Death in Little Tokyo

25

The backstage of the Paradise Vineyard had the same spooky feeling that I felt every time I walked in there. I supposed that after awhile you’d get used to being backstage. But as a novice not quite understanding the workings of the theater, I still found it surprising and disquieting to see behind the magic that I usually saw when facing a stage.

Nobody challenged me as I walked through the stage door and made my way back to the practice area, where I saw Yoshida sitting at a table doing some paperwork. On his lap sat his cane.

“Hello,” I said.

Yoshida looked up from his writing. “Hello.”

“I came back to talk to you again.”

“I can see that.”

I looked around for a chair to sit on. Not seeing one handy, I stood. “I saw a mutual friend of ours this morning.”

“Who’s that?”

“Angela Sanchez. She says that on the night that Matsuda was killed, he came back with her to the theater, where he met you. She said that you two knew each other, but you hadn’t seen each other for fifty years.”

“Yes, that’s true,” he said. “We almost didn’t recognize each other.”

“I can imagine. Fifty years is a long time.”

“A very long time.”

“But evidently not long enough to forgive some things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not quite sure, but I think I have most things figured out. About Matsuda’s murder, I mean. But not the motive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think we both know what I’m talking about.”

“You think I was involved in Matsuda’s murder? Just because we knew each other? That night was the first time we met in fifty years. I didn’t mention it to the police because I didn’t want to get involved.”

“Is not getting involved why you paid for Angela’s motel room in Long Beach? You told her to get out of town, that the Yakuza was after her.”

“I didn’t tell her that.”

“She says you did. She really likes and respects you. She trusts you. It’s a shame you used that trust against her.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“Like I said, I think I have most things figured out. That night Matsuda met Angela in the bar. She turned a trick with him and then invited him to come back to the theater to see her act. I guess she is a very friendly girl, or maybe Matsuda was a big tipper. Who knows. For whatever reason, he came back with her, probably because the little piece of business he had to do with me had been completed.

“Anyway, he was very surprised to see someone he hadn’t seen for fifty years when he walked backstage. That was you, the brother of the woman he used to date. You see, I found out that you were in Heart Mountain Camp before you were in Manzanar. I even have your records of when you were at Heart Mountain and when you were at Manzanar. I was able to match your name on two lists to make sure the same Jiro Yoshida was in two camps. I even learned that Matsuda and Yuki were boyfriend and girlfriend when they were in the camps, before the big blowup over the loyalty oath occurred.”

Yoshida looked surprised, but made no comment.

“Anyway, he came back here and met you. Then I think you two guys went out for a drink, maybe at the same bar you took me to. It would probably be easy enough to check with the bartender to find out for sure.

“Afterward, you and Matsuda went back to his room and something happened there. Something happened that was so horrendous it made you lose all control, and you took out the sword hidden in the cane that you carry.”

I saw Yoshida’s hand tightening around the shaft of his cane, and I knew my guess was right. I thanked Kurosawa and the sword/cane scene in Sanjuro. “Then you hacked Matsuda to pieces. When you were done, you put on your overcoat, which covered most of the bloodstains on your clothing, and left his room.”

“You’re pretty good,” Yoshida said. “Maybe it’s because you’re smart. Japanese tend to be smart.”

“That’s as much a racial stereotype as the one that says we’re inscrutable and that we can’t show emotion. You and I both know that we can show a lot of emotion. In fact, Japanese view themselves as very emotional people. Because of that emotion, we get in trouble a lot. Like when you lost your temper and killed Matsuda. The one thing I don’t know is what caused it. I think the police can prove everything else, but they’ll never know the cause unless you tell them.

“Angela will testify that you and Matsuda met here at the theater. I know someone who was in the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp with you who will testify that she knew Matsuda when he used to date your sister, Yuki. If you and Matsuda didn’t go to the same bar that we did, then it must be another one around here locally. I’m sure the police will be able to find out from the bartender that you two guys were in drinking on the night Matsuda was killed.

“That sword cane of yours is a pretty good idea for someone who has to work late in downtown L.A. But no matter how carefully you’ve cleaned the blade, there will be some microscopic bloodstains still on it that the police will be able to find. In any case, the inside of one of your coats will have bloodstains that the police will be able to match to Matsuda’s. But like I said, the one thing that’s missing is why you did it. Originally I thought this had something to do with the Yakuza, but although Matsuda was involved with the Yakuza, I don’t think you are. There’s another reason. A reason so bad that you got into a rage and hacked him to pieces.”

“He killed my sister,” Yoshida said simply.

“Yuki?”

“Yes.”

“I thought she was murdered by one of the camp guards?”

“So did I. For fifty years. But I guess seeing me after all these years shocked Susumu. After we went drinking together he got very drunk and admitted that he killed Yuki. He started crying. In his room he begged for forgiveness. He got on his knees and bowed in an old-fashioned kowtow right there on the floor until his forehead hit the ground, begging for forgiveness.

“He said he still loved Yuki after the big fight over the loyalty oath, but that Yuki didn’t want to have much to do with him because of the fight between him and me. He said that he wanted to reconcile with Yuki, and on the night she was murdered they met so they could talk with each other. He told her he wanted to go back to Japan after the war, no matter who won. He wanted her to come with him.

“She got mad at him. For some reason she got it into her head that maybe he’d come round to my way of thinking, and she was expecting him to tell her that he was going to volunteer for the army and fight for the U.S. Since I was in a hospital after my accident, Yuki felt strong feelings of patriotism, and she was upset with Matsuda when he said that he hated the U.S. and wanted to go back to Japan. He said he got so mad at her that he pushed her down and she hit her head on a rock. He said it was an accident. I don’t know if that was true or not. It didn’t make any difference to me.

“For half a century I thought one of the white guards had killed my sister. That was the icing on the cake for everything else that white society had done to me. Here in this country my ambitions, my life, what I could and could not do, where I could and could not go, all those things were restricted because I had a yellow face in a white society. The fact that we were in the camps in the first place was because we were Japanese in a white man’s world in the United States.

“When I got torn up by the hand grenade, it was because some meathead sergeant, who probably couldn’t even read and write, was put in charge of training Japanese troops. It was probably punishment for him because he wasn’t good enough to train white troops.

“I was lying in the hospital torn up in pain, knowing that whatever slim chance I might ever have of making it as a song and dance man in this society had disappeared in a shower of smoke and shell fragments. Then I heard that my only sister had been killed. I was told that it was by one of the white guards and that they had involved themselves in a cover-up to protect the real murderer. For fifty years that hate had been added on top of all the others and it stayed locked up in here.” He struck his chest.

“Then Matsuda told me that he was the one who killed my sister. The lousy kibei who wanted to go back to Japan, who didn’t want to stay in white society and fight it out and try to do something despite the obstacles that we had. He killed my sister just because she got mad at him and had a fight with him about going back to Japan.”

Yoshida looked up at me. His eyes looked very tired. “Something inside me just snapped then. I took out my sword from my cane.” He grasped the top of his cane with one hand and the shaft with the other and pulled them apart a few inches, showing me the gleaming sword blade held in the cane. “And I started hitting him and hitting him with the sword, hacking him to pieces. I just couldn’t stop.” Yoshida started crying.

“Why did he tell you he killed your sister?” I asked. “I mean, after fifty years, why didn’t he just keep his mouth shut?”

“You’re Japanese,” Yoshida said. “You should know that Japanese have a compulsion to apologize, sometimes even when they haven’t done anything wrong. Remember when they had that big cyclamate scare, when they said that cyclamates in soft drinks cause cancer?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in Japan when they took the cyclamates out of the soft drinks, all the Japanese soft drink companies published big ads apologizing to the public for putting something which might be unhealthful into their drinks. What was funny about that was that companies that never used cyclamates in their soft drinks also published apologies. They apologized because they might have used something unhealthy in their drinks, even though they didn’t. Typically Japanese. Don’t you sometimes apologize when you’ve never really done anything?”

“I’ve never thought about it, but I guess that’s true,” I said.

“It’s part of the social legacy we Japanese have along with the exaggerated politeness and the stiff social customs between strangers. When Matsuda got drunk, his defenses went down. I guess the shock of seeing me after all those years set him off, asking for forgiveness for Yuki’s murder, although he called it an accident. For all I know, it was an accident. I guess it doesn’t make any difference now.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t,” I said. “I’m going to have to call the police.”

“I know. Weren’t you afraid I’d do something to you when you came here?”

“No. You had some reason for what you did to Matsuda. I didn’t think you’d have the same kind of rage against me. In addition to the police, I think we should also call a lawyer. If you don’t have one, I can recommend a good one. He’s the cousin of my girlfriend.”

“Shigata ga nai,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”

“Then, I’ll call you a lawyer. You’ll need one. Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Why did you tell me all this? I mean about why you did it to Matsuda.”

Yoshida looked up at me, an expression of ineffable sadness in his eyes. “I told you, we Japanese have a compulsion to apologize. I was sorry.”