Karakuri-Netsuke: A Mike Dodge Minimystery

Written in response to: Make Japan (or Japanese culture) an element of your story.... view prompt

46 comments

Mystery

Seth Waldron’s living room was overpopulated with hares and dogs and mice and octopi and dragons and spirits and skeletons and not a few couples engaged in eternal copulation.

“Ah, you’ve found the shunga,” the master of the house breathed behind me. Dad had a 30-year run of National Geographics shelved in the new bedroom I demanded at nine, and it didn’t take long for me to develop a literal Indiana jones for the more fascinating anatomical aspects of sub-tropical anthropology. I couldn’t feign studying the use of cowrie shells as indigenous currency in this situation, so I merely nodded and murmured appreciatively as a tiny entangled pair kamasutra-ed it up.   

“The ‘picture of spring,’ ‘spring’ being a euphemism for sex," the former estate auctioneer related. "Erotic art has had a place in Japanese society for nearly 400 years, encompassing every gender pairing and conventional and unconventional act. Shunga and other forms of ukiyo-e were created to promote the pleasures and attractions of city life especially among the merchant-craftsman class.”

“I can see that...”

“Most shunga took the form of woodblock prints and paintings, but this netsuke was carved from tagua nut – the nut from the ivory palm. They call it vegetable ivory, and sometimes, craftsmen would attempt to palm it off, oops, as elephant ivory. By the way, I’ve been scrupulous in avoiding mammalian ivory – everything you see here is produced from materials such as tagua or hornbill ‘ivory’ or bamboo root agate or black coral or umoregi, fossilized wood.

"I have a piece over here you might like, kataborinetsuke-style, carved from a walnut shell. The nutmeat was removed by inserting a small worm in a hole in the shell before the artist removed portions of the rough outer surface to create a latticed effect, and then polished and shellacked the work.”

I didn’t ask what they were doing in that one, but fortunately, Tiana Waldron called cake on the play.

**

Over a thick wedge of Tiana’s homemade carrot cake, we plotted the Westlake Community Garden’s transition to Westlake Urban Farm and Sanctuary LLC, for would not a rutabaga by any other name smell as sweet? The cake was veined with shredded heirloom purples from the non-profit plots deep on a municipally forgotten tract by the Westlake Homes on the west side.

I’d been on the last few hundred of a small food desert alleviation grant I’d wrangled into a community brainstorming forum a couple years back. Tiana at 67 was no longer up to a one-woman show toting natural fertilizer in the hot sun at a personal loss. I funded an open house and donor campaign at the garden, and with the awareness, Tiana was able to recruit former Peace Corps farm manager Galen Johnston, now seated to my left, sipping organic oolong in lieu of the proffered fair trade Costa Rican I’d doctored with almond creamer.

Rich Christenson, Westlake’s new graphic artist and website guy, kept studying me as if working to figure out what role the fat boomer in the Batman shirt played in any 21st Century venture. Tiana truly had tapped what resources and expertise I could offer, Galen made it passively clear he really didn’t need my fat ass around, and I would have gracefully faded away had Tiana’s gratitude and 301-c tax-free giving requirements not demanded another technically functioning body for the LLC board. The Waldron’s elderly collie Gaia (little bit on-the-muzzle) valued my presence and head-scratching acumen, and I enjoyed the rest of my cake in peace as Galen outlined the principles of trickle irrigation and Rich excused himself for the john. Seth had abandoned his discourse on tagua porn to dawdle at his cake while feigning absorption in his wife’s mission, and eventually wandered off with a muttered excuse.

I heard the commotion in the living room as I was draining the last of my worker- and planet-friendly brew. 

“Empty them!” It was Seth, and unless he’d learned to summon the netsuke spirits, he was addressing Rich. Tiana frowned anxiously, appeared ready either to weep or crumble into her own DNA-branded compost. I sighed, and pushed my chair back. Gaia was displeased.

“Now!” ordered Seth.

“Hey, guys,” I drawled, at once commanding the room. Well, I had as fair a shot at commanding the room as these two. “What’s going on?”

Rich grinned. “He thinks I was trying to steal his dragon, his precious karakuri-netsuki.”

Seth’s head whipped toward the tall young man. “He, ah, he was taking so long in the bathroom, I wanted to see if everything was all right. And here he was, fooling around with the dragon. Empty your pockets, Christenson.”

“Umm,” I interjected. “You’re holding it, Seth.”

He looked down at the fierce wooden creature crooked in his arm, then indignantly back up at me. “Look, this is none of your business. Just empty your pockets, Christenson!”

“Seth, you know my interest in cryptozoology,” Rich implored. Again, Seth froze, then started toward Rich.

“Hold up!” I said, at entirely too high an octave.

 **

“Why’d you refer to this as a karakuri-netsuke?” I asked Rich. “After my netsuke master class with Seth, I realized my knowledge of the topic was lacking, so I Wiki-ed things up in the privacy of the by the way quite lovely guest bathroom.

“Karakuri-netsuke is a very specific type of netsuke — the ‘trick/mechanism’ netsuke, with moving parts or hidden surprises.” I turned the dragon in my hands. “You see any tricks or surprises here? Any little buttons or levers or secret compartments? I missing anything here, Seth?”

Waldron shook his head genially, though his smile was as hard as walrus tusk. “I do have some interesting examples—“

“Calm down and quit evading. So what’s the trick? Well, let’s look at that weird little exchange you guys just had. You are both reeaally bad at subtext. Rich, when you got caught in the act, you were the one who called Seth’s dragon a karakuri-netsuke. Now, you’re talking to the Napoleon of Netsuke — sorry, only alliteration I could come up with on the fly. Would you try to impress him with detailed information he’d already know and could easily call you on? But Seth didn’t.

“Then you tried to argue your fascination with cryptozoology. Now, there, I gotta call you. When I was a dateless teen geek, I devoured everything I could find on the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, the yeti, the tatzelwurm — cryptozoology is the study of the possible, of creatures that MAY exist, based on human sightings or evidence. Not mythological or fantastic creatures, registered trademark J.K. Rowling, like griffins or unicorns or dragons. So you were either talking in secret code, or you’re an ignorant braggart — and you seem far from ignorant.”

“Who’s to say that the dragon isn’t the manifestation of ancient accounts of real…”

“Take the compliment, Rich,” I suggested. “So, again, I ask, what’s the trick? Simply that you were letting Seth know you were onto his trick. Maybe being the clever sonofagun he is, Seth may even have thrown out the term himself at some point, just for shits and giggles. You wanted to let him know you knew.

“So what IS Seth’s trick? Again, Rich, you were being a slyboots. You were afraid Seth might get the cops in on things, even though no crime had been committed. That in itself raises the question: Why make such a massive deal out of the whole thing? Rich stole nothing, no harm no foul. But you kept demanding he empty his pockets, and he kept refusing. Then he trots out that cryptozoology schtick. Letting you know just how much he knew. Rich, you want to show us what’s in your pocket?”

“I repeat—“

“You sure do. OK, lemme guess before I call in my cop buddy Curtis and ramp this whole bidness up. If the situation was resolved, if you meant to steal the dragon, if Seth indeed foiled your plot, why was he still in combat mode? Maybe because you already got what you needed. That cryptozoology remark was a kind of weird go-to, but what you said had an impact on Seth.

“If there’s not something inside the netsuke, maybe there’s something ON it. You guys see anything? Maybe it can’t be seen with the naked eye. But maybe something the police might be able to see with the proper technology, if Seth called them. Seth, call ‘em.”

“I don’t see any need for that,” Seth sputtered. That’s a highly over-used term in mystery fiction, but he performed it flawlessly.

“I know you wouldn’t. Rich, hand me that blacklight.”

Rich’s hand twitched for his jacket pocket, then it stopped, and he gave me a wary, reproving grin.

“Ta da,” I declared. “Now we know your little trick. Seth, let me give yours a try.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out an index card. I handed it to my host.

“It’s bla—“

“Blank? Oh, no. I forgot my pen, so I borrowed one of yours, just didn’t notice it was a UV-reactive pen. Why pick the dragon netsuke for your trick? I know this is more maybes than a Carly Rae Jepsen concert — don’t bother — but I bet it was twofold. Practically speaking, unlike most of your creatures, it’s a lengthy beast — lots of base surface area to work with. And it seemed the appropriate choice for your Dragon Coin account.”

The look on Seth and Rich’s faces was worth a hundred vintage Visa commercials.

“Shazam! Your dragon is literally a piece of crypto-zoology. Cryptocurrency passwords are long and complex, and you only have so many tries before you’re permanently locked out of your ‘wallet.’ Money you’ll never be able to retrieve. You weren’t going to trust that shit to memory, but these days, you couldn’t trust putting it on your computer or certainly on a sticky note. Don’t know how Rich here worked it out, but I did, soooo.” I stuck my palm out. “C’mon, hand it over, or I get Curtis in on the act. The light AND your phone.”

Rich shrugged, and went into his jacket. He dutifully unlocked the iPhone screen and handed it to me. I went to the Camera Roll, deleted the incredibly complex UV-illuminated “invisible” password inscribed on the bottom of the boxwood dragon, cleared the Deleted folder as well, checked his Sent Mail, texts, and Messenger (I doubt he’d have taken that risk), and returned the iPhone.

The young man laughed as he ran his UV light over the blank card I’d scavenged from Seth’s desk.

“And you,” I admonished Seth. “You weren’t going to call the cops on Rich, even though you’d have been within your rights. I’m guessing this falls into the ill-gotten gains category, from what I don’t know and as long as it’s not drugs or guns or trafficking, I dunno and don’t care.

"But you just call it bygones, find a new hidey-place for your password that isn’t quite so clever, and we all have a second piece of cake.”

Seth glared at the would-be crypto thief, and nodded silently.

Then he smiled. “I appreciate your discretion. Let me acknowledge it with a little token of my gratitude. You were admiring the piece earlier, and—”  

“Nope,” I said.

April 01, 2023 01:05

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46 comments

Graham Kinross
00:25 Apr 11, 2023

“ octopi,” is definitely the best of the accepted plurals of octopus. I know someone who hates the word moist, which doesn’t bother me but octopuses is awful, as bad as elfs instead of elves. Tolkien was right about that one. “ a few couples engaged in eternal copulation,” lucky f***ers! Is the carrot cake purple because it’s using the old school carrots before they were bred to be orange? That was an eye opener for me, changing the worlds perception of a carrot completely as a tribute to the House of Orange. Who’s your Batman? Adam West?...

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Martin Ross
02:59 Apr 11, 2023

I used to watch Adam West Batman as a kid in the ‘60s, but Keaton is my favorite. I liked Bale, but felt Keaton conveyed the moral and ethical conflicts better. Not at all sold on Pattison, but that could be generational bias. You’ll flail me alive, but Clooney wasn’t bad as Wayne, tho everything else in the film sucked. Villain-wise, I grew up with Batman ‘66’s more colorful baddies, so the Keaton villains grabbed me more than most of the postmodern “realist” villains (Ledger’s Joker was an exception, and Murphy wasn’t a bad Crane). Howeve...

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Graham Kinross
03:28 Apr 11, 2023

I think as a playboy, Clooney wasn’t a bad choice. It’s not really his fault that film was terrible. It was a job to him. I’ve read some reallly serious breakdowns of the image of Batman which talk about how flamboyant his villains need to be because he wears black and he’s stoic and not a wisecracking guy like Spiderman or the like. Yeah despite having some of the weakest villains, Ledger excepted, I loved the Bale Batman trilogy. It has been ripped off too many times by DC trying to recapture it when the rest of their lineup should be colo...

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Martin Ross
18:44 Apr 11, 2023

The Bale trilogy was great drama and a great revisioning. I just grew up with a different paradigm. I have loved the TV Flash because the rogue’s gallery strikes a reasonable middle ground between realistic character snd colorful villainy. I will be eager to see where Gunn goes — I absolutely love his view toward villains…

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Graham Kinross
19:44 Apr 11, 2023

And he loves villains…

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Martin Ross
20:19 Apr 11, 2023

Why yes he does. Looking forward to the next season of Peacemaker, whenever he pulls his new executive sh*t together.

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Alexey Williams
20:14 Apr 05, 2023

I enjoy your stories, Martin, because to me there's something very human about them. This story feels lived in and has the ring of truth, and to me this is a quality of good writing. I don't know if you've considered screenwriting, but personally I think your writing would really shine in that area. And the cryptozoology aspect of this story stood out to me since I've always had a fascination with yetis, wendigos, skinwalkers, etc. Well, I don't know if skinwalkers qualify ha ha.

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Martin Ross
20:44 Apr 05, 2023

Thanks so much! I was a cryptozoology fanatic when I was young, and I still check the crypto animal sites regularly. Everything that might be hidden from our awareness — it fuels my imagination! I actually do play out my scenes as if they were in a TV show or movie. A friend of mine in college urged me to write the way people actually talk, with all the tics, stops, and hesitations.

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Alexey Williams
05:21 Apr 06, 2023

I think this approach really works, and I'd love to read more on the cryptozoology side of things.

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Martin Ross
08:41 Apr 06, 2023

I’m going to research Midwest crypto-critters for a Dodge story. I’ve been wanting to do a few on the weirder side.

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Alexey Williams
16:11 Apr 06, 2023

That'll be fun to read I think.

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Martin Ross
16:47 Apr 06, 2023

Thanks for the notion.

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Russell Mickler
17:48 Apr 05, 2023

OMG I keeled over on the opening para ... Extremely smart writing. Every sentence conveys so many ideas with masterful, clever phrasing. I mean, the Rich Christenson para cracked me up - you _elevate_ a LLC board meeting with no less than seven conceptual ideas about what's happening in just one para! It's freekin' amazing, and extremely funny/smart satire. And I've never even heard of the tatzelwurm - Jesus! "That’s a highly over-used term in mystery fiction, but he performed it flawlessly." - busted up laughing. You manage to make a su...

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Martin Ross
18:01 Apr 05, 2023

Thanks, friend. I was concerned the mystery was a lil fast and sloppy, and if you can’t tell, my knowledge of cryptocurrency came straight off Wiki.🤣 BTW, Rich Christenson is a tribute to Rich Christenson here, who writes cool stories about characters in finance, crypto, and other white collar settings. Reese Mickler likely will pop up in a future story…😊

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Russell Mickler
18:16 Apr 05, 2023

OMG you did some kinda meta-reference with Rich then? Holy crap! :) R

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Russell Mickler
18:18 Apr 05, 2023

Laugh - you do that, and I may have to try emulating your voice for a 3000-word gumshoe story to see if it breaks my brain ...

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Martin Ross
18:45 Apr 05, 2023

I would LOVE to see that!

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Russell Mickler
18:48 Apr 05, 2023

Giggle no you wouldn't! I couldn't come close to doing your voice justice! But it'd be hellafun to try!

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Martin Ross
20:04 Apr 14, 2023

You have become part of the metaverse.😲

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Russell Mickler
21:34 Apr 14, 2023

laugh - you didn't? Hehe okay I'll check it out this weekend :) R

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Martin Ross
18:06 Apr 05, 2023

Oh, tatzelwurm-wise, I truly was a cryptozoology, UFO, and secret code fanatic as a kid and even as a teen (explaining why it took me an inordinate amount of time to get laid). I still check out weird animal sites, and I used the myth of the freshwater octopus in an X-Files fanfic about 15 years ago.

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Aoi Yamato
03:33 Jun 08, 2023

another great story. more people must read your work.

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Martin Ross
03:35 Jun 08, 2023

Thanks so much!

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Aoi Yamato
04:13 Jun 08, 2023

welcome

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Drizzt Donovan
12:51 Jun 22, 2023

This is really well written.

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Martin Ross
14:26 Jun 22, 2023

Thanks, Drizzt. It was a kind of hurry-up write after I talked to a Gen-Z friend about (SPOILERS AHEAD FOR NON-Drizzts) cryptocurrency. One thing I learned after several magazine rejections was to write what I know or at least build off a base of what I know. Dodge is my fat, schleppy old base, and even if I do something odd or that I have to research heavily like netsuke or crypto, I try to start with a Dodge-type situation. I actually am on a community garden board despite being an indoorsy carnivore, and the garden manager really would ...

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Drizzt Donovan
10:23 Jun 28, 2023

Keep it up

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Martin Ross
13:49 Jun 28, 2023

Thanks!

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Drizzt Donovan
12:37 Jul 25, 2023

Think nothing of it.

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