Journey to Japan

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

—CHUANG-TZU

KYOTO IS AN ANCIENT CITY, a maze of quiet alleys with warrens of old wooden houses, vermillion torii gates, and temples with tiled rooftops that gently curve like waves. Geishas dressed in kimonos garnished with elaborate obis flit in and out of doorways. Few signs are in English. It’s a city of secrets that keeps strangers at bay.

A young Japanese woman approached a store in central Kyoto whose brown shop curtain was tattered and torn. Even so, she was able to make out the distinctive figures that spelled KOJIMA’S ANTIQUES.

Antique blue-and-white porcelain bowls sparsely lined the window, and the interior of the store was dark and in disarray. A note on the door instructed visitors to ring the buzzer. She did so, and a voice responded over the intercom.

She was told the shop was permanently closed and to just go away.

“Was he there? What did he say?” I asked as she walked back to where I stood.

I’d heard of the case when it broke and had become obsessed with the man. This wasn’t the first I’d dealt with a story involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I had written about special agents for years, listened to their tales, and even woven their adventures into a mystery series. However, this undercover operation was different. It captured my interest like no other. I wanted to know what it was that made Kojima tick. Why would someone become a butterfly smuggler? However, Kojima had already served his sentence and been released from California City Prison. He’d returned to Japan and refused to speak to anyone.

I’d called Charles Hanson, but the two were no longer on speaking terms. Hanson had lent Kojima money while in prison and never been repaid. He was furious and hadn’t been in touch with Kojima since he’d been deported.

I’d met butterfly collectors in California who had known and been friendly with the Japanese dealer. All felt as if they’d been deceived by him. They had believed he worked for National Geographic and had a wife and son, though no one had ever met them. Most spoke off the record, not wanting to be associated with Kojima. They whispered of a partner who dealt in drugs and hinted Kojima wasn’t a lone wolf in the business, none of which could be confirmed.

I’d then called Kojima’s former lawyer, Norman Sasamori. He refused to answer even the most basic questions. “Maybe you should go talk to Mr. Kojima in Kyoto,” Sasamori suggested sarcastically before abruptly hanging up.

Why not? I thought. I took him at his word and flew to Japan on a mission without a backup plan. Kojima could have been anywhere in the world rather than at home. The other quandary was that I didn’t speak any Japanese, making it difficult for me to track him down.

I asked everyone I knew for any connections in Japan and was fortunate enough to be introduced to a Japanese woman who agreed to help. Then came the dilemma of arranging the trip. She was busy with her own job in Tokyo and rarely answered my e-mails. I was rebuked as a “pushy Westerner” when I tried to follow up. I began to feel as if I was walking on cultural eggshells.

We arranged to meet at the Tokyo train station, a busy maze that’s nearly impossible for a foreigner to navigate. However, I figured that I would easily stand out in the crowd, being the only redheaded Caucasian in the place. A half hour flew by as we frantically exchanged cell-phone calls while trying to locate each other in the station. We eventually wound up standing on opposite sides of the same pole.

A two-and-a-half-hour bullet-train ride was all it took for cosmopolitan Tokyo to fade into memory, replaced by the mystery of Japan’s ancient capital. Kyoto is as enigmatic and multilayered as Kojima himself. In Kyoto one worries not about traffic but about being hit by residents furiously pedaling to and from work on their bicycles. The women ride in high heels, and both sexes navigate while holding a cell phone up to their ear.

They keep watch for speeding Mercedeses, Hummers, and Lexuses, the favored vehicles of the yakuza. The crime organization rivals the American Mafia, except that their members are officially registered with the police, play an important role in business affairs, and have a large presence in Kyoto.

We checked in to our hotel, then flagged a taxi, whose white-gloved driver took the proffered address. He seemed to have no idea where it was that we wanted to go. We were eventually dropped off on a seemingly endless street with no numbers and began our search for Kojima.

Kojima once had a Web site for his butterfly trade. I’d perused the site before he returned home and shut it down. One page had been dedicated to his antiques shop, with a few of his favorite pieces highlighted. A butterfly dish had caught my eye. I spotted it now in the window of a run-down three-story house. The shredded noren above the entrance verified that it was Kojima’s place.

I’d spent nine months immersing myself in countless hours of Skype DVDs and audiotapes learning all that I could about Kojima. I’d methodically delved into Ed Newcomer’s brain. Finally, I’d traveled halfway around the world to meet the man. Now I feared that I’d receive the same reception as everyone else who had tried to speak with Yoshi Kojima. I refused to be added to a long list of people who had hit a dead end.

It was agreed that Yuko would approach him first as a customer while I remained out of sight. I’d interviewed a number of people who knew Kojima, and it was possible that he’d been tipped off about my trip to Japan. I would join her once she was inside. So much time and planning hinged on just two things: Would Kojima be in Kyoto, and would he let us into his shop?

Kojima was home, but he had no intention of letting Yuko inside. I had traveled all the way to Kyoto for nothing.

We walked down Teramachi Street with its scattering of hidden Buddhist temples and electronics stores that were closed. Stepping into a small bookstore, Yuko asked the owner about the antiques shop across the street. The woman replied that it had been closed for two years. She knew nothing more.

We headed back out, only to spot Kojima sweeping the floor of his shop.

“Hurry! See if he’ll let you in,” I urged, refusing to believe this was the end of my journey.

But Kojima saw her coming and disappeared as fast as a tarantula into a hole. This time he refused to answer the buzzer.

There had to be a way to figure this out. We trekked down the block to a large shopping arcade and main street with its row of expensive stores—Brooks Brothers, Cartier, Benetton, and Takashimaya. Real estate in the neighborhood had to be worth a fortune. Then we wandered back to Kojima’s. The shop’s steel shutters were now pulled down even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Kojima couldn’t have been any more clear. He wasn’t available to anyone. He was as elusive as a shadow.

I drowned my worries in too much sake that night as transvestites sauntered back and forth near his neighborhood. Some worked as shopgirls, the only clue to their gender being the size of their hands. I wondered if one might be the mysterious Russian transvestite that I’d heard about.

A Shinto shrine with its bright lanterns glowing yellow as full harvest moons beckoned us inside. We entered the courtyard, and Yuko demonstrated proper shrine etiquette. I followed her every move. Water flowed into a large stone trough, where we ladled it first over one hand and then the other, after which we rinsed our mouths to purify ourselves. Approaching the shrine, we pulled a long hemp rope to ring a bell in hope of gaining the deity’s attention. A lucky five-yen piece was tossed into the offering box, then we made two deep bows, two claps of the hands, and a prayer: Please let me meet Kojima and be given the chance to speak with him.

I bowed deeply once more and slowly backed away, careful not to turn too soon and insult the gods by showing my rear end.

Finally, a fortune-telling machine with its animated dragon begged to be fed. The mythic creature danced and shook its head as if laughing at the whimsy of fate. I slipped in a coin, watched the dragon grab a slip of paper in its jaws, and dropped my omikuji into the dispenser.

How good your fortune is! Everything will be all right. Nothing to worry. Work hard at anytime. Do not give yourself up to drinking or illicit love.

“That’s a good fortune. You must keep it,” Yuko said through our sake-induced haze.

I needed all the good luck I could get.

We staked out Kojima’s shop early the next morning, its shutters still closed at 8 AM. I decided to wait him out at a café down the block that advertised seasoned cod-roe ice cream. A short while later we heard the angry clank of steel shutters opening, the corrugated armor piercing the air. I jumped up and ran to the street in time to see Kojima riding away on his bicycle. A flock of crows in a nearby tree cackled at my misfortune.

Yuko remained seated as I stood at the shop window and gazed at the antique bowls with their ancient designs. The one that kept catching my eye was a dish in the shape of a butterfly. It matched the blue enamel butterfly pin that I’d purposely worn that day.

I was still studying the dish when my skin prickled and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled like those of a porcupine. I instinctively knew that I was being watched. Spinning around, I found myself face-to-face with Yoshi Kojima. This was it, my one and only shot.

“Good morning. Is this your shop?”

Kojima stood in a faded baseball cap, denim shirt, and khaki shorts with a black fanny pack encircling his waist like a ring on a tree. He had aged, but his skin was still smooth as polished stone. “Yes,” he said, eyeing me warily.

“I love that butterfly dish, and the antiques in your window are beautiful. What time do you open?”

“The shop is closed,” he replied slowly.

“Just today, or will you be open tomorrow?” I inquired, feigning ignorance.

He repeated what I already knew. “No, the shop is permanently closed.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping to buy that dish. I have a special fondness for butterflies, especially blue ones,” I said, and pointed to my pin.

I’m not sure what I expected of him, probably someone unfriendly and gruff. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d refused to speak and closed the door in my face. Instead, he unlocked the shop and motioned me in. I silently thanked the gods at the Shinto shrine for my change of luck.

Kojima rolled his bike next to a second bicycle in his shop and then brought over the butterfly dish.

“I bought these at an auction over twenty years ago. They’re part of my personal collection,” he said. “I think there are four more plates in the set.”

“Are you sure you want to sell them?” I asked.

He removed his cap to reveal a pate of thinning dark hair. “Yes, I no longer care. I have so many things.” He drew my attention to three antique screens that decorated the walls of his store.

“These are worth more than a million dollars,” he confided.

One was four hundred years old and featured two tigers with eyes of gold. They glared at me ferociously, as if aware of exactly who I was and why I was there.

The tansu chests, bronze pots, and lacquer trays were all beautiful, but the shop itself was a wreck, with sagging wooden beams and a sinking cement floor. The railroad-style house was dirty and reeked of mildew and sewage from a sewer pipe that had backed up under the floor. Kojima was in the midst of a fight with his brother as to who should pay to have it fixed. They had clearly reached a standoff.

Kojima didn’t rush me from the shop but now began to talk. He asked where I was from and what I did for a living. I could either come clean, and risk everything, or concoct a story. I morphed into the owner of a small knickknack shop specializing in antique toys. In turn, Kojima related that he’d lived for thirty-eight years in the United States, where he’d had a travel agency in L.A. along with an American wife and son. I felt like a fraud but played along.

“What will you do with all these antiques now that your shop is closed?”

“Oh, my son might take over the store. Everything goes to him,” Kojima said. And there was more. “My son works for National Geographic. In fact, he’s in South America right now. I also used to work part-time for them. They paid me fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

“Really? I know some photographers who shot assignments for the magazine,” I replied, and mentioned a few names.

Kojima shook his head. “No, I wasn’t a photographer. I did something else.”

“What did you do?” I probed.

“I took photographers and film crews into the jungles of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador,” he said.

“To do what?” I asked.

“To find butterflies,” he replied with an enigmatic smile. “I’m very famous for them.”

“South American butterflies are beautiful. My favorites are morphos,” I said, and pointed again to my pin.

“I have lots of them, but that’s what got me into trouble,” Kojima disclosed without the least bit of prompting.

“What kind of trouble?” I asked, surprised he would reveal so much of himself so quickly.

“For selling butterflies. I was in prison in the U.S. for two years, but I was caught by entrapment.” Kojima began to weave his story as deftly as a spider weaves a web.

A young boy had come to his Los Angeles home, told Kojima that he loved butterflies, and wanted Kojima to teach him about them. He was a nice-looking boy, and Kojima had taken him at his word. However, Kojima soon became ill and returned to Japan for bypass surgery. The boy grew furious. He’d wanted to trap Kojima and was angry that he hadn’t caught him.

Kojima returned for the L.A. insect fair two years later, and the boy approached him again. This time he asked Kojima to sell him illegal birdwing butterflies. Kojima didn’t know that the nice-looking boy secretly had a bad heart. He was really a Fish and Wildlife agent. Kojima sent the butterflies from Japan and was then lured back to California. That’s when Ed Newcomer pulled out a gun at the airport and arrested him. What Newcomer didn’t know at the time was that Kojima’s son had been with him.

“I told my boy to run! He was so upset that he was crying.” Kojima grew more animated by the minute. “Fish and Wild went to my ex-wife’s house and harassed her. Even the FBI joined the search, but they couldn’t find my boy. That’s because Ken has a different last name. They tell me, ‘When your boy return we catch him.’ But I say, ‘I have no boy. How come you saying my boy return?’ ” Kojima laughed.

Had Newcomer been wrong? Did Kojima really have a son? Kojima pulled out his cell phone and produced a photo of a handsome twenty-nine-year-old Eurasian as evidence.

“That’s him. That’s my boy,” he proudly claimed. “He speaks seven or eight languages. He’s a very good businessman. After that, Fish and Wild tried to put me in prison for sixty years. You should read articles about me in the New York Times. I’m very famous.”

“I’ll do that,” I replied, and then dared to ask the million-dollar question. “Can I buy butterflies from you if I want to take them home with me?”

“I can sell them to you, but big trouble if Customs finds them. It’s better I send to you by Express Mail. That way no problem.”

It was interesting to know that nothing had changed since his release. Kojima was back in business.

“So you still sell to customers in the U.S.?” I asked, growing increasingly comfortable in my new role.

“Yes, but mostly in Japan and Europe,” he said. “I have a half million papered butterflies in my house.” The unmounted butterflies were stored in boxes protected by mothballs.

I promised to return later that day to buy the dishes, and Kojima agreed to show me some of his insects.

I dashed to the café, gave Yuko the good news, and went to buy a gift for Kojima as a token gesture. Candy was out, so I settled on a box of freshly made rice crackers. Who knew that a number of senior citizens choke to death on them every year in Japan? The next stop was the same Shinto shrine where I had so successfully prayed the night before. I threw in a five-yen piece, thanked the gods, and prayed again.

We made our way back and Yuko waited at the café as I returned to Yoshi’s shop and rang the buzzer. Kojima came downstairs and let me in. The butterfly dishes were already neatly wrapped.

“Are you in Kyoto all by yourself?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s lonely, since so few people speak English. I’m very happy to have met you,” I replied.

“It’s smelly in here. Let’s go for coffee,” he suggested.

Kojima shuffled down the street with his shoulders hunched. He walked like an old man, though he was only fifty-nine years old. He’d recently fallen off his bicycle, nearly been hit by a car, and cracked his tailbone.

We entered the same café where Yuko sat reading a book. Please don’t let her look up and give me away, I prayed as we walked right past her.

“You are very lucky to catch me. I was just in the hospital for three weeks. I only got out four days ago,” Kojima revealed.

I silently thanked the Shinto gods again for my good fortune. “What was the problem?”

“I’m so dizzy all the time. It’s my heart. I must now go to the hospital twice a week to be checked,” he said. “It was a big problem for me in jail. For three months the doctor didn’t know what heart pill I needed. I was very afraid I would die.”

“What about your family? Couldn’t they help?” I asked.

“My father is dead and my mommy has Alzheimer’s. I had to do everything myself. It took time to straighten out my medication. Only my father-in-law tried to help. He asked President Bush to give me a pardon, but the president, he did nothing,” Kojima said.

I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start. “I went to the Internet café and read some of the articles on you. There are so many of them,” I volunteered.

Kojima looked pleased. “Yes, everybody knows me. The problem is lots of dealers don’t like me because I get butterflies cheaper and they’re selling very well. You understand? I don’t know who, but an American dealer turned me in to Fish and Wild.”

“How was your time in prison? Did you have any trouble other than your medication?” I asked.

“It was all right. There were two different Mexican gangs, the Southsiders and the Paisas. The leaders knew why I was in jail. They thought it was funny, crazy, and stupid,” he said.

The Chinese mafia also had a presence in California City Prison and took an instant dislike to Kojima.

“They wanted to do something in a fight with me,” Kojima revealed. “And I’m not so young boy anymore.”

It was the leaders of the Southsiders and the Paisas who protected him. “One of the members was Mexican Japanese, and he tell everybody, ‘Oh, that guy has the top half of his pinkie missing.’ They automatically thought I was yakuza.” Kojima laughed as he showed me his pinkie. “Then they scared about me.”

After that, the Chinese mafia left him alone and Kojima was treated like royalty. Kojima shrewdly never told them that the yakuza cut off the left pinkie. It was his right digit that was missing. He had lost it falling off a ladder as a child.

Kojima next regaled me with stories of homes he owned in Tahiti and Belize. He’d been to them just once, but his son liked to visit more often. That was just the tip of Kojima’s real estate empire. He claimed to have purchased his L.A. Mount Olympus house from Joan Collins for one million dollars and sold it for seven million just a few years later. However, his best investment had been a Bel Air home that he’d picked up for a mere seven hundred thousand and then sold for a whopping fifteen million. Finally, his Kyoto residence had an estimated value of one million dollars. When it came to the art of the deal, Kojima liked to pretend he was right up there with Donald Trump.

I knew most of what he said were exaggerations if not downright lies, but that didn’t matter. Bits and pieces of the truth were interwoven in his stories as they are in the very best fairy tales.

“I’m so lucky that I sold my Mount Olympus house when I did. If I’d been caught before, Fish and Wild would have taken it from me. Ed Newcomer tried to find all my money in my U.S. bank accounts, but I tricked him. I’d already moved everything back to Japan,” Kojima gloated. “That’s why I took my Web site down. Fish and Wildlife was always looking on it. I’ve had to change my password twenty times since I returned home. Yahoo! keeps sending me warnings that someone is trying to break into my e-mail. Ed Newcomer wants to catch me again. He’s a really terrible guy.”

I commiserated as we walked back to his shop, where we agreed to meet again in two days.

Yuko spoke to me that night about Kojima. “He looks like he could be somebody’s grandfather. Do you think if his granddaughter asked that he would stop smuggling butterflies?”

I told her that I doubted it.

Yuko returned to Tokyo with my bountiful thanks, and I continued my assignations with Kojima.

My next visit was on a weekday, and Teramachi Street was crammed with bicycles packed tight as sardines up and down the right-hand side of the street. A small Buddhist temple magically appeared behind a nondescript wall that I hadn’t noticed before. It was dwarfed by the bright neon lights of a shop selling comic books, costumes, and lingerie next door.

I rang Kojima’s bell, and he quickly came down to let me in. This time, the stench of mildew and sewage enveloped me as soon as I entered his residence.

“I brought a book along. I was hoping you might tell me about some of the butterflies,” I said, and placed it on the counter.

Kojima ran his fingers over Endangered Swallowtail Butterflies of the World. “That’s the butterfly they put me in jail for,” he said, gently stroking the Queen Alexandra on the cover.

We opened the book and began to look at the butterflies together. “Did the Japanese authorities penalize you when you finally returned home?”

Kojima gave a contemptuous snort. “They laughed. They say, how come they charge this guy in the airport?” His attention wandered as he pointed to one of the photos. “This butterfly is from Brazil and almost disappeared, but I have a contact and they can get them for me. Brazil is so crazy. No one can collect morphos there anymore, but I have lots.”

“How do you get them?” I asked.

“It’s easy. My collectors take Brazilian material to another South American country where I have a permit. They mail them from there to me,” Kojima revealed. “I do the same thing all over Central and South America. That’s why other people cannot get this material but I still can. I have better contacts than they do.

Of course, it made perfect sense. Why would Kojima stop doing what he did best? Smuggling butterflies wasn’t a hobby or a vocation; it was part of his DNA.

“I’ve heard that the same problem exists in India,” I said.

Kojima nodded in agreement. “India has nice butterflies. A Tokyo dealer I know used to go there to collect, only he got caught and was jailed for three months. No one can import them now except for me,” he divulged with a grin. “I pay and they go out. Two wholesale dealers there send butterflies to me.”

He had the same arrangement for procuring rare butterflies and bugs from South Africa, China, Costa Rica, and the rest of the world. Kojima’s network was as good as ever. “Today I sold about a thousand dollars of butterflies and bugs on my auction site,” he bragged. “I have very good clients.”

“You have an amazing business,” I agreed.

“That’s why Ed Newcomer hate me. He want to kill me. Wait a minute. I can show you some of the butterflies I sell.”

He walked into a second room littered with antiques and proceeded up a stairway. All was quiet when I heard a distinct buzz. Looking up, I spied bugs flying about the room. Kojima’s bedroom had to be directly above my head. That was where his butterfly-rearing equipment and hatching nets were kept. These were probably parasites that had eaten their way through butterfly pupae upstairs. My skin began to crawl as Kojima returned with a selection of beetles and butterflies as exotic as their origins.

There were beautiful blue Morpho rhetenor helena, iridescent-green Ornithoptera paradisea, and dramatic red, black, and cream Bhutanitis lidderdali.

“These are from Costa Rica,” he said, holding a box toward me.

The bugs inside resembled enameled jewelry, each glistening brightly as if three coats of nail polish had been painted on their backs.

Kojima had brought down something else as well: a photo album filled with publicity shots of his L.A. actor friend. The photos chronicled his career from a young stud to the more mature leading man that he was today.

“I see him on TV all the time,” I remarked. “Isn’t he married?”

“Yes, but he wants to have kinky sex with me,” Kojima confided with a giggle. “I meet so many gay celebrities through him. His wife is very jealous because she hears all the rumors. He’s crazy about Oriental boys but doesn’t want to touch any of them in California. It’s because everybody talking so much. He’s a very scared guy. He’s always worried about the disease.”

Kojima lived on memories as though they were oxygen. I turned the page and saw a much younger Yoshi standing with his arms lovingly draped around the neck of a Caucasian gentleman who appeared to be about fifteen years his senior.

“Is that your father-in-law?” I ventured boldly.

“Yes, but we don’t speak anymore. He complain, complain all the time,” Kojima said sadly.

“But wasn’t he the only one that tried to help when you were arrested?” I pressed.

“He would call me in jail all the time and say that he loved me and worried about my health. Then he suddenly got mad and stopped calling.” Kojima’s hands fluttered in distress. “My father-in-law is upset, my wife is upset. Only my boy is okay with me.”

Kojima was so earnest that I wanted to believe every word he said. “My father-in-law never liked my actor friend in L.A. He knows he’s bisexual and was upset because we went on a trip together. He thought we were having an affair.”

Probably with good reason. My guess was that it had most likely contributed to their breakup.

I had another hunch to play. “By the way, how were you able to pay for a private lawyer when you were in prison? Did your family cover the expenses?”

“No, no. An antiques dealer in the States lent me the money.”

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place as I extracted a sliver of truth from Kojima’s lies. Charles Hanson had collected antiques. He’d also lent Kojima money when he was in prison and was angry that he’d never been repaid. It seemed a good bet that Charles Hanson had covered Sasamori’s retainer.

I continued to peruse the photo album and found a head shot of Hanson. Kojima snatched it from my hands. “It’s a shame about your father-in-law, since you were such good friends. How did you first meet?”

“I worked at my uncle’s antiques store when I was in high school and university. I was sixteen years old when my father-in-law first came in. He likes Japanese antiques. He’s a very rich man with so many houses and everything. His family is part owner of a big oil company, and they also own a few banks. He’s going to leave my boy six hundred million dollars, but I don’t want anything.” Kojima slipped the photo into the back of the album. “I’m very angry. I don’t want to look at him anymore.”

“Have you ever been to New York?” I asked, briefly dropping the subject.

“Oh, yes. I had a house there at one time,” he replied.

“Really? Where did you live?”

“Trump Tower,” he promptly replied. Kojima put the album away. “It stinks in here. We go to the coffee shop?” he offered.

“Where is that smell coming from?” I asked as we walked out the door.

“My brother cooks kintoki beans for his business in the back room every night. He uses so much water that the sewer pipes clog up. Water is very expensive here. That’s why I go to the communal bath. He must fix it.”

I had a feeling that Kojima would be going to the communal baths for a long time to come.

Kojima entertained me with tales of how stupid Customs agents were and how he’d smuggled beetles for years by hiding them on his body and in his luggage. It was almost as if he was giving me lessons. “Carrying insects in hand luggage is okay. Butterflies don’t show up on X-ray because they are not meat and bone. That’s how I brought two hundred live beetles back from Bolivia. I do it maybe twenty times selling for two million yen. All Customs ever sees is an empty box,” he disclosed.

Though I’d already heard them on government undercover tapes, I ate up every story. Kojima spoke of having smuggled film for the yakuza in Honolulu, where he bought a seventy-thousand-dollar apartment with the proceeds. He flipped it a few years later for a cool million. There were yearly trips to Paris, Frankfurt, and Florence, and a twenty-five-day luxury vacation with his father-in-law.

“I do so many different things. Once I start something I go crazy. I used to breed fish and birds. I make money but I quit so fast. My life is always up and down, up and down,” Kojima explained.

All except for butterflies. They remained the one constant in his life.

“Still, it’s too bad that you and your father-in-law aren’t in touch anymore,” I said, attempting to resuscitate the topic.

Kojima shook his head. “He hates me now. When I come out of jail I have a problem to go home because I have no money. The government took my wallet and credit cards when I’m arrested and give them to my father-in-law. When I get out I need to go home, but they only give me a five-hundred-dollar check. I’m sick and in terrible shape in the heart. I contact my father-in-law, but he refuse to give my credit cards and money back.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t Immigration and Customs Enforcements agents escort you to the airport and give you a ticket home to Japan?” This was the first I’d heard about it.

“I’m sick when I’m released and they put me in a hospital near LAX for a few days. They said there’d be a ticket waiting for me at the airport, but there wasn’t any. How can I go home? The airlines won’t take my five-hundred-dollar check!” he cried.

Kojima spoke to a supervisor at Japan Airlines, and they finally agreed to help.

“That’s terrible,” I said, feeling bad for the man sitting across from me. “But why wouldn’t your father-in-law give back your wallet?”

“I don’t know. He’s upset because my boy had to leave the country. Then after I return home he never call, he never contact me. I don’t care about it.” Kojima looked at me and smiled. “I’m so happy you’re here. I’m glad you found my shop.”

We agreed to meet once more before I left Kyoto.

I’d begun to like Kojima. In a strange sense, we’d become friends. Granted, he had yet to discuss his bizarre relationship with Charles Hanson, or admit that he’d probably never been married or that he’d done anything wrong. Most of his stories were lies that he’d told in the past and would tell again. No matter, I was still flattered that he’d taken me into his confidence. Kojima trusted me. How could I betray the man?

We spent my last day in Kyoto together and ended by going to dinner.

“I’m so happy you returned here to see me,” Kojima said as we sat down.

“I am, too. You’ve been a large part of my trip to Japan.”

“I try to do the best I can. That is my way,” Kojima humbly replied.

“I’m very glad to have stumbled upon your shop,” I said, feeling totally guilt-ridden.

Kojima smiled. “Yes, you are lucky. You found a closet queen.”

This was his first reference to the topic. “Aha,” I pounced. “Are you a closet queen, Yoshi?”

“No, no, no,” he protested with a laugh.

It was now a challenge as I tried to catch him off guard. “Was your wife beautiful?” I asked.

He stared at me blankly. “My wife? Which one?”

It was my turn to be surprised. “You only have one wife, right?”

“In the United States?”

Maybe Kojima had as many wives as he supposedly had houses. Something clicked, and Kojima was suddenly himself again. “Who cares about that one?”

“Do you have other wives that I don’t know about?” I asked, laughing.

“No, no. Not wife, friend only. Oh my God! Too much trouble. When I call, she always answering and hanging up. Son of a bitch,” he nearly spat.

That was another interesting tidbit. Charles Hanson now had a wife, even if in name only. Perhaps Kojima was referring to her.

“Where is your son these days?” I asked.

“He lives in Australia, but he has a girlfriend in Singapore that’s pregnant. I also want to see the movie Australia because I like Hugh Jackman,” Kojima chattered on. “When he’s young, he’s showing for his naked. There are a lot of nude photos of him on the Internet. He has quite a big one. You can print and put it on your wallpaper.”

Good to know, but that wasn’t the information I was looking for.

“So, were you ever suspicious of Ed Newcomer?” I asked.

“Such a terrible guy! All the time he’s catching someone. It’s a terrible problem. One guy told me Ed Newcomer’s name and warned me to be careful. But then a young man showed up and said he was Ted Nelson. How can I find out? He wanted to study with me, but I finally kicked him out of my house. That’s why he wants to catch me,” Kojima ranted.

I silently listened to his side of the story.

“I just speaking on the phone with him about the butterfly Queen Alexandra, and for that they charge me five years,” he said. “Then Newcomer tells newspapers that I like him very much. Who cares about that kind of guy? If I do it, I pick up a nice one. Anyway, he cannot touch me anymore now that I’m in Japan.”

Kojima felt safe once again. He leaned forward as if to impart a secret. “Maybe somebody kill Ed Newcomer soon.”

The bombshell had its intended effect. I sank back in my seat. Could Kojima be serious?

“The Southsider guy say to me, ‘If you have a problem and you want, I can do it for you.’ He was going to get a message to someone on the outside to kill Newcomer, but I thought about it and say no.”

Either Kojima was blowing smoke or he was more dangerous than I had thought.

“That would have been a bad move on your part,” I agreed. “Newcomer is a federal agent. They’d track you down, and you’d spend the rest of your life rotting in jail. Are you still in touch with that Southsider guy?”

Kojima shook his head. “No, I don’t care about that anymore. I like just selling my butterflies.”

“Can anyone from the U.S. or Europe get on your auction site?” I asked, beginning to wonder just who I was dealing with.

“Yes, if they want something, they contact me and I send it Express Mail. I can send under a different name and put a fake address in Japan. That way nobody knows that it comes from me,” Kojima answered.

It was a shrewd move on his part. U.S. Customs would never connect the dots.

“You can make maybe four hundred dollars a day. It’s easy selling butterflies. You could do too,” he said, and then paused. “I still want to do eBay. I have everything I need, but I do not know how to do. How can I use?”

He looked at me expectantly, and a queasy feeling took root in my stomach. Kojima was testing to see if I was game. “I have no idea how to use eBay. I’m pretty bad at that stuff, Yoshi. But you use Internet auction sites in Japan all the time. Shouldn’t it be pretty much the same thing?”

Kojima was a clever guy. He’d conducted business over the Internet for years. Putting his material on eBay should be a breeze. That was unless he was looking for his next patsy. He confirmed that with his next request.

“I also want to ask you a favor. Sometimes I need help with a couple American guys that don’t want to sell to me American butterflies.”

“Why not?” I asked, suspicious of what might be coming.

“Because he’s scared for selling outside of U.S. It’s nothing do wrong, but some crazy guys don’t want to. That’s why they sometimes have butterflies that I want but cannot get. Do you have PayPal?”

“No,” I replied warily, my mind already conjuring the prison cell I could end up in.

“PayPal is easy. I can send you in one second the money if you buy the butterflies from him. He’ll send them to you and then you send them to me by Express Mail. You do nothing wrong because the post office will never open the package,” he insisted.

“Is he afraid because you went to prison for selling illegal butterflies?” I asked.

“No, no. He needs permission to send butterflies out of the U.S., but who cares? A lot of other people send to me by Express Mail.”

Then why doesn’t Yoshi ask one of his other friends in the U.S. to do it? I wondered as a five-alarm fire erupted in my head. Don’t piss him off. Just play along for now. There’s still more information to get. “Sure, no problem.”

With that went my fantasy of friendship. Apparently, I was simply another mark. I’d have to end all communication with him. The man was a magnet for trouble.

“Hey, I was wondering if you believe in reincarnation?” I asked him. Kojima was raised Buddhist, and it seemed a fitting question.

“I sometimes have a feeling for it. When I was young I used to feel it a lot but now am getting older,” he said.

“Do you think you’ll come back a butterfly?” I asked, knowing the answer I hoped to hear.

Kojima didn’t disappoint. “I think so.”

“That would be fitting,” I replied. If karma existed, he’d be hatched by a butterfly breeder and live all of five minutes.

“Only butterflies fade and don’t last,” he added with a melancholy note.

“I guess they’re just like people that way,” I reflected. Then another thought struck me. “By the way, what happened to all of your butterflies while you were in prison for those two years?”

Kojima’s face turned grave as he stared into space. “I didn’t know I’d be gone for so long. I had four thousand butterflies. Some were very expensive and needed to be put in cases with mothballs. When I came home, they’d been eaten by bugs and had all turned to dust. That’s why you have to enjoy these things while you’re still alive. Because you can’t take them to the cemetery.” He broke the somber mood with a smile. “Besides, Hugh Jackman naked is better than butterflies, right?”

We walked back to his shop as a light rain began to fall.

“I can’t come to the United States anymore, but maybe if you go on a trip to South America, I can go with you,” he offered. “Anyway, I’m going to see you the next time you come.”

He unlocked the shop door. There was no sign of his brother, no scent of kintoki beans cooking in the back room, and the second bicycle remained untouched where it sat parked. I’d never know exactly what was true and what was a lie. The only reality was that Kojima remained the king of butterflies.

He handed me a plastic umbrella for my walk home.

“You won’t forget me?” I asked as I stood at the door.

He gave me a kiss on both cheeks. “I won’t forget you,” he promised.

I wouldn’t forget him, either. I think of Kojima every time I see a butterfly and say a silent prayer of thanks that it’s still flying free.