Free The Ghost Brush by Katherine Govier

insects.”
    “The book did well,” murmured the publisher.
    “Without me it would have been nothing.”
    “You are so arrogant, Utamaro, my friend.”
    “I am arrogant because I am the best.”
    “You’re not the best. You’re only the most expensive,” said Tsutaya.
    “Publishers who buy cheap get what they pay for: the books won’t sell, and they’ll go out of business.” It was true; Utamaro was on top. No painter in Edo could touch him. The common people loved his paintings. The bakufu did too. Even the Shogun’s women loved his paintings, so Shino said. My father tried some in his style, but if you asked me (which he didn’t), no matter how good those were they were still nothing but imitations of Utamaro.
    “You won’t be the best forever; new artists are always coming up,” mused somebody.
    “You mean those idiots who peek out from behind every screen in every brothel? Who crawl the streets like ants?” the great man droned. “They try to make up for want of brush power by dressing up their models in gorgeous costumes with painted faces. Whereas if I do a simple ink sketch, with the power of my brush, what I create will live forever.”
    Downriver from us, a humped bridge with many feet, like a caterpillar, rose over the sluggish water. On the high point, you could just make out a thick, heavily clad figure on horseback in the midst of the men with their swords. A daimyo’s retinue was crossing.
    “Look who’s coming.”
    Everyone looked. It was Sadanobu. Sad-and-Noble, they called him. Famous author of edicts. Hater of the Yoshiwara and our lifestyle. He who—in the storyteller’s tale—punished the famous yakko. Was it our yakko? She wouldn’t say.
    “No matter. He’s not important,” said Utamaro breezily.
    Sadanobu had been councillor because the Shogun was a child. Now the Shogun was grown up and had taken over. As it happened the Shogun was more corrupt than we ever were. Things were back to normal.
    “He can’t be ignored. He’s still got power.”
    “I wonder what he does with his time?”
    “Keeps busy with his martial arts. It fills the hours when he can’t make rulings.”
    “If he makes more, so what? We’ll break them. Look at how many times they’ve ruled that there will be no publication of news. Notice how often Kawara-ban comes out?”
    The little broadsheet and the criers who ran ahead of it announcing news had somehow survived the crackdown.
    “The bakufu are cats—just choosing their moment to pounce.”
    “I’ve been pounced on once,” said Kyoden. “That’s enough. Thereafter I became a mouse: obedient to the Way.”
    Sad-and-Noble’s men had come to the tobacco store and bought a copy of his yellow-back novel about life in the pleasure district. The councillor had read it himself, they said. Then his men had come back and arrested Kyoden. Kyoden was the leader of the literary world. Sad-and-Noble decided to make an example of him. He was sent up to the White Sands for questioning, and his old father too.
    He was charged with making ukiyo-e and depraved books.
    Kyoden suffered his punishment of fines and manacles, and he became even more famous. His book disappeared for a while. Then it came back into print, even though the blocks had been burned. But he didn’t write satirical books anymore. At least not very often.
    “Obedient? Is that what you call it? Gutless is what it is. You make moral tracts,” said Sanba, “and once in a blue moon pop out a racy little novelette. You can’t have it both ways.”
    “Why not?” Kyoden was grinning. “Sad-and-Noble has it both ways.”
    “He’s not so bad. He started a savings bank for the poor. And during the rice riots he released rice from the merchants’ hoarding places. He was even lenient to those who’d been caught doing violence to their betters.” Waki said that.
    “He hates us, though.”
    “That’s because he’s jealous.”
    Yuko brought down her telescope. She pushed out her tiny