The Phoenix in a Foreign Labyrinth

Chapter 17 – The Photograph

Things soon settled down into a routine in Claude and Yune’s new shop. It was in a good location, and the combination of French ironwork with oriental style was selling very well.

A few years later, a large packet arrived one morning. Claude opened it and then called Yune over to look at it too. Inside, in a black lacquered frame decorated with gold, there was a colour photograph of the back of a female nude. It was remarkable enough for being in colour, still an expensive rarity, but even more remarkable because the woman’s back was covered entirely by a tattoo, which Yune could see immediately was Japanese irezumi. The exquisite design, which must have taken some time to complete, was of a phoenix, a Hou-ou, flying upwards through swirling red and gold flames.

‘Do you know anything about this?’ asked Claude, rather bemused by the fact that there was no indication on the packaging as to who had sent it or why they might have done so.

‘No, I don’t,’ replied Yune. They would often buy and sell general oriental items as well as ironwork – it was something Yune enjoyed, and besides, it brightened up the shop’s interior – but in this case, she really did have no idea where it had come from.

She looked at the photograph more closely. At first, she thought she recognized the “signature” that all irezumi masters added to their work, but immediately dismissed the thought as far too improbable. Then she noticed the bird’s tail – it had five feathers, and five being an odd number, that meant it was actually a male Hou rather than a Hou-ou. This was unusual for a woman, not that it wasn’t already unusual enough for a woman to have irezumi in the first place. Thirdly, although the woman’s head was in shadow, it was just possible to make out that she had blonde hair, not black.

With that final observation, Yune was left in no doubt that the woman in the photograph was Alice.

Her mind raced. Of course Alice had loved Japan and Japanese things, but surely this was going too far. Not to mention the reaction that it would cause when it was discovered by a lover or even a new husband on his wedding night. And why did she go through all that pain to have it done? One part of Yune’s mind was quickly putting the pieces of the riddle together, but another part was just as quickly shutting them away.

‘What should we do with it, then?’ asked Claude, wondering why Yune was being so quiet.

‘Well, I don’t think we can sell it in the shop,’ said Yune, hiding her discoveries and her inner turmoil, ‘but I’d like to keep it anyway.’ Claude agreed, so she put the photograph away and no more was ever said about it.

Notes:

Although colour photography did not reach the mass market until the 1930’s, it was still possible, albeit very expensively, in the late 1880’s using specialist equipment. The only anachronism here is that it was not possible to reproduce pure shades of red correctly until the early 1900’s.

Irezumi can be considerably more painful than Western-style tattooing done with a needle as it generally uses tools associated with the making of woodblock prints, such as small chisels. It had been officially banned in Japan in the late 1860’s, but was still practised in secret after that.