Page 34 of Flawsome Explorations

Zio

At the endof the first day of the conference presentations, I attended the group dinner for all the participants. Even though I had enjoyed spending my trip with Armand and my natural shyness made it hard to socialize with strangers, it invigorated me to interact with other Japanese studies graduate students. It was rare for me to feel like I belonged somewhere, but everyone there was on the same wavelength as me.

I was riding high on excitement by the time I returned to have dessert with Armand in the hotel bar. The sight of him waiting outside for me rocketed my heart into my throat. He was stunning in a pair of pinstripe pants and a formfitting white button-down shirt with a deep V-neck cut that showed off his smooth chest. Now that I knew what was under his clothes, what he was wearing was sexier than before.

He greeted me with a warm smile as he wrapped an arm around me to pull me into an embrace. “Bonsoir, Zio. Welcome back.” He pressed a kiss against each of my cheeks.

Feeling unusually bold, I tugged him down to kiss my lips. It made my good night even better, which was why I said, “I missed you.”

His surprise at my statement gave way to a fond look. I swooned so hard, I was grateful he was holding on to me. “As I missed you. But I’m very excited to hear all about your fun at the conference today.” He blessed me with another lingering kiss on the lips. It took a minute for my brain to realize he probably did it to soothe my need for things to be in even numbers. How had I gotten so lucky?

Once we sat down and placed our orders, I couldn’t hold back my gushing any longer. “It was amazing! There were so many incredible presentations. One woman talked about an anime show about anthropomorphic train stations. She explained they were representative embodiments of place and memory within a society. Isn’t that wild?”

“Are you saying it’s an animated Japanese TV show about train stations who are people?”

“Yeah! Although it’s ashojoseries, she elevated something that most scholars would dismiss as silly. She had a fascinating analysis on how the show’s promotion crossed boundaries from the imaginary into the real. It was so meta, and—”

When I cut myself off, he prompted me. “And what?”

My excited rambling embarrassed me; I hadn’t meant to get so carried away. “Sorry, that’s way more detail than you wanted.”

“Au contraire. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

A tiny seed of hope blossomed in my heart at his words. “Really?”

“Sincerely,” he assured me. “What’s ashojoseries?”

The part of me that was aware most people didn’t care about the stuff I liked warned me to rein in my enthusiasm. But when he asked a specific question, I had to answer. “It’s a genre aimed at girls, but the readership is far wider than the targeted market. I haven’t read much of it, but her presentation made me want to check it out.”

“It sounds charming, not to mention unique.”

“She went all out with it and did shot-by-shot comparisons between stills from the anime with photos of the actual train stations. Then she showed the advertising campaign on the physical trains themselves, letting you be part of the TV show. It wassocool! But it also made me feel like I needed to step up my slides game. I added a few things while I was listening to presentations that weren’t as interesting.”

My reaction seemed to amuse him. “Tomorrow will be fun.”

I bit my lower lip as I looked at him. “You’re really going to come?”

“Oui, and I’m eager to learn more about yourkintsugi. Tell me about some of the other talks you enjoyed.”

“A guy from Wintervale University named Vigo van Rooyen presented on the Dutch translator Henry Heusken, who went to Japan at the end of the Edo period and right before the Meiji era.” After being around so many Japanese studies specialists, I almost forgot to give him a frame of reference. “This was between 1855 and 1861, right before Meiji started in 1868. I got so into that one, I bought a book on him halfway through his presentation.”

Our server came over with our desserts. We had ordered Hawaiian guava cake, which was a beautiful shade of pink with a white cream frosting on top and a guava gel glaze. I cut mine in half before I took my first bite. A moan escaped me from the unexpected flavor of strawberry mingled with vanilla that combined to perfection. “Oh, that isgood.”

Armand sampled his dessert, making me shift in my seat as he somehow turned pulling the fork out of his mouth into a sexually charged act. “Oui, c’est très délicieux.” After another taste, he asked, “What’s so intriguing about a Dutch translator?”

That he willingly returned to my original topic made my soul sing. “Heusken was one of the rare foreigners the Japanese accepted into their fold. They let him do things that the diplomats were too high-brow to enjoy, like communal baths and kabuki. Heusken was sympathetic to them for having their country invaded and even had a child with a Japanese woman. He still had some really backward viewpoints because it was the late 1850s, but for the time, he would have been incredibly progressive and open-minded.”

“Then he spoke English, Dutch, and Japanese?”

“Yes, plus French, and a little Latin and Greek as well.”

Armand tilted his head in acknowledgement of the translator’s skills. “That’s quite impressive. No wonder he was so skilled at his work.”

“He earned the respect of everyone, but that caused his downfall. You wouldn’t think of a translator having the power to affect so much change, but the Meiji era almost didn’t happen because of him.” It fascinated me that one person had such a huge impact during that tumultuous time, yet few knew about him.

Armand ate more of his cake before asking, “Did he mistranslate something?”

“No, there were rogue samurai who wanted the foreigners out of their country, so the diplomats had armed guards. Heusken was notorious for refusing to have escorts, because he was so confident that his reputation amongst the Japanese would protect him.”

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