D2 ME: Open Late (open)

[Suzume Hitomi]

Hitomi unwraps the one item she'd purchased from her partner this First Market, a little lucky cat statue made of bits of shell. It was clumsy, but still recognizably a cat, with one chunky paw upraised. She tucks it among the more traditional items on the window ledge above the entry door, looking out. Few would notice it up there, but she liked the idea of the little cat watching the street and entry that way. The pair of protective lion-dogs are at either end of the ledge, with tiny pots filled with seasonal botanicals filling the remaining space.

The little stepstool is folded up as Haku walks out the door with a wave and 'see you tomorrow, boss-sama.' After tucking the stool away, she settles at the counter, flicking the water-heater switch and measuring out enough tea for a pot to last the next few hours. Chances are, it'll be a slow night allowing time to review the books and wonder what the next few weeks will bring.

[Miya Kisha]

Following her meeting at the izakaya, a smoky-smelling Miya Kisha happens by the still-open shop. She glances about at what's on offer, and she smiles to see the chunky kitty.

Then she sets about browsing. It may end up no more than that, but it might make for some sale. Who knows?

[Suzume Hitomi]

Following her meeting at the izakaya, a smoky-smelling Miya Kisha happens by the still-open shop. She glances about at what's on offer, and she smiles to see the chunky kitty.

Then she sets about browsing. It may end up no more than that, but it might make for some sale. Who knows?

Hitomi looks up from her books at the sound of the door chime--a common one here that mimics the bells at Daikoku's temple. She allows a few moments for the guest to look around; it makes people nervous to be jumped on immediately. Once eyes adjust; the nose acclimates to the scents of old wood, cloth, paper, and lacquer; and the psyche acclimates to the slower, older vibe within the shop, that's the time to move. She watches the incense smoke from a small burner atop the many-drawered cabinet, letting 7 curls of smoke touch the ceiling tiles before she speaks.

Tossing the line gently from the counter, the Sparrow's voice carries across the shop with practiced skill. "Good evening, and welcome. Let me know if you have any questions, honored guest. The kintsugi is my own work, so we can handle repairs if you need them. Oh, and I've heard something of a costume party coming up. If you're looking for something along those lines, there are repaired and re-created garments beyond what's on display. Only so much room."

[Miya Kisha]

snip

"Kintsugi?" Kisha asks. "My, I'm getting treated to all kinds of traditional arts here! I'd hardly expected it, but I'm glad to know about it!

"I'm Miya Kisha," she adds, giving a bow. "Medialite. Have you been long in Tango?"

Her tone is upbeat, bubbly. She does look around for the source of the voice; she can't exactly see over the shelves, after all, petite as her frame is.

"And what's this about a costume party?"

[Suzume Hitomi]

<snip>

The voice is definitely from deeper in. The sightlines open up frequently enough that the counter is visible intermittently, but regularly. One wouldn't insult customers with 'no shoplifting' signs, but there are less obvious deterrents built in.

"Honored to have you in the shop, Miya-sama. This one is Suzume Hitomi, and traditional arts are a fair bit of what we do here. Not everyone manages pilgrimage to the homeworld, but all should have access to their heritage. We've been here about 4 years now." Bringing the Sparrow's mandate out past Rokugan...and generating some profit for them at the same time.

"Well, admittedly, I heard it from a Mantis who was looking to create such a party, and mentioned stopping in to look at the older clothing here. They haven't stopped in, so perhaps the idea has been discarded in favor of all the other distractions in the islands." If it had, it was still a good idea if someone else wanted to run with it.

[Miya Kisha]

Snip

"It would be a shame if it were, Suzume-san," Kisha replies easily. "It is, after all, a good idea, no less so than ensuring that even these far-flung stars have some touch of the homeworld.

"But four years...that's a while to be away. Are your family well?"

Kisha begins to make her way to the counter. Better that than calling across shelves and bric-a-brac, after all.

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

"Oh definitely. My younger sister handles custom requests...traditional wedding attire, and so on, back on Rokugan. Our mother's the current chief curator of the Imperial Museum at the capitol, but as one of a flock, I needed to find other career paths, and this has been very rewarding." Now if she was asking about husband and children left pining back on the homeworld, well, there's no mention of such.

"It's a long trip home. So long as the shop survives, I imagine I'll be here." She stands, and moves around the counter to more comfortably chat, as well as move to display anything of interest.

"Do you have a personal interest in the traditional crafts? Or working on a story, Miya-sama?"

[Miya Kisha]

Snip

"I see my reputation's getting ahead of me!" Kisha says, then chuckles. "But, to answer, it's really some of both. There's always the work to do, always content to create, always people to meet and make into friends. But as to tradition...well, there's a reason I know how to ride a horse. The Families are pretty firm on the topic of making sure the ancestral ways continue to be practiced, after all!

"But that's not a bad thing, not at all," she continues. "Knowing where we come from helps us know who we are, even as looking to the future helps us become what we can be. We're not who our parents are and who their parents were, even though we come from them and they shape us. It's like with your kintsugi; the thing, repaired and restored, is not what it was, although what it was is clear in it."

She looks at some of the wares on display, gestures towards one. "Like with that piece, that goblet you've so skillfully redone--at least, I assume the work's yours. It was beautiful before, surely, but treated with the loving care that has restored it, it's another thing, and some might say even more beautiful now."

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

Hitomi nods. "Our Tonbo cousins...well, once-cousins? It's been a while since they left the minor clan fold. Anyway, as they would say, change is the only constant. We maintain traditional crafts, but the conditions are never exactly the same. Our silkworms operate in an environment that's different and so the silk is as well. It's very hard to find old mulberry cultivars for historic-quality washi. Some of the new cultivars make for sturdier paper, but not the same." She glances toward the goblet. "I rather like that kintsugi makes that truth visible, even as we do what we can to retain those old methods and skills."

Walking to a counter displaying Senpet jewelry--both artifacts and re-creations--she adds, "now, it's harder to do for those cultures who were not part of Rokugan until the plagues left their lands empty." Nearly empty, if one was honest. But that wasn't a comfortable truth. "There isn't an uninterrupted tradition to trace, and often no real documentation."

[Miya Kisha]

good stuff

Kisha nods.

"Some of the Archivists talk about that kind of thing," she says. "Some lines have ample and abundant paperwork attesting them, and that's useful for themselves and for those they touch. But some are, shall we say, the results of terser scribes. And there are always issues of survival. It does not take much misfortune for records to suffer, even with our advances."

Kisha approaches the counter, touches one of the pieces gently. "But I suppose some extrapolations can be made, even when there are gaps in the records, themselves. Things that touch on them, or touch on what does. Projections from what we know. Some research that, quite frankly, goes over my head."

She smiles. "Not that it takes much to do so, I admit."

A shake of the head. "But if you were to have your work here known," the Miya says, "what would you want said about it?"

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

Oh, no pressure there! She'd seen people work on media statements for a week, tweaking each word a half dozen times, before offering statements to Imperial media. Even without obvious cameras rolling, Hitomi feels a sudden urge to touch up her makeup.

Instead she merely pushes hair back from her forehead. "I guess, I'd like it said that the work here shows that we take our duty to preserve the past seriously, and that this shop is moving toward a future where we bring that work out into the rest of the Empire where more people can see and benefit from it." With a smile, she adds, "and obviously in the spirit of Governor Yasuki-sama's current initiative, I ought to say that If you can't make it to Rokugan, Green Carp is where to find us bringing the past to the future." She laughs a bit self-consciously at the off the cuff marketing line, but really...that is the sort of thing you need to do to promote a business, a world, or an idea.

With a shake of her head that settles hair right back over her forehead she asks, "OK...official lines aside, Miya-sama, is there an era or craft you have a personal interest in? Pretty slow tonight, so you can have a more personal look at the collection if you like."

[Miya Kisha]

snip

"Hey, that's a good line!" Kisha exclaims. "'Green Carp brings the past into the future' would be an excellent slogan!

"Anyway," she continues, "it's less an era or craft for me than it is the progression of what we can call 'popular culture.' I mean, there's always the formal documentation of court events and the records of Winter Courts and their entertainments, right, but there are a lot of sumai bouts well away from Court and a lot of archery tournaments away from the Wager, a lot of duels not for a Championship, that kind of thing. But there were more people away from Court than in it, and what they did to make themselves themselves, well, that has taken some uncovering.

"I mean," the Miya adds, "when I've looked. It's not like I lock myself away in the library or anything."

Perhaps subconsciously, Kisha mimics Hitomi's hair gesture.

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

snip

"It would! I suppose I should submit it to the karo's people. I expect she's organizing the marketing end of things as the governor focuses more on logistics, neh?"

"Ahh, the harder to document history." Hitomi nods. "Sometimes you can find the hints of those trends finding their way into court as someone romanticizes peasant trends. The 15th century trend from kimono-hakama to silk jinbei decorated in kimono patterns, for example. But it's hard finding good examples of the pre-court versions. There's artistic depictions, but that's a small sample."

"I assume you've found the treasure trove that is old pillow books though? Cheaply made for mass consumption, with all manner of niche authors digging into odd corners of popular culture." Hitomi's speech speeds a bit as she gets into a topic of interest, eyes darting toward the back stores as if running through the inventory to see what might be brought forward.

[Miya Kisha]

snip

Kisha blushes slightly.

"I'm...not unfamiliar with pillow books," she says. "It's like you say-they're mass media, meant for broad consumption, and people are only going to push out what they think will be received well. By which, of course, they mean picked up by a lot of readers.

"What's interesting is that, in a lot of cases, it is the printers rather than the authors who make the things popular. So many of the pillow books are pseudonymous, but the production houses that back them are usually not, and the ones that do more work in more or less official capacities often end up driving popularity, rather than a work getting lucky and dragging the printer up with it. There's a major instance of this in the 1600s with the Maimedo printing house--second only to the Court printer in terms of output at the time. Things that place picked up ran wild simply because their commissioned work occupied so large a share of the printing market at the time. Of course, the head of the house ended up getting fined repeatedly, and he even took a public beating, if you can believe it! But that only made his work more popular, in the end, and--"

Kisha draws up short. "I'm sorry. I go on too much, sometimes."

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

Hitomi laughs waving off the apology. "No ,no. Not my specialty, but Aunt Kimi would like to invite you over for tea, or she would after that. She's constantly sending me notes on clothing hints she finds in books from this or that era. Very helpful, even if some of it may be more fantasy than not."

She crouches down before the nearest cabinet and unlocks a lower door. The scent of old paper and parchment wafts out as it opens. "Nothing Classical, those are too fragile and valuable to offload to me. But there's some Engineering Era and Expansion Era classics. Usually they end up in someone's arms when their interior designer says a corner could use some old books." She carefully pulls out a few. "Don't worry, the censors don't let the really spicy ones leave home. These skew toward adventure stories. I've actually gotten a bit attached to Imperial Cartographer Kiko's Adventures. If you ever spot volumes 26 through 28, I'd love to hear of it."

[Miya Kisha]

snip

"Fantasy clothing?" Kisha asks. "Given some of the...daring looks I've seen, I have to wonder what would count as that.

"But," she continues, "I'll keep an eye out for Kiko."

The Miya will pick up one of the books, leafing through it briefly and smiling slightly. "There's just something about old paper that soothes, isn't there?"

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

"Well, fantasy in the sense of writing about a hem 'floating,' they don't really, or an ethereal fabric standing stiff. Gives a sense of what they _wanted_ in their ideal costuming, but often doesn't reflect what kinds of things you'd actually find in clothing of the period. Or indicates what's considered risque...and thus offers a glimpse into what isn't."

She nods with a smile of her own, "I feel that comfort with old fabric, something about the sense of all the hands that made it. I love the old books, but there's always an underlying reminder of the frustration of my student years trying to decipher centuries old handwriting."

"So what sort of reporting do you work on? I don't always catch the Imperial feeds out here."

[Miya Kisha]

Good stuff

"I often find it interesting," Kisha responds, "to compare what counts as couth across times. Things seem to come in cycles, with more or less of various parts showing being acceptable, or references to bodies or bodies of work, even in the formal records. In the popular, of course, things are more volatile, changing more quickly--though they cycle more slowly. 'Hep cat,' for one, faded out about fifty or sixty years back, but it had been very much in vogue a couple of centuries prior, and then three or so before that.

"But about my work?" the Miya continues. "It's mostly human interest pieces, showing parts of the Empire at their best and most authentic, helping to bridge the gaps between the Clans and within them. Even after all this time, even after all that the Empire has faced, its people still turn against each other readily. What helps keep us one is good to promote."

[Suzume Hitomi]

clipped

"Mmm-hmm," the Sparrow hums in agreement. "The families immersed in the homeworld's history seem very aware of how it keeps cycling, similiar forces creating similar outcomes, maybe? But spotting those little things that cycle in and out as well is a little more work, no? The meanings shift too. Wouldn't be surprised if that one became derogatory as it faded...referring to someone out of step with the times who thought that was still a compliment, neh?"

"The clans do still have forces in place that encourage competition." Leaning toward outright aggression in many cases. Something the Sparrow have traditionally steered clear of. "It does sound nice to remind us why we need to cooperate as well. Not all of the great dangers are gone."

"I imagine First Market counts as 'human interest' then? It's a pretty charming rite of passage."

[Miya Kisha]

"I imagine First Market counts as 'human interest' then? It's a pretty charming rite of passage."

"It is!" Kisha fairly tweets. "I mean, seeing some of those children was just so cute! And the way some very imposing samurai, who normally wouldn't crack even the barest hint of a smile, went along with them...just lovely!"

Something chimes, however, and Kisha looks at her communicator.

"Oh, my!" she says. "I'm not keeping you past closing time, am I?"