A gardener’s not-so-simple life

The best Los Angeles crime fiction is distinguished by its ability to transport readers to unfamiliar corners in our multicultural metropolis. The house-proud black neighborhoods sleuthed by Walter Mosley’s midcentury detective Easy Rawlins, the gay and lesbian enclaves of Katherine V. Forrest’s Kate Delafield police procedurals, the Persian American elite and other diverse groups investigated by John Shannon’s P.I. Jack Liffey all leave readers more knowledgeable than they started about people seen only from a distance and lives imagined only in the broadest of outlines.

For her first novel, “Summer of the Big Bachi,” Naomi Hirahara has chosen as her hero another iconographic albeit little-known figure in the Los Angeles landscape -- the Japanese American gardener. Mas Arai is a diminutive man in his late 60s with a dwindling number of regular customers whose yards he tends with loving care and a practiced eye, even as they look through him and mangle his daughter’s name, Mari.

By the summer of 1999 his life is bleak -- his wife, Chizuko, has died of cancer, and he’s estranged from Mari. At least Mas enjoys the companionship of other Japanese American gardeners who hang out at Wishbone Tanaka’s lawn-mower shop in Altadena, and he has an unusual sidekick -- his 1956 Ford, whose “tough metal hide could survive accident after accident, the blazing L.A. sun, gunshots, and domestic strife. Unlike the aluminum-can Japanese cars, his Ford truck was solid, reliable, and, perhaps, most important, a friend.”

The simplicity of the Altadena gardener’s life belies memories pressed down “so hard that they lay thin and almost invisible.” Mas is a survivor of pikadon (Japanese for flash-boom), the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. The teenage Mas, who had been sent to his family’s ancestral city to study, was trapped in Japan during World War II and became one of the blast’s 350,000 victims, and one of the 500 who returned to their native United States.

Mas’ carefully constructed existence is upended when Shuji Nakane, a private investigator from Hiroshima, turns up at Tanaka’s lawn-mower shop, sporting gold-tipped sunglasses and a turtleneck in 98-degree heat and smelling of “high-tone cologne, not the familiar scent of Old Spice that Mas splashed on special for a funeral.” Nakane is seeking Joji Haneda, who was presumed to have died in the Hiroshima blast but who seems to have a doppelganger living as a nurseryman in Ventura. The reasons for Nakane’s interest in Haneda are initially unclear, but it forces Mas to recall his horrific past and sends him on a quest to confront Haneda before Nakane can find him.

In the process, Mas and his trusty Ford traverse the breadth of Japanese American Los Angeles, treating readers to snippets of the Japanese language in addition to well-drawn scenes in Crenshaw District homes still occupied by elderly Japanese, San Fernando Valley ramen shops, hostess bars on Sawtelle Boulevard that cater to Japanese businessmen, Gardena bowling alleys and illegal card games in Little Tokyo.

Along the way, Mas and his Ford visit the North Hollywood apartment of Junko Kakita, the woman purported to be Haneda’s mistress. Trouble follows close on Mas’ heels, resulting in a rough encounter with an unknown assailant who steals his Ford and warns him to stay away from Haneda and his business.

The theft stirs something in Mas, a steely resolution born of hardship and perseverance. “It was one thing for him to decide to stay out of somebody’s business; it was quite another for someone to steal his property to keep his mouth shut. Mas had no desire to dredge up old memories, but he wasn’t going to let some fancy-heeled sonafugun try and push him down.”

The shock of the assault is compounded when Mas visits a Los Angeles clinic for Hiroshima survivors and encounters Yuki Kimura, a young reporter who is looking for information about his grandfather, Riki Kimura, who may have survived Hiroshima. Mas wonders if the boy’s sudden appearance is a form of bachi (karma or retribution) for his past misdeeds. Is Yuki’s search connected to Shuji Nakane’s?

The answers to these questions, as well as the connection between Mas and the two missing men, are revealed in skillful flashbacks that bring the stark horror of the Hiroshima bombing to life as Mas, Yuki and denizens of the lawn-mower shop are plunged into deeper trouble, even murder.

Hirahara has a keen eye for the telling detail and an assured sense of character uncommon for a first-time novelist. Even when Mas’ peregrinations and the relationships between Haneda, Riki Kimura, his grandson and others get a little confusing, the author’s compassion for her characters and evident love of the region where they live and work keeps the heart of “Summer of the Big Bachi” whirling and purring as strongly as the engine of Mas’ cherished Ford.

Both mystery fans and readers of L.A. fiction will eagerly await her characters’ further adventures. *