“He was born in 1830. The Americans arrived when he was twenty-three, and he looked at their fleet and their guns and then at what Japan had to offer in return, and decided that we were lacking. They say it was at that moment that he decided that the old ways—the ways of the samurai—were no longer relevant. That they held Japan back. What is a sword to a gun, after all? Shōin tried to stow away on one of the American ships so that he could visit their country and learn from them, but he was found before they could set sail. He was imprisoned, yet he still made his case for reform. They executed him for it. He was just twenty-nine when they decapitated him. A tragedy. If he had lived for another nine years, he would have seen the changes for which he had campaigned come to pass. The end of the Tokugawa shogunate. He didn’t know it, but Shōin was one of the last samurai.”

Furokawa opened the newspaper slowly and reverently, peeling the leaves away to reveal what was hidden beneath. It was a tantō, a blade not quite long enough to be considered a sword yet too long to be a dagger. It was double edged, around thirty centimetres in length and with inscriptions on the hilt.

Furokawa held it up and turned it so that the light caught on the dull metal blade. “It is a shinshinto,” he said. “You know anything about them?”

Miyasato shook his head. He didn’t and wasn’t interested in learning. He wanted to get his money and go. The longer he waited to collect Sakura and Yamato, the better the chance that his father would find out what he had done. But he couldn’t insult a man as prone to offence as Furokawa. He had to hear him out.

“A samurai would carry a katana while on the battlefield and a tantō for close work. This blade would have been ceremonial for Shōin. And the most ironic thing of it all? Shōin never had the chance to go to America, but his tantō did. No one knows how it got there, but it was found in the attic of an academic in California. The inscription here, on the nakago”—he turned the sword so that Miyasato could see the hilt core—“confirmed that it was his.” He held it up. “This sword symbolises the moment that Japan changed, the moment we looked outwards rather than inwards. It is progress. That is why I want it.”

And it will look very nice on your wall, Miyasato thought.

“Now,” Furokawa said. “You need to be paid.”