designing cup holders for minivans, but I was pretty pleased with the results. On the Rotterdam blade I could make out a single slash on the tang that Kiyohara told me was the number one, and on both blades I could see the patterns. One had what looked like a village on it and the other had a mountain and a waterfall. Just as important, I got an offer of more help.
“We’ve been talking about this mystery,” he told me when he gave me the finished prints, “and perhaps there’s more we can do for you. The digitized map of Japan we’ve been working on has things like temples and mountains on it, just like the designs that are on these blades. If you’re right about the blades forming a map, maybe we can match that map against our digitized map of Japan to help you pinpoint where the treasure is.”
“Can you help me figure out where the blade I’m missing is? There are supposed to be six blades, and I’ve only got images for five.”
He laughed. “No. Perhaps you should go to a …” He sought the English word. “A psychic.” I wasn’t sure he was kidding.
I spent the rest of the day working on finding the sixth blade with very little to show for it. Junko called Professor Hirota, but his assistant said he was already off on another trip. I talked to Sonoda-san in Kyoto, but although he seemed pleased to talk to me, he wasn’t able to give me any more information than he had when I was in Kyoto. Junko and I searched every database to which News Pop had access, in English and Japanese, and we even tried calling the U.S. to try some databases I knew about. No luck.
Mariko and I had dinner together, and she told me about her sightseeing that day. I was so engrossed in trying to figure out a way to find the sixth blade that I wasn’t much company. While Mariko watched an English-language movie on TV, I sat on the bed looking at the enhanced prints and the rubbings of the blades, trying to make sense of them. When we fell asleep I dreamed about colored sword blades dancing in the air, forming endless patterns as they combined in different combinations. If Walt Disney had been Japanese, perhaps something like that would have been in Fantasia.
The next morning the light woke me. I had forgotten to close the curtains in the room. I looked at the clock and saw it was only 6:10 A.M. I was tired, but not sleepy, and after lying in bed a couple of minutes, I slipped out of bed and got up.