to them weep. Thirty Calmotin, thirty-one. To my father: I hope you have been well. We land tomorrow. I shall do my best, as you would wish. To my wife: the great moment has come. To me, there is no tomorrow. I know well what you are thinking about, my dear wife. But be calm and serene. Take care of our children. To my son: Masaki, dear, your daddy is going to fight with the Chinese soldiers soon. Do you remember the big sword that your grandfather gave me? With it, I shall cut and stab and knock down enemy soldiers, like your hero, Iwami Jutaro. Daddy is going to bring home a sword and a steel Chinese helmet as a souvenir for you. But Masaki, dear, I want you to be a good boy always. Be nice to your mummy and Grandmother and all your teachers. Love your sister, and study so that you may become a great man. I see your little figure, waving a little flag in your little fist. Daddy cherishes that picture forever in his mind. Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai! Forty Calmotin, forty-one. Heavy fog hides everything but the railway station. Hints of Chinese houses, echoes of Chinese voices. Everything is yellow. Now we can smell acacia flowers, now we see Rising Sun flags. Everything khaki. Lookout patrols are dispatched, sentries posted. This unit to the noodle factory, that unit to the match factory. The Chinks rob the Japanese. The soldiers cook and clean. The Chinks rape the Japanese. The soldiers guard and patrol. The Chinks murder the Japanese. The soldiers build defence zones. The Chinks rob the Japanese. Barbed wire and barricades throughout the city. The Chinks rape the Japanese. Every Chinese is challenged at every intersection. The Chinks murder the Japanese. There are sandbags and there are roadblocks. More units arrive. There is always sand, there is never water. More units arrive. Always dust and always dirt. More units arrive. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Daytime duty is followed by nighttime duty. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Nighttime duty followed by daytime duty. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The mattresses are torn, the bedbugs hungry. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. There among the corpses, I cannot sleep. Bayonets fixed. I can hear their screams. Rifles loaded. I can hear their pleas. The Chinks rob the Japanese. The Japanese bosses don’t pay their Chinese workers. The Chinks rape the Japanese. The Chinese workers complain to their Japanese bosses. The Chinks murder the Japanese. The bosses insert cotton-thread needles into the gaps between the flesh and the nails of their workers’ fingers. I can hear their screams. The bosses thrust the needles into their ring fingers, their middle fingers and their index fingers. I can hear their pleas. The Japanese bosses do what they want now. I was impertinent, lazy and bad. Workers are lashed with wet leather whips. This is a warning. Workers are hung from the branches of trees. I was impertinent. Fifty Calmotin, fifty-one. A child shits behind a sorghum straw fence. Single-wheeled carts rush down the street. In this city of robbery. A woman with bound feet hurries past. The solitary wheels groan beneath the weight of huge gunnysacks. In this city of rape. Coolies the colour of dust sift through peanut shells and watermelon rinds. The rhombus-shaped sails of the carts inflate and disappear. In this city of murder. Long-eared donkeys lead a lengthy funeral
Tokyo, 91°, overcast
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The sound of hammering and hammering –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I open my eyes and I remember –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton … I am one of the survivors –
One of the lucky ones …
I take out my handkerchief. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I push my hair back out of my eyes. I look at my watch –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
It is 10 a.m.; it is only 10 a.m. –
Just four hours gone, eight still to go, then down to Shinagawa, down to Yuki. Three, four hours there and then out to Mitaka, to my wife and my children. Try to take them some food, bring them something to eat, anything. Eat and then sleep, try to sleep. Then back here again for 6 a.m. tomorrow …
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
Another twelve hours in this oven …
I wipe the sweat from my shirt collar. I wipe the sweat from my eyelids. I look down the length of the table. Three men on my left, two men on my right and the three empty chairs –
No Fujita. No Ishida. No Kimura …
Five men wiping their necks and wiping their faces, scratching after lice and swiping away mosquitoes, ignoring their work and turning their newspapers; newspapers full of the First Anniversary of the Surrender, the progress of reform and the gains of democracy; newspapers full of the International Military Tribunal, the judgment of the Victors and the punishment of the Losers –
Day in, day out. Day in, day out. Day in, day out …
Turning our newspapers, thinking about food –
Day in, day out. Day in, day out …
And waiting and waiting –
Day in, day out …
The telephones that can’t ring, the electric fans that can’t turn. The heat and the sweat. The flies and the mosquitoes. The dirt, the dust and the noise; the constant sound of hammering and hammering, hammering and hammering, hammering and hammering –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I get up from my chair. I go to the window. I raise the blind –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Three floors above Sakuradamon, I look out over Tokyo –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The Palace to my left, GHQ to my right –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Under a low typhoid sky –
Ton-ton …
The Capital City of the Shōwa Dead, the Losers on their hands and knees, the Victors in their trucks and jeeps –
No resistance here.
I hear the door open. I turn round; Kimura is stood there –
Early twenties. Repatriated from the south. Only three months here and no longer the most junior member of our room, Room #2 …
Kimura is staring down the length of table at me; half in contempt, half in deference, a piece of paper in his hands –
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot …
My stomach knots, my head pounds –
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot …
Kimura holds out the paper marked Police Bulletin and says, ‘Maybe this one’s a murder, Detective Inspector Minami, sir.’
*
There is only one working car for the whole division. It is not available. So we walk again, like we walk everywhere. They promise us cars, like they promise us telephones and guns and pens and paper and better pay and health care and holidays but every day we tear apart old bicycle tires to cut out new soles to hammer onto the bottom of our boots so we can walk and walk and walk and walk and walk –
Hattori, Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, Nishi, Kimura and me — Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Through the heat, through the flies and the mosquitoes –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
From Metropolitan Police Headquarters to Shiba Park –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Jackets off, hats on. Handkerchiefs out, fans out –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Down Sakurada-dōri and up the hill to Atago –
Ton-ton …
Detective Nishi has the Police Bulletin in his hand. Nishi reads it aloud as we walk: ‘Naked body of unidentified female found at 9:30 a.m. this morning, August 15, 1946, at Nishi-Mukai Kannon Zan, 2 Shiba Park, Shiba Ward. Body reported to Shiba Park police box at 9:45 a.m. Body reported to Atago police station at 10:15 a.m. Body reported to Metropolitan Police Headquarters at 11:00 a.m.….
‘They took their time,’ he says now. ‘It’ll be two hours by the time we see the body. What were they doing at Atago…?’
‘She ain’t going nowhere,’ laughs Detective Hattori.
‘Tell that to the maggots and the flies,’ says Nishi.
‘No cars. No bicycles. No telephones. No telegraphs,’ replies Hattori. ‘What do you expect the Atago boys to do about it?’
Nishi shakes his head. Nishi doesn’t answer him.
I wipe my neck. I glance at my watch again –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
It is almost 11:30 a.m.; only 11:30 a.m. –
Five and a half hours gone, six and a half to go. Then down to Shinagawa, down to Yuki. Three, four hours there and then out to Mitaka. The wife and the children. Eat and then sleep, try to sleep. Back here again for 6 a.m. and another twelve hours —
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
If this body isn’t a murder …
‘This way is quicker,’ says Nishi and we pick our way over the hills of rubble and through the craters of dust until we come out on to Hibiya-dōri near Onarimon –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton.
*
Two very young men from the Atago police station are waiting for us in their ill-fitting, dirt-stained uniforms. They bow and they salute, they greet us and they apologize but I can’t hear a word they say –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The uniformed policemen lead us off the road, away from the sound of the hammering, and into the temple grounds –
Huge scorched trees, their roots to the sky …
There is nothing much left of Zōjōji Temple since it was burnt to the ground in the May air raids of last year –
Branches charred and leaves lost …
The two uniforms lead us through the ashes and up the hill, out of the sunlight and into the shadow; the graves forgotten here, this place is overgrown and its paths lost, the bamboo grass taller than a man and as thick as the insects that cloud the air; this place of foxes and badgers, of rats and crows, of abandoned dogs that run in packs with a new-found taste for human flesh –
In this place of assignation –
Of prostitutes, of suicides –
This place of silence –
This place of death –
She is here …
In this sudden clearing where the tall grass has been flattened and the sun has found her, she is here; lying naked on her back, her head slightly to the left, her right arm outstretched, her left at her side, she is here; her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee, she is here …
Possibly twenty-one years old and probably ten days dead –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …
There is a piece of red material round her neck –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …
This is not a suicide. This is murder –
Namu-amida-butsu …
This case ours –
I curse her…
I look at my watch. Chiku-taku. It is almost noon –
Chiku-taku. It is August 15, 1946 –
The defeat and the capitulation. The surrender and the occupation. The ghosts all here today –
I curse her. I curse myself…
It has been one year.
*
In among the tall weeds, an old man is on his knees, bowing and mumbling his prayers with an axe on the ground before him –
‘Namu-amida-butsu,’ the old man chants. ‘Namu-amida …’
‘This man discovered the body,’ says one of the uniforms.
I squat down beside the old man. I swat at a mosquito with my hat. I miss. I wipe my neck. I say, ‘It’s hot today, isn’t it?’
The old man stops his chanting. The old man nods.
‘This man is a lumberjack,’ says the uniform.
‘And you found the body?’ I ask the man.
The old man nods his head again.
‘Found her just like this?’
He nods his head again.
‘Are you sure you didn’t find any of her clothes, a bag or a purse or anything else near her?’
He shakes his head.
‘You haven’t stashed away her things to sell later, have you? Not put away some of her things to come back for?’ Again, he shakes his head. ‘Not her ration card?’
The old man looks up at me now. The old man says, ‘No.’ I nod and I pat him on his back. I apologize to him and I thank him. I put my hat back on and I stand up again –
I see her out of the corner of my eye …
Detectives Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda are sat down in the shade of the trees with their Panama hats in their hands, fanning and wiping themselves, swatting at flies and mosquitoes –
In the shade with the Shōwa Dead …
The two uniformed policemen from Atago shifting from foot to foot, foot to foot; Detectives Nishi and Kimura still stood over the body, still staring at her, waiting for me –
In this City of the Dead …
I walk over to the body –
She is here …
‘I knew it,’ Kimura is saying. ‘Knew it’d be murder.’
‘And she’ll have been a whore,’ agrees Nishi.
‘I doubt that,’ I tell him, tell them both.
‘But this place is notorious for prostitutes,’ says Nishi. ‘We know the ones from Shimbashi bring their men up here…’
I stare down at the body, the pale grey and decaying body, the legs parted, raised and bent at the knee –
‘This woman was raped,’ I tell them both. ‘Why would you rape and then murder a prostitute?’
‘If you had no money,’ says Kimura. ‘There are a lot of destitute and desperate men…’
‘So just rape her and leave her, beat her if you must, but she’s not going to tell anyone.’
‘Unless she knew him,’ says Nishi. ‘Knew his name…’
‘We need to find her name,’ I tell them now, tell them all, my men and the two men from Atago. ‘And we need to find her clothes and any other belongings she might have had with her.’
‘Just a moment!’ barks out a voice from behind me, and everyone jumps to attention, to bow and to salute –
I turn round. I know this voice. I bow and I salute. I know this face well. I greet Chief Inspector Adachi –
Adachi or Anjo or Ando or whatever he calls himself this week; he has changed his name and he has changed his job, his uniform and his rank, his life and his past; he is not the only one …
Now no one is who they say they are …
No one is who they seem to be …
Behind him stand Suzuki, the First Investigative Division photographer, and two men in white coats from the Keiō University Hospital with a light, wooden coffin –
They are all sweating.
Adachi points at Suzuki and tells everyone, ‘Move out of the way and let this man get on with his work, then these other two can get this body out of here.’
Everybody steps back into the taller grasses, among the taller trees, to watch Suzuki load his film and start his work –
Click-click-click. Click-click-click …
I look at my watch –
Chiku-taku …
12:30 p.m. –
Everything is lost; there will be a meeting of all the section heads of the First Investigative Division; there will be verbal and written reports; there will be the assignment of command, the delegation of responsibility, the division of labour, of investigation and of evaluation; more lost hours in more hot rooms …
‘Bad luck, your room pulling this one,’ laughs Adachi. ‘Twenty-one days straight. No time off. You all stuck down here in Atago, knowing you’ll never solve the case, never close it, knowing no one cares but knowing it’s yet another failure on your record…’
‘It’ll be just like the Matsuda Giichi case then,’ I say.
Inspector Adachi leans closer into my face now –
No one is who they say they are …
‘That case is closed, corporal,’ he spits.
No one who they seem to be …
I take a step back. I bow my head. I apologize.
‘You’re two men short,’ says Adachi –
I bow again. I apologize again.
‘Where’s Detective Fujita?’
Another bow, another apology.
‘That’s not an answer,’ says Adachi. ‘Just an admission.’
*
The photographer has finished his work. The ground beneath her is crushed and darker. The two men from Keiō Hospital have lifted up the body. The ground is infested with insects. The men from Keiō have lifted the body into the wooden coffin. She is stiff and refuses to bend. The two uniforms from Atago were called to help and the arms were folded, the lid fitted and secured with ropes and knots, bound. She is resisting the box. The two men from Keiō Hospital have taken her back down the hill. She is no longer here …
Now I take out my watch again –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
It is almost 3 p.m. –
I am stood on the top of a wall behind the ruined Tokugawa tombs, looking up the hill and out over a sea of bamboo grass and zelkova trees, islands of fallen stone lanterns and broken down graves; I am searching for her clothes or her bag, when suddenly I see it –
I jump down from the top of the wall into the long, long grasses and I wade through the dead leaves and weeds towards it –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …
The white cloth grinning through the long, long grasses –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …
White cloth around white bones –
Namu-amida-butsu …
I curse myself again!
Another body …
A second body wearing a white half-sleeved chemise, a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles; a second body ten metres from the first; a second body now nothing but bones –
Tangled up in the weeds and leaves …
I curse her and I curse this place –
I curse and I curse again …
This place of shadow, of forgotten graves and lost paths, of foxes and badgers, of rats and crows, of abandoned dogs and human flesh, of prostitutes and suicides in this place of assignation –
This place of silence. This place of death –
In this place of defeat and capitulation. This place of surrender and occupation. This place of ghosts –
The body now nothing but bones …
In this place of no resistance.
*
It takes three hours for us to report the finding of the second body to Metropolitan Police Headquarters. I stare at her white half-sleeved chemise. Three hours for them to send Suzuki back here to photograph the second body. I stare at her yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress. Three hours for the Keiō University Hospital to send out another ambulance to take away the second body. I stare at her pink socks. Three hours for my men to seal off the crime scene and the immediate area around the second body. I stare at her white canvas shoes. Three hours for us to requisition the necessary uniformed men from the Atago, Meguro and Mita police stations in order to secure the area where the bodies were found. Their red, red rubber soles. Three hours sweating and swatting, itching and scratching, gari-gari, while I stand and I stare at this second body –
Her flesh far from here, carried in the mouths of others …
I stare at the bleached white bones of her fingers –
I stare at the bleached white bones of her hands –
Her wrists and her forearms and her elbows –
The bleached white bones of her face –
The permed hair. The yellow teeth –
Her last, contorted smile …
The shadows have lengthened now, the tall grasses and zelkova trees closer here.
*
The good detective visits the crime scene one hundred times. I have walked away from that place. The good detective knows nothing is random. I have walked out of the shadow and into the sunlight. The good detective knows in chaos lies order. I have walked back down the hill and into the temple grounds. In chaos lie answers …
But there is nothing left of the Zōjōji Temple –
Huge scorched trees, their roots to the sky …
Nothing but the ruin of the old Black Gate –
Branches charred and leaves lost …
In this lonely place, I stand beneath the dark eaves of the gate and I watch the ambulance drive away –
We have seen hell, we have known heaven, we have heard the last judgment and we have witnessed the fall of the gods … Under the Black Gate, a stray dog pants –
But I am one of the survivors …
His house lost, his master gone –
One of the lucky ones …
In the Year of the Dog.
*
It is another long, hot walk back to Metropolitan Police Headquarters, a walk made worse by the dirt and the dust from the trucks and the jeeps with their big white stars and their big white teeth –
The constant, constant sound of hammering –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I knock on the door to Chief Kita’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I enter. I take my seat at the table –
Chief Kita sits at the head of the table with his back to the window, its frame still buckled from the bombs; Chief Kita, the kachō of the whole of the First Investigative Division, an old but lean man with a deeply tanned face, a close-shaven head and hard, unblinking eyes; Chief Kita, the best friend my father ever had –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
To his right, Chief Inspector Kanehara with Adachi –
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
To his left Inspector Kai, leader of the First Team, and me; Inspector Minami now, leader of the Second Team –
No one is who they seem to be …
The report for the Public Safety Division is on the table. It has been translated into English, probably by Kanehara, and then typed up. It is passed round the table for all our signatures and seals –
I take out my pen. I stare at the report –
It could be Das Kapital …
The typed Roman characters –
Mein Kampf…
I sign it.
The report is returned to Chief Inspector Kanehara. Now Chief Kita nods at me and I begin my report; I repeat the timetable of the discovery and reporting of the first body; I detail the state and environment of the first body on our arrival; I recount my initial interview with the lumberjack; I defer then to Adachi who reports the timetable involving the photographer and the ambulance –
‘My initial deduction upon seeing the body was that a murder had been committed. Therefore, I ordered Inspector Minami and his men to conduct a thorough search of the immediate area surrounding the body. It was during the course of this search that Inspector Minami himself discovered the second body, which was approximately ten metres from the site of the first body.’
‘Detective Inspector Minami, please…’
‘As Chief Inspector Adachi has said, the second body was approximately ten metres from the site of the first body. The second body was badly decomposed and largely skeletal, but it appears to be the body of a young woman. However, unlike the first body, it was not naked but wearing a white half-sleeved chemise, a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. Initial inspection and experience would suggest that death occurred between three and four weeks ago but of course that will be precisely determined by the autopsy. It is clear though that the two women did not die at the same time.’
‘Do you believe these deaths are connected?’ asks Chief Kita.
‘Until the results of the autopsy are known, the location and sex of the two bodies remain the only connecting factors,’ I reply. ‘Despite their proximity, the nature of the vegetation meant that the site of one body was not visible from the other. As you are all aware, there was what would seem to be a piece of material tied round the neck of the first body, leading us to assume that death was a result of murder. On preliminary examination of the second body, no such material was found, nor were there any other obvious signs of a murder having occurred. As we know, in the last year a number of bodies have been found in the environs of Shiba Park. However, before today’s discovery, only one of these has proved to be murder. The other deaths were as a result of either suicide or disease.’
Chief Kita nods. Chief Kita says, ‘Chief Inspector?’
Adachi nods, reluctantly. ‘I agree with Inspector Minami.’
‘Then we’ll handle the two cases separately,’ says the chief. ‘Until we have the results from the autopsies which will be…?’
‘The day after tomorrow,’ says Adachi.
‘From Keiō or Tokyo?’
‘From Keiō…’
‘By?’
‘Dr. Nakadate.’
Kanehara and Kai pretend not to look up from their notes. Kanehara and Kai pretend not to look from me to Adachi to Chief Kita. Kanehara and Kai pretend not to see our exchange of glances –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
‘It can’t be helped,’ says the chief. ‘Let’s proceed…’
Now comes the structure of the investigation. The delegation of responsibility. The division of labour …
‘Inspector Kai and Room #1 will open the investigation into the first body. Inspector Kai and Room #1 will set up their Investigation Headquarters at the Atago police station. Inspector Kai will report to Chief Inspector Kanehara.’
Inspector Kai bows. Inspector Kai shouts, ‘I understand! Thank you! I will not let you down!’
Chief Inspector Kanehara bows. Kanehara shouts, ‘Thank you! I will not let you down!’
‘Inspector Minami and Room #2 will investigate the second body found at Shiba Park…’
I bow too hastily; there must be a hint of relief, a glimpse of respite in my action, because Chief Kita’s tone is harsh now –
‘Inspector Minami and Room #2 will conduct the investigation as a murder inquiry. Inspector Minami and Room #2 will also set up their Investigation Headquarters at Atago police station until further instructions are received. Inspector Minami and his team will report to Chief Inspector Adachi.’
I curse him. I curse him. I curse him …
I bow again to the chief. I tell him I understand. I thank him. I promise I will not let him down –
So tomorrow morning Room #2 will take their trunk to Atago. Tomorrow morning our banner will be unfurled and raised on its poles. Tomorrow the investigation will begin. Day and night, night and day. From tomorrow morning there will be no rest, no time off for twenty days or until the case is closed …
‘Has anyone anything else they wish to say?’ asks Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘Anything they wish to clarify?’
There is nothing to say. Nothing to clarify –
There is silence now, almost –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘Then tidy up all your affairs tonight,’ Chief Kita tells us. ‘Leave nothing unfinished. No loose ends, please.’
The chief looks away now –
I glance at my watch –
Chiku-taku …
It is 8:30 p.m.
*
I run down the corridor of Police Arcade to the back stairs. I leave through a back door. I cut through Hibiya Park. The temperature not falling with the night, the flies and mosquitoes hungrier than ever –
Pan-pan girls calling through the shadows and the trees –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
I run across Hibiya-dōri. I reach the elevated tracks –
Pan-pan girls in the shadows and the arches –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
I follow the Yamate train tracks –
To the Shimbashi Market –
‘Asobu …? Asobu…?’
To Senju Akira.
*
Kettles and pans. Crockery and utensils. Clothes and shoes. Cooking oil and soy sauce. Rice and tea. Fruit and vegetables. The kakigōri stalls and over and over, again and again, the ‘Apple Song’ –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching …’
All laid out on the ground, on stall after stall –
Half of it Japanese. Half of it foreign. All of it illegal. But there are no police here. No Victors. No Occupiers –
‘Apple doesn’t say a thing, but Apple’s feeling is clear…’
Here there is only one law; buy or be bought. Sell or be sold. Eat or be eaten; this is where the cannibals come –
‘Apple’s loveable, loveable is apple…’
To the Shimbashi New Life Market –
‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
The old Outside Free Market is gone. The old Black Market is finished. This is the new market for the new Japanese yen –
‘If two people sing along, it’s a merry song …’
This is the two-storey Shimbashi New Life Market with its modern arcades for over five hundred stalls –
‘If everyone sings the Apple Song …’
The dream of Matsuda Giichi –
‘It’s an even merrier song…’
But Matsuda Giichi never lived to see his New Life Market open because two months ago, on the night of the tenth of June, Matsuda Giichi was attacked and shot in his office by Nodera Tomiji, one of his own former gang members, one who had been expelled during Matsuda’s reorganization of his own gang, the Kantō Matsuda-gumi, in their amalgamation with the Matsuzakaya gang –
But nobody really knows if Nodera killed Matsuda –
Nobody saw Nodera pull the trigger and fire –
Nobody really knows because Nodera Tomiji was drunk when persons unknown found him in a bar on the Ginza –
And he was dead when they left him –
‘So let’s all sing the Apple Song and…’
Now Senju Akira is the new boss –
‘And pass the feeling along…’
This is the man I’ve come to see. This is the man whose men are waiting for me. The man whose men are watching for me –
They know I’m here. They know I’m back …
In their pale suits and patterned shirts, with their American sunglasses and Lucky Strikes, they are whispering about me –
They know why I’m here, why I’m back …
Among the kettles and the pans, they come up behind me now, one on either side, and they take an arm each –
‘You’re more brave than you look,’ whispers one of them –
‘And more stupid,’ says the other as they whisk me past the mats and the stalls, the crockery and the utensils, out into the alleys and the lanes, through the shadows and the arches, until we come to the wooden stairs and the open door at the top with its sign –
Tokyo Stall Vendors Processing Union.
Now they let me go. Now they let me wipe my face and wipe my neck, straighten up my shirt and put on my jacket –
The calls of odd, even and play …
There is a foreigner coming down the stairs, an American in sunglasses. At the foot of the stairs, the American turns his face to look at me and then looks away again. He nods to Senju’s men as he disappears into the alleys and the shadows –
No one is who they say they are …
There is no ‘Apple Song’ playing here as I walk up the stairs towards the open door, just the dice and his voice –
‘You got good news for me, have you, detective?’ calls out Senju before I even reach the top of the stairs –
I stop on the stairs. I look down at his two goons. They are laughing now. I turn back to the door –
The sound of dice being thrown. The calls of odd, even and play, odd, even and play …
‘Don’t be a coward now,’ he shouts. ‘Answer me, detective.’
I start walking again. I reach the top. I am a policeman. I turn into the doorway. Into the light –
‘Well?’ asks Senju –
I kneel down on the tatami mat. I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
Senju spits his toothpick onto the long low polished table. He turns his new electric fan my way and shakes his head –
‘Just look at you, officer,’ he laughs. ‘Dressed like a tramp and stinking of corpses. Investigating murders when you could be getting rich, arresting Koreans and Formosans and bringing home two salaries for the pleasure. Taking care of your family and your mistress, fucking the living and not the dead…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘How old are you now, detective?’
‘I am forty-one years old.’
‘So tell me,’ he asks. ‘What do they pay a forty-one-year-old detective these days, officer?’
‘One hundred yen a month.’
‘I pity you,’ he laughs. ‘And your wife, and your children, and your mistress, I really do.’
I lean forward so my face touches the tatami mat and I say, ‘Then please help me…’
And I curse him; I curse him because he has what I need. And I curse Fujita; I curse him because he introduced us. But most of all I curse myself; I curse myself because of my dependence; my dependence on him …
‘You chase corpses and ghosts,’ he says. ‘What help are you to me? And if you can’t help me, I can’t help you.’
‘Please,’ I say again. ‘Please help me.’
Senju Akira throws down five hundred yen onto the mat in front of my face. Senju says, ‘Then get a transfer to a different room; a room where you can find things out, things that help me…
‘Like who paid Nodera Tomiji to kill my boss Matsuda; like who then killed Nodera; like why this case is now closed …’
‘I will,’ I say, then over and over. ‘Thank you.’
‘And don’t come back here until you have.’
‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Now get out!’ he shouts –
I shuffle backwards across the mats then down the stairs, past the goons and through the alleys, back into the market –
‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
The Shimbashi New Life Market –
This is the New Japan … This is how we live –
‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song and pass the feeling along.’
*
I haggle. To eat. I barter. To work. I threaten. To eat. I bully. To work. I buy three eggs and some vegetables. There was no fish and there was no meat. Now there is another problem on the Yamate Line and the trains have stopped running in the direction of Shinagawa, so I take the streetcar. It is crowded and I am crushed and the eggs were a mistake. I get off at Tamachi and then I walk or run the rest of the way. The vegetables in my pockets. The eggs in my hands –
To eat. To work. To eat. To work …
There is only this now.
*
I have waited hours to lie again here upon the old tatami mats of her dim and lamp-lit room. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to stare again at her peeling screens with their ivy-leaf designs. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to watch her draw her figures with their fox-faces upon these screens –
I think about her all the time …
Yuki is the one splash of colour among the dust, her hair held up by a comb. Now Yuki puts down her pencils and stares into the three-panelled vanity mirror and says, ‘Oh, I wish it would rain…
‘Rain but not thunder,’ she says. ‘I hate the thunder…
‘The thunder and the bombs…’
She haunts me …
‘Rain like it used to rain,’ she whispers. ‘Rain like before. Rain hard like the rain when it fell on the oiled hood of the rickshaw, drumming louder and faster on the hood, the total darkness within the hood heavy with the smell of the oil and of my mother’s hair, of my mother’s make-up and of her clothes, the faces and the voices of the actors we had seen on the stage that day, in those forbidden plays of loyalty and of duty, those plays of chastity and of fidelity, of murder and of suicide, those faces and those voices that would swim up through the darkness of the hood towards me…’
She has haunted me from the day I first met her, in the thunder and the rain, from that day to this day, through the bombs and the fires, from that day to this …
Yuki is lying naked on the futon. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her head slightly to the right. Red! Red! Incendiary bomb! Her right arm outstretched. Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand! Her left arm at her side. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Black! Black! Here come the bombs! My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs. Cover your ears! Close your eyes!
‘Make it rain again,’ she says –
And then she brings her left hand up to her stomach. I think about her all the time. She dips her fingers in my come. I think about her all the time. She puts her fingers to her lips. I think about her all the time. She licks my come from her fingers and says again, ‘Please make it rain, rain like it rained on the night we first met…’
She haunts me here. She haunts me now …
I place an egg and two hundred yen on her vanity box and I say, ‘I might not be able to visit you tomorrow.’
Here and now, she haunts me …
‘I am a woman,’ she whispers. ‘I am made of tears.’
*
The Shinagawa station is in chaos. Every station. There are queues but no tickets. Every train. I push my way to the front and I show my police notebook at the gate. Every station. I shove my way onto a train. Every train. I stand, crushed among people and their goods –
Every station. Every train. Every station. Every train …
This train doesn’t move. It stands and it sweats –
Finally, after thirty minutes, the train starts to move slowly down the track towards Shinjuku station –
Every station. Every train …
I force my way off the train at Shinjuku. I fight my way along the platform and down one set of stairs and then up another. I have the two eggs in one hand, my notebook out in my other –
‘Police. Police,’ I shout. ‘Police. Police.’
People hide their eyes and people clutch their backpacks. People stand aside as I heave my way onto the Mitaka train. I stand crushed again among more people and more goods –
This is how we live, with our houses lost …
I jostle my way off the train. I go through the ticket gate at Mitaka. I put the eggs in my jacket pocket. I take off my hat. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I am parched –
Itching and scratching again –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
I follow crooked, impotent telegraph poles down the road to my usual restaurant, half-way between the station and my home –
The one lantern amidst the darkness where once there had been ten, twenty or thirty others, illuminating the street, advertising their pleasures and their wares. But there is no illumination –
No wares or pleasures to be had here now.
I step inside. I sit down at the counter.
‘A man was here looking for you last night,’ says the master. ‘Asking questions about you. After your new address…’
No one who they say they are. In the half-light …
I shrug my shoulders. I order some sake –
‘No sake left,’ says the master. ‘Whisky?’
I shrug my shoulders again. ‘Please.’
The master puts the glass of whisky on the counter before me; it is cloudy. I hold it up to the light bulb –
I swirl the mixture around –
‘If you don’t want to drink it,’ says the master. ‘Then go.’
I shake my head. I put the glass to my lips. I knock it back –
It burns my throat. I cough. I tell him, ‘And another!’
I drain glass after glass as the old men at the counter joke with the master, horrible jokes, terrible jokes, but everyone smiles, everyone laughs. Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he!
Then one old man begins to sing, softly at first, then louder and louder, over and over –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching …’
*
In the half-light, my wife sits sewing at the low table, my children asleep under the mosquito net, and suddenly I feel too drunk, too drunk to stand, to stand and face her with tears in my eyes –
The two eggs broken in my pocket –
But she says, ‘Welcome home.’
Home to where the mats are rotting. Home to where the doors are in shreds. Home to where the walls are falling in –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
I sit down in the genkan with my back to her. I struggle with my boots and then ask, ‘How are the children?’
‘Masaki’s eyes are much better.’
‘How about Sonoko?’
‘They are still inflamed and swollen.’
‘Haven’t you taken her back to the doctor?’
‘They washed them out at the school yesterday but the nurse told her to stay at home until they have cleared up. They are worried it will spread to the rest of the class…’
Now I turn to face her and ask, ‘So what did you do today?’
‘We queued at the post office most of the morning…’
‘And did you get the money? Did they give it to you?’
‘They told us to come back tomorrow. So then we went to the park in Inokashira but their eyes hurt and they were hungry and it was so hot that we came back here before lunchtime…’
‘Have you eaten anything today?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Some bean-paste buns.’
‘Fresh?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘One each.’
‘One each for the children and one for you?’
‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Liar!’ I shout. ‘Why do you lie?’
My wife stops darning the children’s clothes. She puts away her needle and thread. She closes her sewing box. She bows slightly and says quietly, ‘I am very sorry. I will try harder.’
Now I stand up. I walk across the mats –
These rotting mats …
‘There was a murder today, maybe two murders,’ I tell her. ‘My room has pulled the case and so you know this means I’ll be away for the next twenty days or…’
My wife bows again. My wife says, ‘I know. I understand.’
I take the three hundred yen from my pocket. I put it on the table and I say, ‘Take this.’
My wife bows a third time. My wife says, ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s not much, not with the way prices rise,’ I say. ‘But if I can get away, I’ll try to come back and bring what I can.’
‘Please don’t think about us,’ she says. ‘We will be fine. Please just think about solving the case.’
I want to upend the table. I want to tear apart the children’s clothes. I want to slap her face. I want to beat her body –
I want to make her really, really hate me –
I want to make her really leave me –
This time. This time. This time …
To take the children and go –
‘Don’t try and make me feel sorry for you,’ I tell her and close the doors to the other room. ‘Martyrdom is out of fashion!’
*
Behind the shredded doors, I close my eyes but I cannot sleep –
I think about Yuki all the time, all the time …
I could never sleep because I thought about her –
Because she haunted me even then …
From the day I first met her, even here –
She is lying naked on the futon, her head slightly to the right, her right arm outstretched and her left arm at her side. Her legs are parted, raised and bent at the knee …
I get up from the tatami. She brings her left hand up to her stomach. I go into the other room. She dips her fingers in my come. I search through the kitchen cupboards and drawers. She puts her fingers to her lips. Through all the cupboards and the drawers. She licks my come from her fingers. But there is no Calmotin and no alcohol to be found, not one pill, not one drop –
She haunted me even here …
I gently slide open the doors. I step inside the room in which we sleep. My two children still lain together beneath their net. I lie down beside my wife. Her eyes are closed now. I close mine but I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep –
In the half-light, I can’t forget…
I remember when the bombs began to fall on Mitaka. I remember their evacuation, out to my wife’s sister’s house in Kōfu. I remember the platform on which we parted. I remember the train on which they left. I remember their tears; that they would live and I would die. Then, when the bombs began to fall on Kofu, when her own sister called her cursed, I remember their return to Mitaka. I remember the platform and I remember my tears –
That they would die and I would live –
In the half-light, the walls falling in …
‘But we’re already dead,’ they’d said. ‘We’re already dead.’
Tokyo, 89°, fine
I itch from black-headed lice. I scratch. Gari-gari. I get up from the low table. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I go over to the kitchen sink. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I comb my hair. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. The lice fall out in clumps. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I crush them against the sink. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. The skin lice are harder. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. They are white and so more difficult to hunt. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I turn on the tap. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. The water starts. The water stops. The water starts again –
I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari …
Brown and then clear, clear and then brown again –
I rinse my face. I search for soap to shave –
But there is none to find, again –
I rinse out my mouth and spit –
I am one of the survivors …
I put on my shirt and my trousers, the same shirt and the same trousers I have worn every day for the last four or five years, the same shirt and the same trousers that my wife has tended and mended, stitched and re-stitched, like the socks and the shoes on my feet, the winter jacket on my back and the summer hat on my head –
I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch and I scratch –
I am one of the lucky ones …
There is one small dish of zōsui on the low table, a porridge of rice and vegetables. I leave it for my wife and my children –
I take out my watch. Chiku-taku. And I wind it up –
It is 4 a.m. My wife and children still asleep –
I still itch and I still scratch. Gari-gari …
I put on and lace up my old army boots in the genkan. I gently open the front door and then close and lock it behind me. I walk down the garden path of our house. I close the gate behind me –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I walk away from my house, away from my family –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I walk down our street towards the station –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Through the sound of the hammers –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The dawn of a New Japan –
Ton-ton …
The reconstruction work starts early; the surviving buildings being repaired or demolished, new ones built in their place; the roads being cleared of the rubble and ash, the rubble and ash tipped into the canals, the canals filled up and hidden. But the rivers and roads of Tokyo still stink of piss and shit, of cholera and typhus, of disease and death, death and loss –
Ton-ton.
This is the New Japan; Mitaka station swarming with hundreds, thousands of people waiting for trains in both directions; to travel out into the countryside to sell their possessions off cheap to buy food; to travel into Tokyo to sell food to buy other people’s possessions cheap: endlessly back and forth, forth and back, endlessly buying and selling, selling and buying; the New Japan –
Every station. Every train. Every station …
People in two solid lines along both platforms, swaying as newcomers try to push their way to the front, treading and trampling on the bodies of those who have slept out all night upon the platform, a last huge surge as the first Tokyo-bound train approaches –
Every train. Every station. Every train …
Two empty carriages exclusively reserved for the Victors, one second-class hard-seat carriage for the privileged Losers, and a long string of run-down third-class carriages for the rest of us –
The ones who’ve lost everything …
The third-class windows already broken, the carriages filled to the last inch at 5 a.m., the people on the platform pushing more bundles through the windows to take into Tokyo as others silently fight for a foothold on the steps or on the couplings –
Every station. Every train …
I take out my notebook –
I itch and I itch …
I shout, ‘Police!’
I manage to climb on board the train. I itch but I cannot scratch. I force my way inside one of the carriages. I itch but I cannot scratch. People continue to push from behind me. I itch but I cannot scratch. The train begins to move slowly down the track. I itch but I cannot scratch. My arms are pinned to my sides in the crush. I itch but I cannot scratch. There are people and there is baggage in every possible place. I itch but I cannot scratch. They squat on seat backs and they squat in the luggage racks. I itch but I cannot scratch. I can only move my eyes. I itch but I cannot scratch. The young boy’s head in front of me covered in ringworm. I itch but I cannot scratch. Lice crawl in and out of the hair of the young woman to my left. I itch but I cannot scratch. The scalp of the man to my right smells of sour milk. I itch but I cannot scratch. The train lurches over another set of points. I itch but I cannot scratch. I close my eyes –
I think about her all the time …
It takes over an hour to reach Yūraku-chō station and then it takes a fight to get off the train and onto the platform –
I scratch. Gari-gari. I scratch. Gari-gari …
I walk from Yūraku-chō station down to Police HQ. I itch and now I sweat and it is not yet 6 a.m. and Tokyo stinks of shit; shit and dirt and dust, the shit and the dirt and the dust that coats my clothes and coats my skin, that scars my nostrils and burns my throat with every passing jeep, every passing truck –
I stop. I take out my handkerchief. I take off my hat. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I stare up at the bleached-white sky, searching for the invisible sun hiding somewhere up above the clouds of typhus, the clouds of dust, of dirt –
Of shit, of human shit …
The side of the road is littered with people on mats, men and women, young and old, soldiers and civilian, their eyes blank or closed, exhausted –
My fists ball, my chest constricts, my lungs scream, What are you waiting for?
It has been one year since people knelt upon the ground across the moat and wept. It has been one whole year, but still the people are on their knees, on their knees, on their knees, on their knees –
Get off your knees! Get off your knees!
*
Ishida is back. Ishida is cleaning Room #2, wiping down the chairs and the tables, sweeping up the floor and the doorway, straightening the telephones that can’t ring and dusting the fans that can’t turn –
Ishida is too young for this room, for this work, this place, but his family have connections, connections that have kept him alive and given him this job in this place and he is grateful and eager to prove himself, his face permanently to the floor, his back slightly bent, he is here to clean and make the tea, to make the tea and take our shit –
‘This is disgusting! The worst tea I’ve ever tasted!’ Fujita is shouting at Ishida; Fujita spitting his tea across the desk –
Fujita is back too. Fujita always comes back –
Late forties. Passed over and bitter …
Detective Fujita knows he should be the head of this room, knows I am too young for this position, for this work, this place. But Detective Fujita knows my family had connections, connections that have kept me alive and given me this job in this place –
In his place. But Detective Fujita knows –
No one is who they say they are …
Ishida apologizes. Ishida mops up the tea Fujita has spit out on the desk. Ishida apologizes again –
‘Don’t apologize like that,’ shouts Fujita. ‘Your apologies are always insincere. Your apologies make me feel worse than your silence. Apologize sincerely!’
Ishida has his face to the floor, his back bent. Fujita smacks the top of Ishida’s head. Fujita pushes him through the door, out of the room into the hallway –
‘You stay out there until you learn how to make decent tea!’
Ishida is on his knees in the hallway. Ishida is apologizing –
Fujita turns his back on him. ‘And learn how to apologize with some sincerity!’
I follow Fujita back into the room. I say, ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ he mumbles. ‘You got a cigarette?’
I shake my head. I ask him, ‘How was yesterday?’
‘I hate the countryside,’ he says. ‘And country people.’
I nod. I ask, ‘They fleece you?’
‘They tried,’ he laughs. ‘Until they found out I was a policeman and then I quickly managed to get some bargains.’
I point at the doorway. I ask, ‘Did Ishida turn up?’
‘Unfortunately,’ says Fujita. ‘No use, as usual.’
‘But you got some rice? Some supplies?’
‘Yes,’ he says, and then, ‘Thank you.’
I shrug. I say, ‘For what?’
‘For covering for us.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘No, but I heard about Shiba Park, about your two bodies. That was bad luck. And I heard they were asking where I was.’
I shrug. I say, ‘Forget it. You’d do the same for me.’
Fujita bows slightly and says, ‘Of course.’
I look at my watch. Chiku-taku. I am late, again.
*
I knock on the door to the chief’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I take my seat at the table; Chief Kita at the head, Adachi and Kanehara to his right, Kai and I on the left; the same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day –
The rumours of purges and SCAP’s so-called reforms –
In October last year, following the issuance of SCAPIN 93, forty-seven out of fifty-one prefectural police chiefs were purged along with fifty-four superintendents, one hundred and sixty-eight inspectors, one thousand assistant inspectors, one thousand, five hundred and eighty-seven sergeants and two thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven patrolmen, each of these assistant inspectors, sergeants and patrolmen being members of the disbanded Tokkō —
In January this year, following a new Purge Directive known as SCAPIN 550, two further police chiefs lost their jobs along with sixty superintendents and twenty-eight inspectors —
This Purge Directive not only removes men from public office, it also disqualifies them from all other positions –
And the Victors have not finished —
‘I was talking with this old friend from Nerima last night,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘And he was telling me that SCAP sent the Public Safety Division into the Nerima police station to check the career histories of every single police officer in the building, the dates of all their transfers and appointments…’
‘Why Nerima?’ asks Adachi –
Or Anjo or Ando or …
‘Because some uniformed patrolman complained directly to SCAP that last August, just after the surrender, some former high-ranking Tokkō and Kempei officers at Nerima had changed their names to those of dead or retired men and then transferred to other, better positions and ranks under their adopted new names…’
No one is who they say they are …
‘While men who had served in the Tokkō and Kempei sections for only a few months were now being purged…’
No one who they seem to be …
‘Snitch!’ spits Adachi –
And everybody nods –
Except me …
Now the talk around the table turns to an overnight spate of muggings in the Setagaya area, of a three-man gang with handguns, of possible connections to last month’s armed burglaries in the same area of Tokyo, of the continuing rise in violent crime, the use of guns when we have none and back then to SCAP’s so-called reforms –
‘We’ve asked them for guns,’ says Kanehara. ‘More guns. Better guns. Guns that work. Guns with ammunition to match…’
‘And they’ve promised us guns,’ says Adachi –
‘But that’s all they’ve done,’ says Kanehara –
The same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day, meeting after meeting, until there is a knock on the door, until there is an interruption –
‘Excuse me,’ mumbles the uniform –
‘What is it?’ barks Chief Kita –
‘The mothers are here, sir.’
*
It is 8:30 a.m. on the day after the bodies were discovered and there are already twenty mothers here. Twenty mothers who have read the morning paper or heard the news from neighbours. Twenty mothers who have taken out their last good kimonos. Twenty mothers who have called upon their other daughters or their sisters. Twenty mothers who begged the streetcar or train fare to Sakuradamon –
Twenty mothers looking for their lost daughters –
‘They’re quick enough to read the papers,’ Kai is telling me. ‘Quick enough to come down here, but where were they when their daughters went missing? They’re too late now…’
Inspector Kai and I are walking down the stairs of Metropolitan Police Headquarters to one of the reception rooms –
‘There used to be just twenty missing persons a month, before the war. Now we’ve got between two and three hundred…’
To the reception rooms to face the twenty mothers –
‘And forty per cent of them are young women aged fifteen to twenty-five, and they’re just the ones who get reported…’
The twenty mothers looking for their daughters –
‘You watch,’ says Kai. ‘Not one of these mothers will have reported their daughters missing before today.’
A uniformed officer opens the door to the reception room for Inspector Kai and me. Kai and I enter the room. Kai and I introduce ourselves to these twenty mothers before us, these twenty mothers in their last good kimonos with their other daughters or their sisters –
These twenty mothers looking for their lost daughters –
Praying they do not find them here, in this place.
But because the bodies are at Keiō, because the autopsies have yet to be performed, because the search of the area has yet to be completed, because we have yet to formally open the investigation, Inspector Kai and I have nothing to show these twenty mothers, nothing to tell them, so Inspector Kai and I will ask our men to interview these twenty mothers, to take down the descriptions of their daughters, their heights, their weights and their ages, the places they were going, the people they were meeting, the clothes they were wearing, the bags and belongings they were carrying –
On the days they were last seen …
The meals they had eaten –
‘But why?’ they’ll ask –
The scars they carry or the teeth they have lost or any other unique features that might help to eliminate or identify their daughters from among the rotting flesh and bleached bones we found in Shiba Park, but not today –
‘But if not today?’ these mothers ask. ‘Then when?’
Today there is no consolation for these mothers –
‘When?’ they ask, again and again…
The day after the autopsies these twenty mothers must return, these twenty mothers and the one father –
The one father in his last good suit with his hat in his hand who steps from the mothers to ask — ‘May I speak with you?’
*
‘My name is Nakamura Yoshizo and I am a grocer in Kamata. My daughter’s name is Nakamura Mitsuko. She is my only daughter. She graduated from the Aoyama Domestic Science College and she had a number of wartime jobs with the Yasuda and Taito Yokosan companies as well as some volunteer work. But she is my only daughter and so, as the situation worsened in Tokyo last year, my wife and I decided to send Mitsuko to live with her elder brother and his wife in Ibaraki Prefecture. And so, on the twelfth of July last year, she left our home in Kamata to travel to Ibaraki. Mitsuko never arrived at her brother’s house. She was twenty-two years old, but she will be twenty-three now. She is my only daughter, detective.’
‘Did you report Mitsuko missing?’ I ask him –
The father nods. The father says, ‘Of course.’
‘And what did the local police tell you?’
‘That they could find no clue…’
I open my notebook. I lick the tip of my pencil and I ask him, ‘Can you remember what clothes your daughter was wearing on the day she went missing last year?’
‘A pair of brown monpe trousers and a pale yellow blouse.’
‘Can you remember her footwear that day?’ I ask him.
‘A pair of traditional wooden geta sandals…’
‘And can you describe Mitsuko for me?’
Mitsuko’s father takes a deep breath and says, ‘She is one hundred and fifty-five centimetres tall and she weighs about fifty kilograms. She has long hair which she usually wears in two plaits. Mitsuko also wears round silver spectacles.’
In the half-light, no one forgets …
‘Anything else?’ I ask him.
‘On the day she went missing,’ he nods. ‘She was carrying a beige-coloured cotton rucksack…’
‘And what was inside?’
‘A bentō lunch box.’ ‘Anything else?’
Nakamura Mitsuko’s father nods again, wipes the sweat from his face and says, ‘For her twentieth birthday, I gave her an elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch…’
No one forgets …
I stop writing now. I close my notebook. I put away my pencil. I tell him, ‘As you know, the autopsies on the two bodies have yet to be performed. However, one of the victims died very recently and the clothing found on the other does not match that of your daughter, at least on the day she went missing. So it’s doubtful your daughter is one of these bodies…’
The father holds a handkerchief to his face. His shoulders begin to tremble –
‘It was in the newspaper,’ he whispers. ‘About the two unidentified bodies in Shiba Park and so my wife and I thought that we should…’
‘I understand,’ I tell him. ‘And I will contact you if I do find anything…’
He bows his head –
‘Thank you.’
*
The first trunk is packed and ready. Nishi and Shimoda will each take a handle. The second trunk is packed and ready. Kimura and Ishida will each take a handle. The others have got their things together. They have tidied up their loose ends. They have cleared their desks. They are ready to go to Atago. They know there will be no days off now. They know there will be no rest now. They are waiting to go, passing round the newspaper, talking of the latest suicide –
A Rear Admiral Sato Shiro, a fifty-four-year-old former commander of the Japanese Naval Forces in the New Guinea area, committed suicide at his home in Yokosuka at about 5 a.m. yesterday morning after having first murdered his forty-two-year-old wife, his eleven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter as they were sleeping. The former officer who returned home from New Guinea in January this year had been suffering from a nervous condition and is believed to have been contemplating killing himself and his entire family since the latter part of July …
‘Too many good men,’ say my own men. ‘How many more good men are needlessly going to give their lives in apology…?’
‘While bad men are still lining their pockets…’
‘Too many ceremonies for the dead…’
Turning the page of the paper, talking of the latest fugitive –
Yet another Kempei man on the run —
‘They’ll catch him, you see…’
‘You can’t run forever…’
‘Too many snitches…’
The next two pages of the newspaper, talking of the latest convictions and sentences –
Five men found guilty of mistreating Allied prisoners of war. Evidence showed that as guards at Hakodate Prisoner of War Camp Number One, they had mistreated prisoners and stolen food and clothing from them. The Commission found all five men guilty of crimes against war prisoners and meted out prison sentences ranging from thirty to five years. In the closing hours of the trial, one of the accused, Takeshita Toshio, told the court that former Prime Minister Tojo was responsible for everything and that he and his co-accused were merely conscripted soldiers given orders that they had to obey on pain of death …
‘It’s never-ending; it just goes on and on and on…’
‘They’re not criminals, just soldiers…’
‘Too many trials…’
The bottom corner of the last page of the last newspaper and there is our story; the bodies of two women found in Shiba …
I look at my watch again. Chiku-taku …
I stand up now. They all stand up –
I bow. They all bow –
I say, ‘Let’s go.’
*
Through the doors of Atago police station, Nishi and Shimoda carry the first trunk, Kimura and Ishida carry the second trunk; up the stairs of Atago police station, Nishi and Shimoda carry the first trunk, Kimura and Ishida carry the second trunk; Sanada, Hattori, Takeda, Fujita and I marching behind, through the doors and up the stairs –
Nishi and Shimoda put the first trunk down. Kimura and Ishida put the second trunk down in a corner, to stay locked until tonight. Now Nishi and Shimoda open the first trunk. Nishi and Shimoda take out the white banner and the bamboo poles. Nishi and Shimoda raise the banner on the poles beside the door –
Two metres tall and fifty centimetres wide –
In beautiful, bold, bright-red stitching:
Special Investigation Headquarters.
The men of the Second Team assemble before the banner. The men stand to attention as I tell them –
‘This banner remains here until this case is closed with honour or until we are forced to retreat back to HQ in disgrace –
‘Which is it to be, honour or disgrace?’
‘Honour!’ they shout. ‘Honour!’
‘Then every single one of us must give his very utmost, must give his very best,’ I tell them. ‘Only then can this case be solved and our team return with honour to HQ –
‘So give your utmost!’
‘We will give our very utmost,’ they reply. ‘Our very best!’
Across the hallway, Inspector Kai and his First Team have already raised their banner, already made their pledges and their exhortations; now they are waiting for us –
‘Meeting time!’
The First Team, the Second Team and all the uniforms from the Atago, Meguro and Mita police stations are gathered in the hot, dark second-floor room which the First Team is using at Atago –
I stand up at the front of the room beside Chief Inspectors Adachi and Kanehara and Inspector Kai, the four of us facing the First Team, the Second Team and the uniformed men –
‘Attention!’ shouts one of the uniformed sergeants and everyone in the room jumps to attention –
‘Bow!’ shouts the sergeant –
Everyone bows –
‘At ease!’
Everyone stands at ease now or sits back down except Chief Inspector Adachi; Adachi has a piece of paper in his hand; Adachi reads out lists of names and lists of teams; Adachi assigns names to teams and teams to leaders; Adachi points to a map on the board behind him; Adachi reads out lists of grid coordinates; Adachi assigns coordinates to teams, teams to search and teams to find –
Finally Adachi exhorts every one of us to do our best –
And every one of us promises we will do our best –
‘Attention!’ shouts the uniformed sergeant again and every one of us stands back to attention –
‘Bow!’ he shouts –
And we bow –
‘Dismissed!’
*
There are journalists waiting for us downstairs again. There are always journalists waiting for us these days. There are hundreds of new newspapers and magazines now, thousands of new journalists –
Freedom of Press. Freedom of Press. Freedom of Press —
Things are better since the defeat of the Yomiuri strike last month, but there are still far too many newspapers and magazines, still far too many journalists, too many press freedoms –
Too many questions. Too many questions …
Far too many press scumbags –
Scumbags like Hayashi Jo –
My personal scumbag …
Hayashi writes for Minpo under one name and Minshū Shimbun under another. Hayashi would write anything for anyone as long as they paid him and they usually do so he usually does –
Hayashi is waiting for me downstairs –
I take his arm. I take him outside –
Out of sight and out of earshot, across the road and among the trees, a crippled soldier burning weeds in an old black metal drum –
Fire upon fire, heat upon heat, a furnace within a furnace …
Hayashi inhales and says, ‘I hate the smell of burning…’
I tell him, ‘You better have something this time.’
‘It’s not that it reminds me of the air raids…’
‘Have you got something? Something new?’
‘That smelt more like pork fat,’ he says. ‘This smoke reminds me of the day of the surrender…’
‘Quickly,’ I tell him. ‘What have you got?’
‘They turned the sky black with the papers they burnt…’
‘Enough memories!’ I shout now. ‘Talk or walk.’
‘Up in smoke,’ he says. ‘All the evidence…’
I curse him. I curse him …
‘And all the names…’
‘That’s it,’ I tell him and I turn to go –
He grabs my arm. He holds out a piece of folded paper. He says, ‘Read this before it goes up in smoke.’
I take it. I open it. I read it –
‘Fujita Tsuneo,’ he says like I cannot read the characters of the name. ‘He was seen drinking with Nodera Tomiji at the New Oasis in Ginza on the night of the Matsuda Giichi hit…’
‘The Detective Fujita of my room?’
Hayashi nods. ‘The very same.’
I curse and I curse …
I shake my head. I tell him, ‘It’s a mistake.’
Hayashi shakes his head. ‘No mistake.’
I ask him, ‘Who told you? Who?’
Hayashi shakes his head again.
‘Who else knows about this, then?’ I ask him. ‘Your snitch knows, you know, and so how many others know?’
‘No one else,’ says Hayashi. ‘No one still breathing.’
‘Except for you,’ I tell him –
‘And now you,’ he smiles.
I stare into Hayashi’s eyes. I say, ‘Who says you’re not lying? Who says you haven’t just made this up…?’
‘Bastard,’ snaps Hayashi now. ‘It was you who came to me. You who wanted to know who ordered the hit on Matsuda. You who wanted to know who paid Nodera. And then who killed Nodera…’
I turn to go, to walk away –
Out of the shadows …
He grabs my arm a second time. He says, ‘So what now?’
I pull my arm free of him. I say, ‘Nothing.’
‘What do you mean, nothing?’ he asks. ‘I did what you asked me to do. I got you your information. Now I want my money!’
‘But I can’t use this information,’ I tell him.
‘That’s not my problem,’ he laughs.
‘But I can’t pay you.’
Hayashi has stopped laughing. Now Hayashi says, ‘Well then, I’ll just have to take it to someone who can pay me.’
‘Like who?’ I ask him.
‘Like Boss Senju.’
Now I laugh. ‘Boss Senju?’
‘He’ll pay me.’
I step towards him. I lean into him. I say, ‘You think Boss Senju will pay you? A lowlife scumbag journalist who couldn’t tell someone the right time if they asked him because he wouldn’t know what that right time was because he lies and he lies and he lies? You think Senju will pay a lowlife scumbag piece of shit like you just because he says he heard that one of my detectives was seen in a Ginza bar with the very lowlife scumbag who later that same night shot his boss, his mentor, his surrogate father … is that the information you think Boss Senju is going to pay you for? Is it? Is it really? Because the first thing Senju will do before killing Fujita and then killing me is to torture you to find out how you came upon this piece of information, when you came upon it, and why you never said anything to anyone about it before and believe me, Hayashi, whatever you tell Senju will be the wrong answer and it will also be your final answer before he then kills you! So if I was you, I would forget you ever heard Fujita’s name in connection to Matsuda Giichi.’
Hayashi shrugs. Hayashi says, ‘You’re no better than me, inspector. You think you are, but you’re not…’
I smile. I turn. I leave. I walk away –
Fire upon fire, heat upon heat, a furnace within a furnace …
‘I know you,’ he shouts after me. ‘I know your secrets…’
I turn back. I say, ‘We lost a war. We’ve all got secrets.’
Hayashi smiles. Hayashi shakes his head –
‘Not like yours, inspector.’
*
There are thirty men on the slopes of Shiba Park. Thirty men with their towels and their sticks. To search in the long grass. Thirty men in three teams of ten. Three teams of ten sweating in their plainclothes and sweating in their uniforms, swatting at mosquitoes and swatting at flies. For the secrets of the dead. They stare up at the sun. They look back down at the ground. In the long grass. They take out their handkerchiefs. They take off their hats. Their skulls to the sun. They wipe their heads. They wipe their necks. In the long grass. They put their hats back on. Their handkerchiefs away. That strangles and binds. They reach for their sticks. They start to search. In the long grass. To search again. To try to find. The long grass …
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
From eleven in the morning till six in the evening –
But there are no clocks in the land of the dead …
In these forgotten graves. By these fallen trees –
Just the sound of the crows, the many crows …
There is only resignation, no enthusiasm –
In this place of assignation …
I am searching too –
For Fujita …
‘Looking for someone?’ asks Chief Inspector Adachi –
‘Aren’t we all?’ I say and I turn away, again.
*
I find Ishida alone in our borrowed upstairs room at Atago. Ishida is smeared in the dirt and the sweat from the search. He is wiping down the chairs and the tables, sweeping up the floor and the doorway, straightening our banner. Ishida senses my shadow. He looks up –
Ishida stands to attention. He bows. He apologizes –
I smile at him and I tell him, ‘Stand at ease.’
Ishida bows again. He apologizes again –
‘Your apologies are always insincere.’
‘You’ve worked hard today,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you.’
Again, he bows. Again, he apologizes –
‘How was yesterday?’ I ask him. ‘With Detective Fujita?’
Ishida turns his face to the floor now, his back slightly bent. He is unwilling to look up, to look me in the eye –
‘Yesterday?’ I ask him again. ‘Were you and Detective Fujita able to get some rice and some supplies?’
Ishida turns his head slightly to his left, his back still bent –
‘You went out into the country, didn’t you?’ I ask him –
Ishida nods his head once, back still bent –
‘And so where did you go?’
Ishida turns his head again and now he says, ‘I went with Detective Fujita at his request, sir.’
‘I know that,’ I tell him. ‘Now I am asking you where it was you went with Detective Fujita.’
Ishida sucks the air in between his teeth but does not answer –
I smack the top of his head. I shout, ‘Answer me!’
Ishida starts to bow again, to apologize again –
I smack him again. I shout again, ‘Quickly! Answer me!’
But Ishida does not answer, he only apologizes –
‘Your apologies are always insincere.’
‘Idiot!’ I shout and I turn to leave –
Nishi and Kimura stood there –
‘Chief Kita is here, sir,’ says Nishi. ‘In the reception room with Chief Inspector Adachi.’
*
The head of the entire First Investigative Division has come to Atago police station. Chief Kita is here for the results of the initial search. I stand outside the reception room. I wait until Chief Kita and Adachi have finished their meeting, until Adachi comes out of the room and walks past me without a word, without even a glance in my direction, and then I knock on the door of the reception room and enter –
I bow to Chief Kita. I apologize to Chief Kita. I take the seat the chief offers me. I tell him what we have done today, what we have found and what we will do next, tomorrow –
Chief Kita listens and then Chief Kita says, ‘But I hear you want to leave Room #2. To transfer…?’
I have told no one this. But I ask nothing and I say nothing. I bow deeply to the chief. I apologize for asking for a transfer –
‘It’s interesting you don’t deny it,’ smiles Chief Kita. ‘And apparently it’s a transfer to Room #6 you want?’
I ask nothing and I say nothing…
I bow. I apologize again.
The chief asks, ‘Why?’
‘I have been in Room #2 for almost a year now,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe they need a new leader.’
‘But why do you want Room #6?’ the chief asks me again. ‘It’s the gangs and the markets. You’d know nothing…’
‘I knew nothing when you put me in Room #2.’
Chief Kita smiles and asks, ‘And now?’
‘One can never know enough…’
Chief Kita inhales deeply, closes his eyes and then he says, ‘You identify that girl’s body. You find out how she died. If she was murdered, you find out who killed her and why –
‘Then you can have your transfer.’
I bow. I apologize. I repeat –
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
*
Up the stairs again, back to the same hot, dark second-floor room and the last meeting of the first full day of the two investigations –
‘Attention!’ shouts the same uniformed sergeant –
‘Bow!’ shouts the sergeant –
‘At ease!’ he shouts.
Chief Inspector Adachi and I stay standing at the front of the room, in front of the table on which are lain out the things that have been found today on the slopes of Shiba Park, the many things –
The wicker basket containing a set of carpenter’s tools, found fifteen metres from the first body; the child’s undershirt and material found near the basket; the soiled women’s underwear; the soldier’s shoulder bag in the bushes on the Northern Path; the long Chinese-style pipe and the empty lunchbox; the Asahi Shimbun from the eleventh of August this year; the old man’s glasses, broken in two; the rusted Western-style razor and the red haramaki with five darned holes found on the Eastern Path, five darned holes for identification –
‘It would seem that the material from the haramaki,’ reports Adachi, ‘matches the material found around the neck of the first body. However, we will have to wait until the results of the autopsy tomorrow before we can be certain. Inspector Minami…’
‘The military shoulder bag,’ I continue, ‘was found to contain a statement of employment for a Takahashi of Zōshigaya, Toshima Ward. Detectives have already left for the Toshima ward office to follow up on this information…’
‘Scientific tests will also be conducted,’ states Adachi, ‘on the various items of clothing found during the search. The underwear may aid in identification.’
Chief Inspector Adachi and I sit down. Chief Inspector Kanehara stands up now –
‘Tomorrow morning,’ he says, ‘we resume the search.’
*
The chief has reserved a room in a recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, near one of the kitchens of the Victors. The chief is treating the whole of the First Investigative Division to a meal. The whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on new tatami mats. There is no menu. No choice. But there is beer and there is food; we are eating leftovers, zanpan, from the Victors’ dustbins, just grateful not to have to eat zōsui again –
Dogs starved at their masters’ feet, beneath their tables …
Everyone still talking about this former naval commander who murdered his wife, his eleven-year-old son, his nine-year-old daughter and who then shot himself and the message he left:
‘Dispose of our bodies as you would a dog’s…’
Everyone talking now about the one million unclaimed ashes of the war dead, the four million repatriated soldiers and civilians, many bearing the bones and ashes of their comrades and kin in small white boxes around their necks, the million more yet to come –
‘To live lives as broken jewels, not common clay…’
Everyone talking then about the piss and the shit in the rivers, the cholera and the typhus, the train disasters and the union demonstrations, the strike slogans on the sides of the trains –
‘I don’t feel free. I don’t feel I have rights…’
Talking about the GI who raped and sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl, the two other Victors who kidnapped and raped a girl on her way home from a flower-arranging class, talking about the Japanese man who attacked and beat up two GIs in Kamata –
‘There was spirit in the war, stimulation…’
Everyone talking about the minutes that feel like hours. The hours that feel like days. The days that feel like weeks. The weeks that feel like months. The months that feel like years –
This year that has felt like a decade –
‘For now there is only monotony…’
Talking about purges. Talking about trials. Talking about all our trials; to work, to eat. Talking about food. Talking about food. Talking about food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food –
In whispers. In screams. In whispers. In screams –
If you’ve never been defeated, never lost –
If you’ve never been beaten before –
Then you don’t know the pain –
The pain of surrender –
Of occupation …
In whispers, in screams, this is how the Losers talk –
Their chests constricted and their fists balled –
Their knees bleeding and backs broken –
By the fall …
This is how the Losers talk –
To whisper, to scream –
‘We are the survivors. We are the lucky ones.’
*
Back at Atago on the second floor, the second trunk has been opened, the blankets distributed, but this borrowed room is an oven, another furnace, and the stench of sweat and the whine of mosquitoes is unbearable. From across the hallway, from the other room, drift the low voices of the First Team singing their drunken lullabies –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching…’
But they are soon asleep in here, in their chairs or under their desks, snoring and farting, all except Detective Fujita –
The one empty chair. The empty desk …
I get up from my own chair and tiptoe as quietly as I can over the bodies. I open the door. I go down the corridor. Down the back stairs. Out of the back door –
She haunts me …
I start to run, to run through the night, the black and starless night, the hot and humid, damp and dark cloth hanging down –
Down to Yuki.
*
In the half-light of her dim lamps, in the three glass panels of her vanity mirror, she puts her hand to her hair and says, ‘You had just bought a packet of cigarettes at the corner shop when a man ran past shouting, It’s going to rain! It’s going to rain! Old women in their aprons and young children with their toys scurried indoors as a gust of wind blew a reed blind to the ground and newspapers skated like ghosts down the street. Then came the flash of lightning. The clap of thunder. The great drops of rain. But you did not run. You finished your cigarette and you opened your umbrella. And that was when I first saw you, standing beneath your umbrella, when I first called out to you, as I was leaving the hairdresser’s shop, do you remember?’
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
‘May I walk with you?’ she’d said. ‘Just over there?’
Her white neck beneath my dark umbrella, her high chignon just freshly dressed, tied up in long silver threads, I remember –
Shipped home from China, discharged from hospital …
‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘Take the umbrella…’
‘You don’t mind?’ she smiled. ‘Just over to there…’
My umbrella in her right hand, she hitches up the skirt of her kimono with her left and then turns back to ask –
‘Does this umbrella become me?’
In the half-light, I can’t forget…
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …
In the half-light. Thinking about my wife. In the half-light –
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …
Thinking of my children. In the half-light. Her back to me –
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …
In the half-light. Her face to the wall. In the half-light –
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …
To the paper. In the half-light. To the stains –
I am sorry. I am sorry …
In the half-light, the half-things –
I am sorry…
Half-lives, all gone.
Tokyo, 90°, fine
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I have not slept again. I have not closed my eyes. My eyes tired and sore. The early morning sun coming through the window now, illuminating the dust and the stains of her room, the sound of the hammering trailing in with the light –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I sit up on the futon. I look at my watch –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. I am late –
Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!
I get up from the futon. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I put on my shirt and my trousers. Gari-gari. I go over to the genkan. Gari-gari. I lace up my boots. Gari-gari …
I curse. I curse. I curse …
I turn to say goodbye –
But she does not move, her back to the door, her face to the wall, to the paper, the stains –
I curse myself…
I close her door and I run down the corridor. Down the stairs and out the building. Out of the shadows, into the light. The light so bright this morning, the shadows so dark, bleaching and staining the city in whites and blacks. The white concrete hulks, the black empty windows. The white sidewalks and roads, the black telegraph poles and trees. The white sheets of metal, the black mountains of rubble. The white leaves, the black weeds. The white eyes and the black skin of the Losers, the white stars and the black uniforms of the Victors –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
No colours today. No colours on this moon.
*
Detective Fujita is at his borrowed desk in our borrowed room. Fujita does not look up. Ishida is pouring the tea. Fujita is going through his jacket pockets. Nishi and Kimura are repairing their notebooks, rolling up thin pieces of waste paper into tight threads to bind together the coarse rough paper on which they take their notes. Fujita takes an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket. The others waking up, yawning and stretching, coughing and scratching. Fujita has not slept. The windows are open but the room is still hot and stinks of stale breath and sweat. Fujita glances at his watch. They drink their tea and start to grumble. Fujita writes a name on the front of the envelope. They want cigarettes but the next ration is not until Monday and today is Saturday. Fujita puts the envelope back in his inside jacket pocket. They want breakfast but the next meal will be cold zōsui again. Now he looks up. Detective Fujita looks up at me –
I wait for him to speak but he says nothing. Now I stand up at my desk. I bow to everyone and I say, ‘Good morning, Room #2.’
They all stand. They bow. They say, ‘Good morning.’
I tell them, ‘This morning I will accompany Inspector Kai of Room #1 to the Keiō University Hospital for the autopsies. In my absence, Detective Fujita will be in charge of the continuing search of the crime scene. The identification of the second body will not be easy and so the smallest scrap of evidence may prove crucial, so I would ask you all to be as diligent as possible in your search.’
‘We will be as diligent as possible,’ they reply.
I bow to them again. They bow to me –
Everyone but Detective Fujita.
*
Back out into the light, back out to the shadows. Into the white and into the black. Into the dirt and into the dust. The hot walk up to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. The morning meeting –
I knock on the door to the chief’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I take my seat at the table; Chief Kita at the head; Adachi and Kanehara to his right; Kai and me on the left; the same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations –
Purges and reforms. Reforms and purges …
Last year seven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one policemen voluntarily gave up their jobs, three thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine left due to illness or injury, one thousand, six hundred and forty-nine died and two thousand, eight hundred and fifty-six police officers were purged and fired –
‘Now they want to issue a further Purge Directive,’ Kanehara is saying. ‘We have few enough men as it is and, if they carry out this purge, there’ll be no one left at all…’
‘That’s why they are promising better working conditions,’ says Adachi. ‘To recruit new men…’
Reforms and purges. Purges and reforms …
From this coming Monday new regulations are to be put into practice; uniforms are presently working an average of thirteen hours a day over three shifts. The Victors have decreed they will now work an average of eight hours a day over three shifts; on the first shift they will work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., on the second shift from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m., then the third shift on the third day will be a day off –
‘But there aren’t the numbers for these shifts,’ says Kanehara. ‘There aren’t the men yet to cover these kinds of hours…’
‘And we all know their answer to that,’ says Adachi. ‘Transfer seven hundred of our Metropolitan Police Board officers back onto local patrol duties to cover the shortfall…’
‘It’s our own fault,’ says Kanehara. ‘We asked them for better conditions; better hours, better holidays, better benefits, better pensions and better salaries. We asked them so we could recruit better men and keep the good men we had. We asked them and this is their answer, this is what they do…’
‘They just keep purging the leadership,’ says Adachi. ‘And transferring the men we have…’
‘We ask and we ask,’ says Kanehara. ‘And they promise us this and they promise us that…’
‘That’s all they do…’
The same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day, meeting after meeting until there is a knock on the door, until there is an interruption –
‘Excuse me,’ mumbles the uniform –
‘What is it?’ barks Chief Kita –
‘Keiō Hospital are ready, sir.’
*
There has been another accident on one of the streetcars, a mother and her child killed. The system is suspended and so Inspector Kai and I get off our bus and walk the rest of the way. The route takes us through the old parks and the gardens of Moto-Akasaka –
The sound of crows, the sound of crows …
Here too the light is so bright that the green leaves shine white against the black trunks of the trees, though much of this area was untouched by the bombs, just like the Imperial Palace and its grounds, and now these grand houses and former palaces of Moto-Akasaka are homes and offices to the Victors and their families –
‘They still hunt round here,’ Kai tells me.
‘Hunt?’ I ask. ‘Who still hunts here?’
‘The nobility and the Americans.’
‘They go hunting together?’
‘Yes,’ says Kai. ‘I heard that members of our nobility entertain the American top brass with falcons. Even MacArthur…’
‘The Americans don’t trust the nobility with guns, then?’
‘They take the Americans cormorant fishing too.’
‘I’d like to eat ayu now,’ I tell him. ‘Even ayu caught by Americans. I can taste it now, washed down with sake.’
Kai laughs. ‘I’d even eat the cormorant.’
Two hills to the north of us stand the former War Ministry buildings at Ichigaya, the large three-storey pillbox that was once the headquarters of the Imperial Army but which since May has been the site of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East –
A different kind of hunt. A different kind of sport.
*
The Keiō University Hospital is at Shinanomachi, in the Yotsuya district of Tokyo. The main building is scarred but standing, the approaches and grounds scorched or overgrown. The sick or lost wander in and out, back and forth. There are queues out of the gates. Policemen on the doors. Inside the plaster is peeling from the walls and the linoleum torn from the floorboards. The corridors are crowded with the dying and the dead, the waiting and the grieving –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
I step over or around them and try not to breathe in –
I hate hospitals. I hate hospitals. I hate hospitals …
The air thick with screams and sobs, death and disease, DDT and disinfectant. The only drugs are aspirin and Mercurochrome, the only bandages grey and bloody. The gurneys lined up against the walls, limbs fallen loose from their sides. Remains of meals and scraps of food standing, stinking in cardboard boxes and battered tins under beds of coarse blankets and soiled sheets –
But in the half-light I can’t forget…
I try not to stare, to just walk on –
I have spent too long here …
Through the waiting rooms and down the long corridors, past the consulting rooms and the operating theatres, the surgeries and the wards, to the Chief Medical Officer –
The Chief Medical Officer is either eighty or ninety years old, his face grey and sunken, his eyes black and empty. He is wearing an unpressed morning coat and a pair of striped trousers, both two sizes too big for him, smelling of mothballs –
‘You’re late,’ he says.
Inspector Kai and I bow deeply to him. Inspector Kai and I apologize repeatedly to him –
The Chief Medical Officer shakes his head and says, ‘I have to make an important report to the Public Health and Welfare Section. I don’t want to be late…’
‘We are really very sorry,’ I tell him again. ‘But there was an accident on one of the streetcars…’
‘More work,’ he groans –
‘They’re dead,’ I say –
‘Who are dead?’
‘The mother and her child,’ I tell him. ‘The mother and her child who fell from the running board of the streetcar…’
He hands us two files from the pile on his desk. He says, ‘You know the way.’
Each with our file, reading as we walk down another long corridor towards the elevator. There are the mothers sat here. Five of the mothers here, looking for their missing daughters –
Five mothers whose descriptions of their missing daughters most closely resemble the two bodies found in Shiba Park. Five mothers praying they do not find them here …
‘What do they want now?’ spits Kai. ‘We told them to wait until tomorrow. They shouldn’t be here…’
I have skimmed the evidence and statements in the files. I have seen the hopes and fears in their eyes. I say, ‘Let them look.’
‘They can wait,’ says Kai. ‘Until after the autopsies…’
‘Why not just let these five look? It might help us…’
‘Why?’ he says. ‘They’ll either be lucky or late.’
‘Let them look before the autopsy,’ I say again.
‘No.’
‘What if it was your daughter that was missing?’ I ask him. ‘Would you want to see her after an autopsy?’
Inspector Kai stops in the corridor now. Inspector Kai says, ‘My daughter is dead. My daughter burned to death in an air-raid shelter. My daughter had no autopsy…’
Now I shut up. Now I remember. Now it’s too late. Now I say, ‘I am sorry. I’m really sorry…’
But Kai is away from me now and away from the five mothers, already half-way down the corridor. Down the narrow corridor to the service elevator. To push the elevator button. To wait. To watch the elevator doors open. To step inside. For me to follow him. To push another button. To watch the elevator doors close –
There are no electric light bulbs in here, for the sake of economy one of the orderlies tells us, and so we ride down in an elevator so dark that I cannot see my hand before my face –
I think about her all the time …
I cannot see the body on the gurney beside me. The body on the gurney parked up against my leg. The body that smells –
That smells of fruit, that smells of rotten apricots …
The elevator stops. The elevator doors open –
The light returns. The half-light. The basement not much brighter than the elevator. Half-things move in the half-light. People and insects drawn like magnets towards the few naked bulbs there are. Half-things. The people working in their shirtsleeves or their undershirts; the insects feasting on their sweat and their skin, their flesh and their bone. In the half-light. This labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Here where the dead come. The tiled walls of sinks, of drains. Where the dead live. The written warnings of cuts, of punctures. Here in the half-light. The orderlies washing and rinsing their hands and their forearms, again and again. Here. Down here …
The autopsy room is along the corridor to the right, beyond the mortuary. There are slippers waiting for our feet, the room itself back beyond a set of glass doors, bomb tape still upon the glass –
She is coming now. She is coming …
Dr. Nakadate is waiting for us outside the autopsy room, before the glass doors, before the tape. Nakadate is finishing his cigarette, smoking it right down to the stub –
A familiar face, a familiar place …
Dr. Nakadate glances up at us. He greets us with a smile. ‘Good morning, detectives.’
‘Good morning,’ we reply. ‘We are very sorry we are late.’
‘There are no clocks down here,’ says Dr. Nakadate –
He puts out his cigarette and opens the glass doors to the autopsy room where five junior medical examiners in grubby grey laboratory coats are already gathered round the three autopsy tables and two smaller dissecting tables; the three autopsy tables which stand on the concrete floor in the centre of the room, three elongated octagonal tables made of white marble and of German design, slanted for drainage with raised edges to prevent leakage –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …
She is coming …
The glass doors open again. The first body is brought in from the mortuary under a grey sheet on old wheels. The grey sheet is removed. The body lifted from the gurney –
In the half-light, she is here …
The naked body of the first woman lain out on the table –
Here where half-things move in the half-light …
Her body seems longer, paler. Eyes open, mouth ajar –
‘And I am here because of you,’ she says …
Her sex is noted. Her age estimated at eighteen –
‘Here where there is pain…’
Her weight is taken. Her height measured –
Here in the half-light …
Dr. Nakadate puts on a stained surgical gown and a pair of rubber gloves. The orderlies raise the body. The orderlies place a rubber body block beneath it. Her breasts and chest rise upwards, her arms and neck fall backwards –
I turn away now.
‘There is still no name?’ asks the doctor. ‘No identification?’
I glance over at Inspector Kai and I say, ‘No names yet.’
‘Then this is Number One. The next is Number Two.’
I nod. I take out my pencil. I lick its tip.
Nakadate begins his gross observations on the exterior condition of the first body, one of his assistants noting down everything he says on the chalkboard on the wall, another writing in a large hospital notebook, the observations in German and Latin –
Mumbled evocations. Muttered incantations …
‘Irises are black, corneas clouded,’ intones the doctor. ‘Haemorrhaging in the surfaces…’
I look up again –
She is watching the doctor, watching him work …
‘Removal of a piece of material from the neck reveals a ligature mark — to be known as Ligature A — below the mandible…’
She is staring up at the fabric he holds …
‘Minor abrasions present in the area of Ligature A but the lack of haemorrhage suggests Ligature A is post-mortem…’
She opens and closes her eyes …
‘Heavy bruising on the neck is of a pattern that suggests an attempt was made to throttle the victim…’
She swallows now as …
‘In the same area as the bruising on the neck, a second ligature mark is present — to be known as Ligature B — which encircles the neck, crossing the anterior midline of the neck just below the laryngeal prominence…’
As she remembers …
‘The skin of the anterior neck above and below Ligature B shows petechial haemorrhaging…’
Her own death …
‘The absence of abrasions here is consistent with the use of a softer ligature…’
‘Like a haramaki?’ asks Kai.
Dr. Nakadate looks up from her neck. He nods. ‘Yes, like a haramaki, Inspector Kai.’
Kai looks across at me. I open my mouth to start to speak. To ask him again. Inspector Kai shakes his head. I stop –
Dr. Nakadate has moved down her body to her genital area. ‘There is evidence of forced sexual activity here…’
Here there is pain. Pain is here …
‘Pre- or post-mortem?’ I ask him –
‘I am here because of you…’
Dr. Nakadate looks across her body at me. He holds up a finger. ‘One moment please, inspector.’
Her cheeks blush, her eyes close …
‘Possibly both,’ he says –
Here is pain. Pain is here …
Dr. Nakadate and his assistants now minutely examine every part of her skin, every nail and every hair, every tooth and every orifice, every spot and every blemish –
‘Are there any distinguishing features for identification, doctor?’ I ask him. ‘Anything…’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There is evidence of a small whitlow scar on her left thumb…’
I look over again at Inspector Kai. Kai making his own notes. I cough. I clear my throat. I start to speak again, to say, ‘Then maybe we should let the mothers see the body now, Inspector Kai?’
Dr. Nakadate stops his observations. He looks up –
‘No,’ says Inspector Kai again.
‘But with this scar,’ I say. ‘And the haramaki, the five darned holes in the haramaki …’
‘No,’ says Kai.
‘I believe positive identification is now possible…’
‘No.’
‘But we’re wasting time…’
‘Room #1 has been assigned to this body…’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But…’
‘And Room #2 the next body.’
‘But obviously, until this body has been identified, I can’t…’
‘Then I believe I am in charge of this case, detective.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But what, detective?’ asks Inspector Kai.
‘Nothing.’
‘Dr. Nakadate,’ says Kai now. ‘I am sorry if we have disturbed your work. Please continue with the autopsy.’
Dr. Nakadate picks up a scalpel from the tray. Metal on metal. Dr. Nakadate inserts the scalpel into her chest cavity. Metal through skin. Dr. Nakadate cuts a Y-shaped line down through the centre of her body, from the front of each shoulder down beneath each breast, around her navel to her pubic bone. Metal through flesh to bone …
She crosses her arms. She grasps her own shoulders …
The skin, the muscles and the soft tissues of her chest wall are now peeled back and away, the chest flap pulled upward towards her face, the ribcage and the lower neck left exposed –
She turns and gazes across at me …
Her body is open. Her blood flowing –
‘I am here because of you…’
Black/white light. In/out knife –
‘Here because of you…’
Hack away. Cut away. Piece by piece –
To weigh. Measure for measure –
Here where there is pain …
Dr. Nakadate removes her stomach and an assistant opens it up at one of the smaller dissecting tables, inspecting its contents as another assistant slices her liver and the smell of gastric acid –
That stench of gastric acid fills the room –
Her ribcage is opened up now –
Here where there is pain …
Her heart taken out –
Here.
Finally, the rubber body block is placed beneath her head. Now Dr. Nakadate opens her scalp –
I close my eyes again –
Black/white light. The scalp of my wife. In/out knife. The scalp of my daughter. Hack away/cut away. My son …
I open my eyes –
Here …
Her head is slumped back while her eyes stare upward, fixed in one last cold gaze at the cracked ceiling of the autopsy room, her spinal cord cut and her brain removed –
Measure for measure…
Piece by piece…
To record …
Inspector Kai has closed his notebook. He has put away his pencil, taken out a cigarette. The detective has finished his work –
Her suffering recorded. Her misery noted …
Dr. Nakadate is washing his gloves in a metal bowl. The water red, his gown black. The doctor has finished his work –
The doctor’s assistants beginning to stitch –
Her suffering. Her misery …
I watch them work. I watch her –
Her breaking…
‘Preliminary conclusions, doctor?’ asks Inspector Kai –
‘I would estimate the time of death as being somewhere between ten and eleven days ago,’ says the doctor. ‘And the cause of death as asphyxia due to ligature strangulation.’
‘Thank you very much, doctor,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘I look forward to reading your full report.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Inspector Kai turns to me. ‘I’m going back to Atago now.’
‘What about the second body?’ I ask him. ‘You’re not going to stay for the autopsy. There might be…’
‘That’s your case,’ says Kai. ‘It’s mostly bones anyway. There will be nothing to see.’
I turn back to the autopsy table. Back to her. The stitching complete, her body is being lifted onto the gurney. The grey sheet is placed back over her body once more. The glass doors are opened and she is wheeled out of the autopsy room back to the mortuary –
The marble table washed down with a bucket of water –
I swallow bile. I swallow bile. I swallow …
Her blood running away in rivers.
*
I sit in the corridor between the autopsy room and the mortuary. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I wait for Dr. Nakadate to drink his tea and smoke his cigarette. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I wait for the orderlies to finish cleaning up the autopsy room. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I wait for them to bring in the second body. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I wait for the second autopsy to begin –
Itching and scratching. Itching and scratching –
My autopsy, my body. My body, my autopsy …
The bomb tape still upon the glass.
*
The second body is on a blanket on a stretcher on a gurney. The second body is mostly bones and clothes. Two orderlies take two corners of the blanket each to lift the bones and clothes off the stretcher and the gurney and place them on the autopsy table. The blanket is then removed from under the clothes and bones.
Dr. Nakadate has put back on the same stained surgical gown and the same rubber gloves and again begins the gross external examination with the measurements and the estimates, one assistant at the chalkboard on the wall, another one writing in the hospital notebook; the facts and the figures and the educated guesses; first in German and Latin, then in our native tongue –
The mumbled evocations. The muttered incantations …
‘The body is that of a young female, a young female once again aged approximately eighteen years…’
The same age, the same sex …
The clothes are now carefully removed from the bones –
Knives and scissors through buttons and threads –
First the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, next the white half-sleeved chemise, then the white canvas shoes with their red rubber soles, and finally the dyed-pink socks –
There are no undergarments on her –
The same sex, the same place …
I say, ‘Underwear was found near the scene.’
‘Have it sent here,’ says one of the assistants. ‘It may still be possible to compare its age to the age of these clothes and also to search for matching threads or fibres.’
I lick the tip of my pencil –
I make a note and then I ask, ‘What about time of death?’
Dr. Nakadate shakes his head. ‘With the heat and humidity this summer, with the insects and vermin that found her first, it’s difficult to be precise but I’d estimate about three to four weeks…’
I lick the tip of my pencil again. I make another note –
Three, four weeks; twentieth to the twenty-seventh of July …
Dr. Nakadate places his gloved fingers around the neck bones and the jawbone. Dr. Nakadate looks up at me. Dr. Nakadate sticks out his lower lip, nods to himself and then says, ‘The hyoid bone at the base of the tongue is fractured, as are the thyroid and cricoid cartilages, all of which were seen on Body Number One…’
The same place, the same crime …
‘This girl was strangled?’
‘More likely throttled.’
‘The same person?’
Dr. Nakadate nods. ‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember?’
*
Back out into the light. I curse. I curse. I curse. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember. The heat on the street. I sweat. I sweat. I sweat. Keep it simple, keep it simple; two bodies, one murderer; one case, Kai’s case. The streetcar never comes or the streetcar is full. I itch. I itch. I itch. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember. The trains always late, the trains always full. I scratch. I scratch. I scratch. Fuck Nakadate, hide the link, and bury the connection. Back down through Moto-Akasaka and along the side of the river. I run. I run. I run. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember. Through the doors of Headquarters. I pant. I pant. I pant. Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing. Up the stairs to the First Investigative Division and the door to the chief’s office. I knock. I knock. I knock. Remember nothing. Remember nothing. Nothing…
I step into the chief’s office. I apologize. I bow –
No Adachi. No Kanehara. No Kai. Just me …
‘Please sit down,’ he says. ‘You look hot…’
I bow and I apologize again. I sit down –
He hands me some tea. ‘Drink…’
I take the tea. I thank him –
‘It’s always hot in this city,’ says Chief Kita. ‘I hate it, this city heat. I have bought a little land, you know? Near Atami. I’ve started to cultivate it. Look…’
Chief Kita holds out his hands across his desk. There are calluses on these hands –
‘These are real calluses,’ he says. ‘From the land. Because the land is important. The land keeps us alive. The land keeps us close to the people…’
Chief Kita has lost both his sons; one dead in China, one missing in Siberia…
I nod. I agree with him. I put down the tea –
‘How was Nakadate?’ asks the chief –
‘Dr. Nakadate thinks that both bodies found in Shiba Park were probably murdered by the same person.’
‘Does he really?’ says Chief Kita. ‘Now do you think that makes things easier or more difficult for us?’
‘I would hope it makes things easier,’ I say. ‘There surely needs to be only one investigation now…’
I stop speaking. It’s too late –
I curse! I curse! I curse!
The chief looks across his desk at me. He tuts. He smiles –
I curse myself! I curse myself! I curse myself!
‘I just don’t think there’s any need for two…’
The chief has one finger raised now –
I curse myself! I curse myself!
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I don’t mean…’
The chief sighs. The chief shakes his head. The chief asks, ‘Why don’t you want this case, inspector?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just that I —’
‘You want to transfer? To transfer to Room #6?’
‘Yes,’ I say and then, ‘But it’s not just that…’
‘You know Kanehara and Adachi think I am too soft with you? They think I indulge you when I should reprimand you?’
I bow my head. I apologize –
‘And I know they are right,’ he says. ‘But I knew your father and your father was a good friend to me and so I have obligations to his memory and thus to his son…’
I apologize again –
‘And in times such as these,’ he continues, ‘I believe honouring one’s obligations is more important than anything else, that by honouring our obligations we will be able to survive these times and rebuild our country…’
I glance up at the scroll on the wall behind his desk, that blood-flecked scroll on which is written, ‘It is time to reveal the true essence of the nation.’
‘Now is not the time to forget our obligations,’ he says. ‘They are who we are.’
‘I am very sorry,’ I tell him. ‘I have made unreasonable demands on you…’
‘Your eyes are red,’ says the chief. ‘Be careful how you go.’
*
The day is still unbearably hot and I need a drink. I need a meal and I need a cigarette. I take a different route back to Shiba Park through one of the many makeshift markets where street vendors have set up their stalls and stands with their straw mats and reed screens. They squat in what shade there is and shout out their wares, their faces red and their tempers short, fans in their hands and towels on their heads, the men might be women and the women might be men –
But there is drink here. Food and cigarettes –
Here among the shrieks of the vendors and the clatter of their plates, as open-mouthed customers stagger from stall to stall staring with bloodshot eyes at the goods and the food, clutching their crumpled old notes and misshapen bellies –
Drink and food and cigarettes –
I watch a vendor slap putrid sardines on a corrugated grill. I smell the oil on the metal and I listen as the hungry come running with their notes and their bellies –
I can’t eat this food.
I turn away. I keep walking. I come to a woman who is selling rice-balls, each one wrapped in a thin piece of seaweed –
‘Three yen,’ says the woman. ‘Polished rice…’
But there are ten or twenty flies on each rice-ball, the seaweed torn and the rice old. I turn away from the stall and stare up and down the marketplace, looking and listening out for drink or cigarettes –
I watch the man on the next stand but one. I watch him sell candies and sweets from a kerosene drum. I watch him reach inside that metal drum and also bring out packs of American cigarettes –
I walk over to the stand. ‘How much for just one pack?’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says the man –
The man wears an undershirt, shorts and army boots –
‘Please?’ I ask him. ‘How much for just a pack…?’
The man stares at me and says, ‘One hundred yen.’
‘How about two packs for one hundred yen?’
The man laughs. ‘Get lost, you bum…’
I look around. I take out my police notebook. I hold it in front of me so that he can see it but no one else. I say, ‘Four packs.’
‘Say what?’ says the man. ‘You’re joking…’
I shake my head. I say again, ‘Four packs.’
The man sighs. The man reaches down inside the kerosene drum. The man brings out four packs of Lucky Strike –
‘There you are, officer,’ he says.
I take the cigarettes. I turn –
‘Stop! Put that back now you thieving little bastard…’
I turn back. The woman at the rice-ball stall has a young boy by his wrist. The boy has a rice-ball in his hand –
I have seen this boy somewhere before …
The young boy is caked black in rags and filth which the heat and his sweat have stuck one to the other, the dirt to the cloth, the cloth to his skin, his face and hands covered in blisters and boils which weep fresh pus in the market sun –
I have seen this boy before …
‘Let go,’ the woman shouts –
But the boy will not let go and he leans in towards her and bites down into her hand and the woman jumps back in pain as she pushes the young boy away –
Back into me –
Banzai!
Biting into the rice-ball as he falls, swallowing it whole as he goes, the boy sends me sprawling back into a stall and onto the ground but before I can hold him, before I can stand, the boy is up and away, into the crowd which now stands and stares down at me –
Among them the man in the undershirt, the shorts and the army boots who shakes his head and says, ‘The thieving bastard.’
*
My trousers are coated in dust. My back aches from the fall. It is 4 p.m. now. I find some of my team sat on the slopes of Shiba Park; Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda slumped in the shade with their hats in their hands, swatting at flies and mosquitoes. They struggle to their feet as they see me approach, bowing and apologizing, making their excuses and their reports. I give them cigarettes. I don’t care. I’m not listening. I’m looking for the others. For Detective Fujita –
Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda scratch their skulls and suck in air, they shake their heads and say, ‘Detective Fujita was here before. He was definitely here before. But now he’s not…’
‘How about Nishi? Kimura? Ishida?’ I ask them –
Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda peer into the sun and shield their eyes, they point up the hill and say, ‘Detectives Nishi and Kimura went up there with the woodcutter…’
‘And where’s Ishida?’ I ask them –
Now Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda have a think before they say, ‘With Detective Fujita.’
I turn to go, to walk away, but turn instead to face Adachi –
‘Hard at work as usual,’ says Chief Inspector Adachi –
I bow. I apologize. I make my excuses. My report –
But Adachi doesn’t care. He’s not listening. Adachi is not looking for the others. He’s looking for Detective Fujita –
No one is who they say they are …
I scratch my skull and suck in air. I shake my head and I say, ‘Detective Fujita has gone back to Atago police station, sir.’
*
Back at Atago, one hour later, and Chief Inspector Adachi is staring at me. No Fujita. The First Team, the Second Team and all the uniforms from the other stations are gathered in the First Team’s room at Atago. Adachi is staring at me. No Fujita. I am stood up at the front of the room beside Adachi, Kanehara and Kai, the four of us facing the First Team, the Second Team and the uniforms. But Adachi’s eyes are turned to the side and fixed on me –
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Attention!’ shouts the sergeant –
‘Bow!’ he shouts. ‘At ease!’
Everyone stands at ease now or sits down except Inspector Kai and me. Kai has a piece of paper in his hand; Kai reads out the findings from Dr. Nakadate’s preliminary autopsy report on the first body; the physical description of the victim and her estimated age, the time of her death and the cause of her death. But I am not listening. I am looking for the face of Detective Fujita in the faces at the back and sides of this room –
‘Inspector Minami!’ says Adachi again. ‘If you wouldn’t mind giving us your report…’
I bow. I apologize. I begin to read aloud the findings of the preliminary autopsy report on the second body; the physical description of the victim and her estimated age, the time of her death and the cause of her death. But I am not listening to my own words. I am still looking for the face of Fujita in the faces at the back and sides of this room, still looking for Fujita when I see Ishida –
‘Attention!’ shouts the sergeant again –
Ishida here, his face to the floor …
‘Bow!’ the sergeant shouts –
His back bent …
‘Dismissed!’
He runs …
I run.
*
Down the Atago stairs, through the uniforms, to the doors, but I am too late. Too late. Too late. Too late. The hand on my arm. I jump. I jump. I jump. I spin round but it’s not Ishida. Not Fujita –
The desk sergeant asks, ‘Did you speak to Detective Fujita?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Where is Detective Fujita?’
‘Hayashi of the Minpo paper…’
‘What about him?’ I ask –
‘He was here…’
‘When?’
‘This afternoon,’ says the sergeant. ‘Hayashi was looking for you, but you were up at Keiō, so he asked to see Detective Fujita…’
‘And was Detective Fujita here?’
‘Yes,’ says the desk sergeant. ‘He was waiting to see you too, kept asking me what time you were due back from Keiō…’
‘And so when did you last see Detective Fujita?’
‘I haven’t seen him since he met Hayashi…’
‘When?’ I ask him. ‘When was that?’
‘It must have been about 3 p.m….’
‘Where? Where did they meet?’
‘They were here first,’ says the sergeant. ‘In reception, but then they stepped outside and…’
‘And what?’ I ask –
‘And I haven’t seen Detective Fujita since he stepped outside with Mr. Hayashi.’
*
Past the pots and the pans, the kettles and the cans. Down the alleys and the lanes, the shadows and the arches. Up the stairs and through the doors. I kneel down on his tatami mats. I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
Senju Akira selects a new toothpick. Senju slips it between his teeth and chews. He spins his new electric fan my way and says, ‘You always smell of corpses, always stink of death, detective.’
I say again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry…’
‘They tell me you’ve got yourself another dead body,’ says Senju. ‘They tell me you’re all camped out at Atago police station.’
I say, ‘Yes. Two young women were found in Shiba Park.’
‘Were these two young women prostitutes?’ he asks.
I say, ‘Maybe not. We haven’t identified them yet.’
‘It’s no wonder you smell like shit then, is it?’ he laughs. ‘They work you hard, don’t they? How many hours a day is it?’
I tell him, ‘Twenty-four on a murder investigation.’
‘Twenty-four hours?’ he laughs again. ‘That’s nearly as many as I work, detective! But at least I work for me and at least I get well paid and at least my kids get to eat and my mistresses get to wear silk stockings and I don’t smell of fucking corpses…’
Now Senju Akira stops laughing. Now Senju spits out his toothpick. Now he says, ‘So tell me, officer, how many detectives have they got working on these two dead girls?’
I tell him, ‘About twenty detectives.’
‘Twenty? For two dead whores?’
I start to say, ‘I don’t know…’
‘So tell me this, detective, how many men then have you got out there looking for the killer of my boss? For the real killer? For the man who paid Nodera to pull the trigger? How many, detective?’
I bow. I apologize. I tell him, ‘It’s not my decision…’
‘So what use are you to me? What use, detective?’
I bow again. I start to say again, ‘I’m sorry…’
‘Shut up!’ shouts Senju and he gets to his feet and he says, ‘Let’s take a walk, just you and me, detective.’
I stand up. I follow him. Down his stairs. To his two goons –
In their pale suits, their patterned shirts and their shades …
The two goons and us stepping out into the market –
His market; the Shimbashi New Life Market …
Each stall-keeper bowing and thanking Senju as he ambles past them, past the fresh sardines and second-hand suits, past the coffee and the silk, each stall offering him free this and free that, bowing and thanking him as he acknowledges them all with an imperial nod or a military salute, these people on their knees, bowing and thanking him, on their worn-out knees at his leather-shod feet –
Emperor Senju, Banzai! Emperor Senju, Banzai! Banzai!
Then he turns to me and asks, ‘You got a name for me?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry,’ I say. I bow my head –
‘So why do you come around here, detective?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m very sorry…’
‘Stop apologizing,’ says Senju. ‘And start looking around you, looking where you are. This is a market, officer, where people come to buy and sell. This is the future –
‘This is the New Japan!’
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’ laughs Senju. ‘But you’ve got nothing to sell and no money to buy, detective.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘You’re the past, Detective Inspector Minami,’ he laughs again. ‘With your stench of death and your one hundred yen a month, your shrieking kids and your starving mistress…’
I bow my head.
Now Senju stops at a kakigōri stall. Senju asks for two strawberry flavoured cups. The stall-owner bows. The owner hands them to Senju. He thanks Senju again and again –
Senju hands one of the cups to me –
I bow. I apologize. I thank him –
I curse him. I curse him …
‘What is it you really want?’ he asks me. ‘More money, is that what you need, detective?’
I shake my head. I apologize again. Then finally I tell him, ‘Please, I really need some Calmotin.’
‘Calmotin?’ laughs Senju. ‘Why would you want to sleep? I wouldn’t want your dreams…’
‘Please,’ I beg him again. ‘I really need some Calmotin.’
Senju stops laughing. ‘And I really need some names.’
Fujita. Hayashi. Fujita. Hayashi. Fujita. Hayashi …
‘You give me a name and I’ll give you your Calmotin.’
‘But how much can you get me?’ I ask him. ‘I really need as much as you can give me. Please…’
‘Don’t worry,’ laughs Senju again. ‘You give me a name and you need never wake again.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, over and over. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching…’
‘But don’t dare come back here without a name.’
Hayashi. Fujita. Hayashi. Fujita. Hayashi …
‘Thank you,’ I say again. ‘Thank you.’
‘Or I promise you, you won’t wake again.’
*
From Shimbashi to Atago. Up the stairs to the office –
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
But Ishida is here; Ishida with his head down on his desk –
I shake him. I pull his hair. I whisper, ‘Where’s Detective Fujita? Quickly! Come on! Where is he? Tell me! Quickly!’
Ishida shakes his head. Ishida starts to apologize –
I shake him again. I slap him. I hiss, ‘Tell me!’
Ishida apologizes and apologizes –
Bodies stir. Bodies wake …
I push him away –
I run again.
*
From Atago back through Shimbashi. From Shimbashi through Ginza. Through Ginza to Hatchōbori. The city getting darker and darker, the lights fewer and fewer. Through Hatchōbori and across the Kameshima River. Across the Kameshima River to Shinkawa. Through Shinkawa and across the Eitaibashi Bridge. The city getting flatter and flatter, the buildings getting fewer and fewer. Across the Eitaibashi Bridge into Monzen-nakachō. Monzen-nakachō up to Fukagawa, the dark burnt field where Fukagawa once stood –
Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!
The endless burnt field where now stands but a lone chimney here, a lone chimney there; the bathhouses and the factories but rubble and dust. Red! Red! Incendiary bomb! The hull of a hospital, the shell of a school, the rest is all ash and weeds. Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand! An endless field of ash and weeds –
Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!
This is where Fujita’s house once stood –
Black! Black! Here come the bombs!
His house gone. His family gone –
Cover your ears! Close your eyes!
Fujita has nothing left to lose –
I stand before the ruins of his home, before the scorched stone steps and the charred tree stump, panting and sweating, itching and itching, and now I begin to weep as a gust of wind raises the thick, brown dust that covers the lot where his house once stood and bangs the loose sheets of iron on the neighbouring shacks, drowning out the sound of my sobs, of my scream –
Get off your knees!
Tokyo, 89°, cloudy
I have walked all night through fields of ash to find him here; Detective Fujita sitting in the early morning shade on the steps of the Atago police station with his face to the sun, his eyes closed, a new Panama hat in one hand and a freshly lit cigarette in the other –
I stand over him. I block out the light. I say, ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ he replies but he does not open his eyes –
I tell him, ‘Let’s go for a walk, please. We need to talk.’
‘Talk about what?’ he asks me, his eyes still closed –
‘Hayashi Jo,’ I say. ‘Matsuda Giichi. Senju Akira.’
Now Detective Fujita opens his eyes. He gets to his feet. He wipes away the dust from his trousers. Now he says, ‘Lead on.’
My eyes ache. My head aches. My belly aches …
In the old grove across the road, among the cedars and the bamboo, we stand in the shadows and the sunlight, black and white patterns across our clothes and across our faces –
‘They missed you yesterday,’ I say. ‘Adachi and Kanehara. They were both asking where you were…’
Fujita bows ever so slightly and says, ‘I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped. I had to meet someone…’
‘I hear you met Hayashi from the Minpo …’
Fujita laughs. ‘Minpo, Minshū, Akahata…’
‘What did Hayashi want?’ I ask him.
‘Blackmail. Extortion. Money.’
‘He tried to blackmail you?’
‘Not only me. You too.’
‘Me?’ I ask. ‘Why?’
‘He knows things.’
‘Things about you and Nodera Tomiji?’ I ask him. ‘Things about you and the murder of Matsuda Giichi?’
‘All lies,’ hisses Fujita. ‘All lies.’
‘Is that what you told Hayashi?’
‘I didn’t tell Hayashi anything,’ says Fujita. ‘I just wanted him gone and now he’s gone and he won’t be coming back.’
My stomach aches. My head aches. ‘Really?’
‘I paid him to go. To not come back.’
‘How much did you pay him?’
‘Forget it,’ smiles Fujita.
‘No,’ I say. ‘How much?’
‘Forget it!’ he snaps –
I nod. I bow to him. I thank him. Then I ask him, ‘But do you know where Hayashi is now?’
‘He’s running,’ says Fujita. ‘Running from Tokyo. Running from this life. His turn to change his name. To change his job. He’ll not be back, I promise you.’
I tell him, ‘Senju Akira wants a name from me.’
‘Whose name does he want?’ asks Fujita.
‘The name that set up Nodera Tomiji.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or he’ll make things difficult for me.’
‘So give him Hayashi’s name,’ laughs Detective Fujita. ‘Hayashi doesn’t need it any more.’
‘But how do you know he won’t come back?’
‘I just know,’ he laughs again. ‘Trust me.’
‘But how do you know…?’
Detective Fujita steps closer. Fujita whispers, ‘I told him I’d kill him if I ever saw him again.’
*
I have vomited in the toilets of Atago police station. Black bile. Now I stand over the sink. I spit. I wipe my mouth. I turn on a tap. I wash my face. I look up into the mirror. I stare into the mirror –
No one is who they say they are…
I stand up in front of the First Team, the Second Team and all the uniforms from the Atago, Meguro and Mita police stations as Chief Inspector Kanehara reviews the progress of the investigation to date; the searches of the two crime scenes in Shiba Park have been completed; the statements of the witnesses have been taken; the autopsies have been conducted; the initial stages of the investigation have been successfully completed bar the identification of the bodies, which is scheduled for later this morning; then the second stage of the investigation will begin –
I swallow…
‘All reports must be completed and submitted to Headquarters this morning,’ Adachi is now telling the First Team, the Second Team and the uniforms from the Atago, Meguro and Mita police stations. ‘Following the completion of the identification process, there will be a second meeting later today at 4 p.m.’
‘Attention!’ shouts one of the sergeants –
‘Bow!’ the sergeant shouts –
‘Dismissed!’
I run back to the toilets. I vomit again. Brown bile. I walk over to the sink. I spit. I wipe my mouth. I turn on a tap. I wash my face. I look up into the mirror. I stare into the mirror –
No one is who they say they are …
In the upstairs corridor I wait for Nishi and Kimura. I take them to one side. I ask them, ‘Have you written up your reports?’
They both nod. They both say, ‘Yes, we have.’
‘Then I want you to go to Toshima Ward,’ I tell them. ‘I want you to go to the ward office. I want you to ask again about this Takahashi of Zōshigaya, Toshima…’
Kimura nods again but Nishi says, ‘The First Team have already been up there.’
‘I know that,’ I tell him. ‘And I know they couldn’t find him or any mention of him, but his name on a statement of employment in his bag in that park is the only name we have found so far and, remember, our body is only bones and those bones need a name or they’ll always be bones…’
Nishi nods. Kimura nods. They both bow. They both turn to leave. I wait until they’ve gone and then I run. I run back to the toilets to vomit a third time. Yellow bile. I turn on the tap. I wash my face. I look up into the mirror. I stare into the mirror –
No one is who they say they are …
Ishida is wiping down the chairs and the tables, sweeping up the floor and the doorway, straightening our banner. Ishida looks up. He sees me. He flinches. Then he stands to attention –
‘At ease,’ I say as he bows and apologizes –
I ask, ‘Have you written up your report?’
He nods. He says, ‘Yes, I have, sir.’
‘Then I want you to do something for me,’ I tell him. ‘I want you to go to the offices of the Minpo newspaper…’
Ishida nods. Ishida bows again –
‘I want you to ask to see a Hayashi Jo…’
Ishida takes out his notebook –
‘Tell Hayashi to come see me…’
Ishida licks his pencil tip –
‘Now if he’s not there, I want you to find out who he has seen recently, where he has gone and when he’ll be back.’
Ishida nods. Ishida says, ‘I understand, sir.’
‘I’m depending on you, Ishida.’
Ishida nods. He bows. He turns to leave. Now I run again. Back to the toilets of Atago police station. I vomit again. Grey bile. Four times I have vomited in the toilets of Atago police station. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey. Four times I have looked into the mirror. Four times I have stared into that mirror –
I don’t want to remember. But in the half-light…
Four times I have screamed into the glass –
In the half-light, I can’t forget. I can’t forget…
I have screamed into my own face –
No one is who they say they are!
*
Inspectors Kanehara, Adachi and Kai have already left for Metro Headquarters, left in a car without me. Ton-ton. But I am glad. Ton-ton. I don’t care. Ton-ton. I want to walk. Ton-ton. In the shit. Ton-ton. In the dust. Ton-ton. In the dirt. Ton-ton. There is a typhoon approaching Japan. Ton-ton. But it won’t hit Tokyo. Ton-ton. Not this time. Ton-ton. Not this one. Ton-ton. But the air is still heavy with its approach. Ton-ton. The people wilting in the streets. Ton-ton. The stalls at the sides of the road quiet. Ton-ton. Men sat on their butts slowly shelling nuts to sell, slowly stripping down old wirelesses for parts. Ton-ton. Nut by nut, part by part, as slowly as they can. Ton-ton. Frightened to finish, frightened of having no more nuts to shell, of having no more wirelesses to strip, of having nothing more to do –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Nothing more to do but think, think about food –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
My stomach aches. My head aches –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
My feet ache. My eyes ache –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I curse! I curse! I curse!
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I curse myself –
Ton-ton.
*
I knock on the door to Chief Kita’s office. I open it. I bow deeply. I apologize profusely. I take my seat at the table; the same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day but today I am late so I have missed all their talk of the Tokyo trials and the rumours of purges. Now the talk around the table has turned again to SCAP, to their so-called reforms, all of which are based on the recommendations of former New York Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine, and to the SCAP puppet Tanikawa, the chief of the Police Affairs Bureau at the Home Ministry –
‘He’s helping them purge good hard-working officers,’ Kanehara is saying, ‘and replacing them with policewomen, turning female clerks into police officers, giving them the authority to arrest suspects or to take them back to the stations…’
‘Tanikawa is a fool,’ agrees Adachi. ‘A fool and a stooge.’
‘He might be a fool and a stooge,’ says Kanehara, ‘but he’s not finished yet; have you seen the kind of reforms they want to include in the proposed new Police Bill? Not only policewomen with powers of arrest and detention, but an emphasis on the recruitment of college graduates above all other recruits…’
‘All communists,’ says Kai –
‘Exactly,’ continues Kanehara. ‘And then let’s not forget the centrepiece of the Bill; the prevention of unreasonable or unjustifiable detention in police cells or jails. You know what this will mean? That for every single suspect you pick up, there will have to be either some proof of guilt or some actual charge. There will be no more picking people up and holding them until you find the evidence or gain a confession. There will have to be either evidence or a charge before you can touch them. If not, then you’ll be the one charged — with violating the suspect’s human rights!’
‘Human rights!’ everyone laughs.
‘Like all this talk of new uniforms,’ says Kai. ‘All these calls for less militaristic ones, of blue instead of khaki, of sleeve stripes instead of shoulder boards. All this talk of new uniforms when we barely have enough men left…’
‘We’ve asked and asked and asked them for new uniforms,’ says Kanehara. ‘New uniforms and new boots or, if not new uniforms or new boots, then new material to patch up our old uniforms or new soles for our old boots, anything that stops our men looking like tramps and being despised by the public as tramps…’
‘And they’ve promised and promised us,’ says Adachi –
‘Yes,’ says Kanehara. ‘But that’s all they’ve done…’
The same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day, meeting after meeting until there is another knock on the door and another interruption –
‘Excuse me,’ says another uniform –
‘What is it?’ barks the chief –
‘The mothers are ready, sir.’
*
The autopsies have been performed, the search of the area has been completed, and five of the mothers have been told to come back to Headquarters. Five mothers who read the morning paper or heard the news from neighbours two days ago. Five mothers who have taken out their last good kimonos again. Five mothers who have called upon their other daughters or their sisters for a third time. Five mothers who have once again begged the streetcar or train fare up to Sakuradamon. Five mothers still looking for their daughters –
Five mothers praying we have not found them.
A uniformed officer opens the door to the reception room for Inspector Kai and me. Kai and I apologize to these five mothers for keeping them waiting, these five mothers in their last good kimonos, their other daughters or their sisters at their sides –
Praying and praying and praying …
These five mothers whose daughters’ ages and descriptions, their heights and their weights, the scars their daughters bore or the teeth their daughters lost, the clothes they were wearing and the shoes on their feet, the bags they were carrying –
On the days they were last seen …
These features and descriptions that help us eliminate or match the missing to the dead, these features and descriptions that have brought these mothers back here –
Their hands in their laps …
These five mothers who stare up at us now as Kai asks, ‘Which one of you is Mrs. Midorikawa of Meguro Ward?’
Blinking and nodding, Mrs. Midorikawa gets to her feet with the help of her two other daughters. Blinking and nodding, Inspector Kai and I lead them into a smaller room next to the reception room. Blinking and nodding, Mrs. Midorikawa sits between her two older daughters. Blinking and nodding, Mrs. Midorikawa is twisting a piece of cloth in her hands. Blinking and nodding, Mrs. Midorikawa is staring at another piece of cloth on the table. Blinking and nodding, the tears already running down her cheeks. Blinking and nodding –
The red haramaki with the five darned holes …
‘It was her father’s. Ryuko darned it herself,’ she tells us. ‘Five times. Replaced the buttons.’
Blinking and nodding as Inspector Kai picks up the haramaki, folding it in two and then wrapping it back up inside the brown paper, the crumpled brown paper –
‘Ryuko darned it herself,’ she repeats, blinking and nodding. ‘Ryuko darned it herself.’
I excuse myself. I step outside. I go back into the reception room next door. The four other mothers look up at me. The four other mothers stare up at me –
Mouths open …
I tell the four mothers that a car will take them up to the Keiō University Hospital.
*
Mrs. Midorikawa and her two older daughters do not speak in the car to the Keiō University Hospital. They do not speak in the corridors crowded with the dying and the dead, the waiting and the grieving –
She is here. She is here. She is here. She is here …
They do not speak as we wait for the elevator, as we watch the elevator doors open, as we step inside and watch the doors close –
She is here. She is here. She is here …
They do not speak as we ride the dark elevator down, as we watch the elevator doors open again, as the light returns –
She is here. She is here …
They do not speak as they walk along the corridor to the mortuary, as they put on the slippers, as they step through the doors into the half-light of the mortuary –
She is here, here …
They bow but do not speak when they are introduced to Dr. Nakadate, as the orderlies remove a stretcher from the refrigerator –
Here is Ryuko …
They do not speak as they stare at the raised grey sheet on the stretcher, as Dr. Nakadate reaches under the grey sheet, as he takes out a hand from under the sheet, as he holds up a left hand and points out a scar on the left thumb, they do not speak but they weep –
They do not speak but they weep and they weep –
‘I am here because of you…’
They weep and they weep but they still do not speak as Dr. Nakadate slowly pulls back the grey sheet, as he shows them the bleached face of a young girl, seventeen years old –
‘I am Midorikawa Ryuko of Meguro…’
They weep and they weep but they still do not speak until Mrs. Midorikawa finally looks up from the bleached face of her daughter, from the ruined corpse of her child and cries out, ‘Kodaira!’
*
Inspector Kai and I stand in the corridor between the autopsy room and the mortuary and wait for Mrs. Midorikawa and her two older daughters to finish their discussions with the Keiō staff about the funeral arrangements for her youngest daughter. Inspector Kai is smoking a cigarette. Inspector Kai is smiling. Inspector Kai is looking at his notebook, a name written three times –
Kodaira. Kodaira. Kodaira …
‘This time tomorrow,’ laughs Inspector Kai. ‘This case will be closed and I’ll be drunk…’
Dr. Nakadate’s assistant comes down the narrow corridor. He bows. He apologizes for interrupting our conversation. He hands me a piece of paper torn from a newspaper and says, ‘This was found folded in the pocket of the skirt of the pinafore dress on your body.’
I open out the piece of newspaper. It is an advertisement –
Salon Matsu in Kanda now hiring new staff …
It is a clue, at last. It is a start, at last –
‘You never know,’ laughs Kai. ‘Maybe this time tomorrow, we’ll both be drunk…’
I bow and I thank Dr. Nakadate’s assistant as Mrs. Midorikawa and her two daughters step out of the mortuary room –
The arrangements have been made.
Now Inspector Kai puts out his cigarette. Inspector Kai stops smiling. Inspector Kai takes Mrs. Midorikawa and her daughters back to Metropolitan Police Headquarters.
Now it is my turn –
I open the glass doors. I step inside the autopsy room. I walk over to one of the sinks. I take off my jacket. I roll up the sleeves of my shirt. I wash my hands. I dry my hands. I do up my shirt cuffs. I put my jacket back on. I walk over to one of the autopsy tables, octagonal, marble and German in design. I take out my pocket knife, blunt, rusted and Japanese. I cut the string of the three brown paper parcels waiting for me here on the table. I unwrap the brown paper of the first parcel. I take out the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, the white half-sleeved chemise, and the dyed-pink socks. I lay these clothes out on one of the other autopsy tables. I unwrap the brown paper of the second parcel. I take out the two white canvas shoes with the red rubber soles. I place these shoes on the same autopsy table. I unwrap the third brown paper parcel. I take out the ladies’ undergarments we found near the bodies in Shiba, these undergarments that did not belong to Midorikawa Ryuko. I lay these garments out on one of the smaller separate dissecting tables –
Now I step back out into the corridor –
The four other mothers with their other daughters or their sisters or neighbours are waiting. Four other mothers who have lost daughters aged fifteen to twenty years old. Four mothers who lost their daughters over three weeks ago. Mothers who are wringing their hands and praying they do not find their daughters here at the end of this corridor, beyond these glass doors –
Praying and praying …
I ask Mrs. Tamba of Ōmori Ward to please step into the autopsy room. Mrs. Tamba and her two sisters follow me inside –
Mrs. Tamba and her sisters stare at the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, the white half-sleeved chemise, the dyed-pink socks and the white canvas shoes with red rubber soles lain out on the autopsy table and they shake their heads. I ask them to look at the undergarments on the other table. They stare again and then they shake their heads again. I thank them and they leave –
I lick the tip of my pencil. I make a note –
Mrs. Nakahara of Yodobashi Ward and her other daughter stare at the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, the white half-sleeved chemise, the dyed-pink socks and the white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. They dab their eyes but shake their heads. I ask them to look at the undergarments on the other table. They shake their heads again. I thank them and they leave –
I turn the page. I make another note –
Mrs. Hidari of Ebara Ward and her sister stare at the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, the white half-sleeved chemise, the dyed-pink socks and the white canvas shoes with red rubber soles and finally, after five minutes, they shake their heads. I ask them to look at the undergarments. They look at each other and then shake their heads. I thank them and they leave –
I lick the tip of my pencil –
Mrs. Mitani of Jōtō Ward has no daughter or sister or neighbour with her today. Mrs. Mitani stands alone before the autopsy table and stares at the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, the white half-sleeved chemise, the dyed-pink socks and the white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. Mrs. Mitani shakes her head. I ask her to look at the undergarments. Mrs. Mitani shakes her head again. I thank her but she does not move. Mrs. Mitani continues to stare at the undergarments lain out on the dissecting table. I thank her again. She still does not move but asks, ‘What happens now?’
‘We will continue to try to identify these clothes so…’
‘Not about that,’ she says. ‘About my daughter…’
‘I’m sure the Jōtō police are trying to find her…’
‘How can they?’ she asks me. ‘Have you been to Jōtō Ward? There’s nothing left there. The police have nothing. No buildings. No telephones. No bicycles. How can they find her?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry…’
‘She was all I had,’ she says. ‘I have nothing now. No family. No house. No job. No money. Nothing…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘But I promise I will make sure that the description of your daughter is sent to every police station in Tokyo and I hope we will find her…’
Now Mrs. Mitani of Jōtō Ward looks up from the ladies undergarments and the dissecting table. Now Mrs. Mitani wipes her eyes. Mrs. Mitani bows and thanks me –
Now Mrs. Mitani leaves –
I make my final note –
I need a cigarette …
I walk back down the basement corridor past the walls of sinks and drains, the written warnings of cuts and punctures, the orderlies washing and rinsing their hands and their forearms and I push the elevator button and I watch the doors open and I am about to step inside the elevator when Dr. Nakadate catches my arm and asks, ‘Did you find that file, inspector? The Miyazaki file…’
*
I don’t want to remember. In the half-light, I can’t forget…
The cars have gone back to HQ. The streetcar full again –
Kai has a name. Kai has a suspect. Kai will get an address …
I walk back to Sakuradamon, through Moto-Akasaka –
Kai will make an arrest. Kai will get a confession …
By the river, behind the parliament building –
Kai can close the case. Both our cases …
Past the imperial moat to HQ –
Both our cases closed …
Miyazaki Mitsuko forgotten again.
*
I knock on the door of the interview room. I open it. I bow. I take a seat next to the stenographer at the side. Inspector Kai does not look up. Mrs. Midorikawa does not look up; Mrs. Midorikawa sat next to one of her older daughters, twisting and wringing that same piece of cloth in her lap as Inspector Kai confirms again, again and again, the things she has told him during their initial two interviews –
‘So you last saw your daughter on the sixth?’
‘Yes,’ whispers Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘Ryuko left the house at about nine on the morning of the sixth of August.’
‘And this is the house in Meguro Ward?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But it’s not our house, it’s the Yamamotos’ house. We’ve been staying with them since our house was pulled down for fire defences at the end of last March.’
‘And Ryuko was living there too?’
‘Yes,’ she says again. ‘Always.’
Now Inspector Kai asks, ‘And so can you tell me again what was she wearing when she left the house in Meguro on the sixth?’
‘A white summer dress and white canvas shoes.’
‘And did she have any money with her?’
‘She would have had about ten yen,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘Just for the streetcar or the train fare.’
Inspector Kai turns the page of his notebook. ‘And she told you she was going for a job interview?’
‘Yes,’ agrees Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘Ryuko didn’t really like the job she had as a waitress in Ginza.’
‘And this was as a waitress at a café in the fourth cho me?’
‘Yes,’ she agrees again. ‘But there were not many tips.’
‘And the interview for this new job was in Shibaura?’
‘Yes,’ she says again. ‘With the Occupation Army.’
‘And this job interview had all come about through this man called Kodaira?’ asks Inspector Kai. ‘Kodaira Yoshio?’
Mrs. Midorikawa pauses here. Mrs. Midorikawa swallows. Now Mrs. Midorikawa says, ‘Through that man, yes.’
‘Please tell me again then, in as much detail as you can, how your daughter Ryuko came to meet this man called Kodaira?’
Mrs. Midorikawa sighs. Mrs. Midorikawa shakes her head. Mrs. Midorikawa says, ‘By chance at Shinagawa station.’
‘How was it by chance that Ryuko met this man Kodaira?’ asks Inspector Kai. ‘And what was the date they met?’
Mrs. Midorikawa looks at her other daughter. Mrs. Midorikawa asks her, ‘You said the tenth of July?’
‘Yes,’ says her other daughter. ‘There was an accident at Shinagawa and all the trains were delayed.’
Inspector Kai looks down at his notebook and then asks, ‘And this was when Kodaira approached and spoke to Ryuko?’
‘Yes,’ says the other daughter again. ‘Ryuko told me that he just came up to her on the platform and started talking to her.’
Inspector Kai asks, ‘Do you know what they talked about?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘They talked about work and about food.’
‘Ryuko told him she wanted to find a new job,’ adds Mrs. Midorikawa now. ‘And Kodaira said he had connections with the Occupation Army and that he could help her find a job with them.’
‘How exactly did he say he would be able to help Ryuko?’
Mrs. Midorikawa shakes her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Through his connections,’ says the other daughter. ‘That’s what Ryuko told me that he said; through his connections …’
‘Did she say what kind of connections?’ asks Kai.
‘He was wearing the Shinchū Gun armband.’
Kai nods. ‘So when did they next meet?’
‘Not until earlier this month,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘Ryuko fell ill with intestinal problems and so she didn’t see Kodaira again until he suddenly turned up at the house asking after her…’
‘So Kodaira knew where Ryuko lived then?’
‘Yes,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘She must have given him her address that day in July at Shinagawa…’
‘And so when exactly did Kodaira make this visit?’ asks Kai. ‘This visit to the house in Meguro?’
Mrs. Midorikawa says, ‘The day before she went missing.’
‘The fifth of August,’ confirms her other daughter.
‘And did you both meet Kodaira?’ asks Kai –
‘Yes,’ they both reply at the same time.
‘So then tell me,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘What is he like?’
They are both silent for a moment until Mrs. Midorikawa first sighs and then says, ‘He seemed like a gentleman. He brought us a small gift. He said he was concerned about Ryuko’s health. He told us he was working as a cook with the Occupation Army. He thought he could help Ryuko find work at the same barracks.’
‘Can you remember which barracks these were?’ asks Kai.
‘Number 589,’ says the other daughter. ‘In Shinagawa.’
Kai looks up from his notes. ‘And you believed him?’
‘Of course I believed him,’ spits Mrs. Midorikawa, suddenly. ‘Do you really think I would have let my daughter go off to meet him, if I didn’t believe him? If I didn’t trust him?’
Inspector Kai looks back down at his notebook. Inspector Kai shakes his head and now says, ‘I am very sorry. I…’
‘There are six of us in our family,’ she says. ‘And no man.’
Inspector Kai bows his head and says again, ‘I am sorry.’
‘He promised her a good job,’ she says. ‘Free food.’
Inspector Kai just nods and stares at his notebook.
‘He was wearing the Shinchū Gun armband.’
I cough now. I edge forward on my seat. I bow and then ask, ‘And so Ryuko went to meet him on the sixth of August?’
‘Yes,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘They had arranged to meet at ten o’clock at the east gate of Shinagawa station.’
‘Ten o’clock in the morning?’ I ask –
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Of course.’
‘And so when Ryuko didn’t come home, what did you do?’
‘I waited until the next morning,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘And then, first thing, I went straight to see Kodaira.’
‘You went to see him at his home?’ I ask. ‘Where is it?’
‘In Hanezawamachi,’ she replies. ‘In Shibuya Ward.’
‘And what did he say when you went to see him?’
‘He lied to me,’ spits Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘He said Ryuko had never turned up to meet him at Shinagawa station.’
‘Let me just check this,’ I say. ‘When you went to see Kodaira in Shibuya it was the seventh of August?’
‘Yes,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa.
‘And you went to see him because Ryuko hadn’t come home the night before?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Kodaira told you Ryuko had not shown up to meet him at Shinagawa station at ten o’clock on the morning before?’
‘Yes,’ says Mrs. Midorikawa. ‘He lied to me.’
‘They all lie,’ says her other daughter.
Now I take out an envelope from my jacket pocket. I open the envelope. I take out the piece of newspaper found in the pocket of the skirt of the pinafore dress on my body. Now I place the newspaper advertisement on the table before Mrs. Midorikawa –
I ask, ‘Does this mean anything to you?’
Mrs. Midorikawa looks down at the newspaper advertisement. Mrs. Midorikawa pushes it away. Mrs. Midorikawa looks up at me. Mrs. Midorikawa says, ‘My daughter was not a whore.’
*
Inspector Kai and Room #1 have been busy. Room #1 have an address for Kodaira Yoshio. Inspector Kai and Room #1 have sent two men to the address in Hanezawamachi, Shibuya Ward. Room #1 have stationed two pairs of detectives near the address –
No escape. No escape. No escape. No escape …
‘It is Kodaira’s sister’s house,’ Inspector Kai is telling us. ‘His younger sister’s house. He lives there with his wife and son…’
Chief Kita knows Kai wants to bring Kodaira in now –
No escape. No escape. No escape. No escape …
The chief asks, ‘What about his place of work?’
‘It is Laundry Barracks #589,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘Just as he told the mother, but he’s not a cook. He’s been working in the laundry since March this year. In Shinagawa, on the ocean side…’
Now Adachi glances up from his notes. Adachi looks at me –
‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember?’
The chief asks, ‘What shifts does he work at the laundry?’
‘He’s been working on nights this month,’ replies Kai.
Adachi still looking at me. Adachi still watching my face –
‘Did you find that file, inspector? The Miyazaki file…’
The chief asks, ‘Do we have his family’s address?’
‘Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture,’ says Inspector Kai –
No escape. No escape. No escape. No escape …
The chief says, ‘Arrest him tomorrow at noon.’
No escape. In the half-light, no escape at all.
*
I take a different route back to Atago, through Hibiya Park and out onto Hibiya-dōri. The branches of the trees hang low in the hot and overcast light, the leaves on the branches covered in dirt and dust. There were statues in this park before the war turned against us, when there were heroes to celebrate and metal to spare. There were fountains too, when there were hours to play and water to spare. Restaurants and tea-houses, flower exhibitions and symphony concerts, tennis courts and a baseball ground, before they converted it into vegetable gardens and anti-aircraft batteries –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I queue for a streetcar at Uchisaiwai-chō, just down the road from the Imperial Hotel; the Imperial Hotel where there are still heroes to celebrate and metal to spare, hours to play and water to spare. The old woman queuing next to me is bent double with the weight of the box tied to her back. The old woman telling the queue the story of a small boy in Hongō who waited and waited for his chocolate ration to come and was so excited when the chocolate finally came that he could not take his eyes off the chocolate, that he did not look up from the chocolate, that he did not see the streetcar coming. The queue for our streetcar says nothing. The queue just stands and waits, watching for a streetcar that never comes, listening to the hammering that never ceases –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
*
I am back in the toilets of Atago police station. I have vomited again. Black bile again. I stand over the sink. I spit. I wipe my mouth. I turn on the tap. I wash my face. Now I look up into that mirror again –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
Ishida is waiting for me beside our banner –
‘Did you find Hayashi Jo?’ I ask him –
‘No,’ says Ishida. ‘He’s resigned.’
‘When did Hayashi resign?’
‘Late yesterday evening.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘No one knows.’
‘Good work,’ I tell him. ‘Dismissed.’
I wait until Ishida has stepped into our borrowed office and then I run back to the toilets. I vomit again. Brown bile. I walk over to the sink. I spit again. I wipe my mouth. I turn on the tap. I wash my face again. Now I stare into that mirror –
I don’t want to remember …
No Hayashi. No Fujita –
You can tell which are the men from Room #1 and which are the men from Room #2 by the looks on their faces. No Fujita. The anticipation on the faces of Room #1, the resignation on the faces of Room #2. No Fujita. Room #1 have a name for their suspect. No Fujita. Room #2 still have no name for their victim. No Fujita. Detectives Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda are sat at the very back of the room. No Fujita. Detectives Nishi, Kimura and Ishida sat at the front. No Fujita. None of the men from the Second Team are smiling in anticipation of an arrest as they listen to Inspector Kai –
‘But the mother and sisters had already identified her haramaki by its five darned holes and given us details of the whitlow scar on her left thumb, so she was then formally identified by her mother as Midorikawa Ryuko, aged seventeen of Meguro Ward…’
Inspector Kai updating Room #1 and Room #2 about the identification of the body, about the life of the victim, about the name of the suspect and the plan for his arrest at noon tomorrow. The uniforms from Atago, Meguro and Mita have not been invited this evening. This meeting is just for detectives; detectives only –
‘And our two teams of detectives in Shibuya have just reported that the suspect left for his shift as usual at 5:30 p.m. tonight and then arrived at the laundry before 6 p.m….’
I am stood next to Inspector Kai at the front of the room beside Inspectors Kanehara and Adachi –
I am cursing Inspector Kai…
‘Naturally the detectives from Room #2 will also be able to question the suspect Kodaira about the second body found at Shiba Park and to which we hope he will also provide an identity and a confession and thus spare the blushes of Room #2 again…’
There is laughter from one half of the room –
There is resentment from the other half –
‘I’m just joking,’ laughs Kai. ‘We’re all comrades now.’
There is more laughter and more jeering, fists on desktops and boots on floorboards, backs slapped and hair ruffled –
In anticipation, in excitement –
‘Attention!’ shouts Kai –
Their fists by their sides, their boots together now …
‘Bow!’ he shouts –
Backs straight and hair flat…
‘Dismissed!’
They file out…
And I run out of the meeting room and down the stairs to vomit in the toilets. I vomit in the toilets of Atago police station a third time. Yellow bile. I spit. I turn on the tap again. I wash my face. I look up into that mirror again. I stare into that mirror –
I can’t forget. In the half-light, I can’t forget…
Adachi is waiting for me outside the toilets –
‘We’ve both seen this before, detective…’
Adachi grabs my arm. ‘Where’s Fujita?’
‘Did you find that file, inspector?’
‘I sent him to the Salon Matsu in Kanda,’ I lie but I don’t ask him why; why Adachi wants Fujita. I don’t ask him why because I turn back into the toilets. Back to vomit. Grey bile. Back to the sink. Back to the tap. Back to the mirror –
In the half-light …
Adachi is gone but Nishi and Kimura are waiting for me in the corridor. They are hot and they are dirty. They know I have forgotten about them. They are tired and they are angry –
‘There are no records of a Takahashi of Zōshigaya,’ says Nishi. ‘Because there are no records of anyone because all their records were lost when their ward office burnt down…’
‘But did you go to the address in Zōshigaya?’
Kimura nods and Nishi says, ‘Yes.’
I ask them both, ‘And…?’
‘It’s cinders,’ says Nishi.
I ask, ‘Have either of you seen Detective Fujita today?’
Kimura shakes his head and Nishi says, ‘No.’
‘Right then,’ I say and I take out the envelope from my pocket and hand them the piece of newspaper. ‘Find out which paper this advertisement is from and the date it was run. Then, last thing tonight, before they pull this man in tomorrow, you two are coming with me to Kanda to help me wake up the ladies of the Salon Matsu.’
Kimura nods. Nishi nods. They both bow. They both turn to leave. I wait until they’ve gone and then I run back to the toilets of Atago police station to vomit in the toilets –
But this time I do not vomit –
Nothing comes up.
*
Everything is falling into place. Back to Shimbashi to give Senju the name. Everything is turning out fine. Back to Shimbashi to get some Calmotin. Falling into place. Back through the pots and the pans, through the knives and the spoons. Turning out fine. Back through the suits and the sardines, the tinned fruit and old army boots –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching…’
But tonight there are many more pale-suited goons out here, many more patterned shirts and American sunglasses in the alleys and the lanes, in the shadows and the arches –
Trains screaming overhead…
Eight goons tonight at the foot of the stairs that lead up to his office, their legs apart and their hands in jackets, with twitches in their cheeks and pinpricks for pupils –
In the half-light …
His office door is closed, his office lights out tonight –
I straighten my jacket. I ask them, ‘Is the boss in?’
‘And who the fuck are you?’ asks one of them –
I tell him, ‘Inspector Minami of Metro HQ.’
This goon tells that goon to go up the stairs and so that goon goes up the stairs and taps on the door to the office and then that goon comes back down the stairs and whispers in the ear of this goon and so now this goon says, ‘You’re to wait, Minami of Metro HQ.’
No dice tonight. No calls of odd, even and play …
Now the door to the office opens. A foreigner, an American, a Victor, comes down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, this man turns to me and says, ‘Good evening, inspector…’
‘Good evening, sir,’ I reply.
The foreigner, this American, this Victor, he winks at me now and Senju’s goons all laugh along –
‘Up you go now, Minami of Metro HQ,’ says one of the goons as the Victor disappears –
And up I go now –
Senju Akira is sat cross-legged in the dark with only the street lights illuminating the sweat on his skull and the sheen on his skin; Senju Akira naked except for a traditional loincloth –
‘You better have a name for me,’ whispers Senju Akira. ‘Or you won’t be leaving here again tonight…’
I curse him and I curse myself…
I kneel before him. I say, ‘Hayashi Jo of the Minpo paper.’
Senju says nothing. His eyes on me. Senju says nothing –
My face to the floor, I say, ‘He was seen with Nodera.’ His eyes on me. Nothing.
His eyes on me. Nothing –
‘They were drinking together in the New Oasis.’
His eyes on me. Nothing. His eyes on me …
‘The night before the hit,’ I tell him –
In the dark. Senju shifts his weight. In the dark. Senju hisses, ‘Get out, detective! Go now! Quickly before I change my mind…’
I slide back on my knees towards the door, the stairs –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching…’
In the dark, Senju is getting to his feet. In the dark, Senju is rising, saying, ‘You want your drugs, you be here tomorrow night.’
*
I open the door to the borrowed office at Atago. Fujita still not here. They are all asleep now. Fujita gone again. I put my head down on my desk. But Fujita will be back. I still can’t sleep. Fujita is safe now. Tomorrow I will sleep. Tomorrow Fujita will return. Tomorrow …
Everything will fall into place. Everything will turn out fine –
Tomorrow Kai and the First Team will make their arrest –
Tomorrow the killer will confess to both crimes –
Tomorrow everything will fall into place –
Everything will turn out fine –
Everything will end –
‘Boss … Boss…’
I open my eyes –
‘The advertisement is from the Asahi newspaper,’ says Nishi. ‘It ran on the nineteenth of July…’
‘Thank you,’ I tell him –
Nishi smiles. Nishi asks, ‘So is it time to go and wake up the ladies of the Salon Matsu yet?’
*
The streets are dark and silent now, the heat heavy still, as we walk up Hibiya-dōri and show our passes again and again as we walk in front of the illuminated Dai-Ichi Assurance Building, Emperor MacArthur’s Headquarters opposite the darkened Imperial Palace of the old Emperor, as we walk on up past the Imperial Theatre and the Meiji Seimei building, then the Yūsen building and the Kaijo building, to Marunouchi and Ōtemachi –
The old Mitsubishi Town …
Here most of the modern steel and concrete buildings are still standing, just the odd ones gutted here and there; here where the Victors rule from their offices and their barracks; here in the new heart of Occupied Tokyo –
Same as the old heart …
Now Kimura, Nishi and I cut under the tracks of Tokyo station to Kanda –
Here, less than a mile from the Emperors old and new, few of the wooden buildings are still standing. There were train yards here once. Family businesses. Bicycle shops. Homes. Now there are only burnt-out ruins and makeshift shelters, rare clusters of old timber houses that were spared and sudden alleys of one-storey offices that have sprung up among the fields of weeds and mountains of ashes, the braziers and lanterns, the guitars and girls, the songs and shouts –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
From the alleyways and the doorways with their permed hair and painted faces, they coo and they call, luring and then leading their catches back to the shabby little buildings where their foreign names and Japanese prices are written on placards or posters –
Off-limits. Off-limits. Off-limits. Off-limits …
The Salon Matsu is just another shabby little building stained with dirt among all the other shabby little buildings stained with dirt, an unlit pink neon sign the only new thing here. I slide open the cracked glass door. There is a young Korean man sat in the genkan, before a split noren curtain. The Korean has a pageboy haircut and spectacles, loud-coloured trousers and a grey undershirt –
He sees us. He stands up. He starts to speak –
‘Shut up!’ I tell him. ‘Police raid!’
I tell Kimura to wait with the Korean in the genkan and then I lead Nishi through the split curtain into the kitchen-cum-waiting room where three Japanese women are sat with their blouses wide open and their skirts up round their thighs, fanning themselves –
They look up at us. They sigh. They roll their eyes –
‘What do you want this time?’ asks the oldest –
I tell her, ‘We’re from Tokyo Metro HQ.’
‘So what?’ she says. ‘We’ve paid.’
I offer her a cigarette. She takes it. I light it for her. I ask her, ‘Are you the mama here then?’
‘So what if I am?’ she asks, and then she winks and says, ‘You after a free ride?’
I take out the envelope. I take out the clipping from the Asahi. I show her the advertisement. I ask her, ‘Are you still hiring?’
‘Why?’ she laughs. ‘You’re too ugly even for here.’
The other girls laugh. I hand out more cigarettes –
I ask her, ‘Do you do the interviews yourself?’
‘Why?’ she asks again. ‘So what if I do?’
‘Come on, play the game,’ I tell her. ‘Answer the questions and then we can all go home.’
She snorts. She says, ‘Home? Where’s my home? This is my home, officer. You like it?’
‘Listen,’ I tell her. ‘The body of a young girl was found up in Shiba Park, up behind Zōjōji. It had been there a while and it is impossible to identify…’
Now they are listening to me, smoking my cigarettes, sweating like pigs and fanning their thighs; the pictures in their heads, the pictures behind their eyes –
The Dead …
‘This advertisement was in one of her pockets, so we are here to see if you can identify her, help us put a name to her body…’
‘So how did she die?’ asks one of the girls –
The picture in her head, behind her eyes …
‘Raped and then throttled,’ I say –
The pictures of the Dead …
There is silence here now, behind the split curtain in this kitchen-cum-waiting room, silence but for the giggles and the groans from upstairs rooms, the panting and the pounding –
Ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton …
‘Who says she came here first?’ asks the mama. ‘Poor thing might have been on her way here when…’
‘That’s what I’ve come to find out, to talk to you about…’
‘But you haven’t given us a description,’ she says. ‘How would I know if she was here or not?’
I ask her again, ‘So do you do the interviews yourself?’
‘Not just me,’ she says. ‘Me and Mr. Kim do them.’
‘Is that him outside?’ I ask her. ‘Mr. Kim?’
‘He’s a Kim,’ she laughs. ‘But not him.’
‘Where’s the real Mr. Kim then?’
‘He’ll be here tomorrow.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Recruiting.’
‘Where?’
‘Where? Where? Where?’ she laughs and rolls her eyes. She puts out her cigarette. She picks up a mirror. She primps her perm –
I think about her all the time. I think about her all the time …
‘Ninety per cent of all the girls that come through our door have come from the International Palace,’ she says. ‘Now that doesn’t mean your dead girl did, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t…’
I turn to Detective Nishi. I tell him, ‘Please describe the body and the clothing of the victim for this lady.’
But Detective Nishi is miles away, lost between the breasts and thighs of these girls. Now Nishi blushes, reaches for his notebook and stammers, ‘The victim was approximately seventeen or eighteen years old with shoulder-length permed hair, wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles…’
‘We’re all corpses then,’ laughs the mama. ‘All ghosts…’
‘It could be anyone,’ says another one of the girls –
Made of tears. Made of tears. Made of tears …
‘She’s all of us,’ says the mama. ‘Every woman in Japan.’
Tokyo, 87°, moonless & cloudy
The three of us leave the Salon Matsu, leave Kanda and walk back towards Headquarters. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. This time we walk back along the other side of the tracks, the Nihonbashi side, on the opposite side to the old Imperial Palace and the new. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. This side we don’t have to show our notebooks –
There are no Victors here. No white stars. No lights at all –
From Sotobori to the Yaesu entrance of Tokyo station –
Five trucks in a row. Five trucks full of Formosans –
But not all Formosans, some are Japanese…
Kimura looks at Nishi. Nishi looks at me –
No radio. No telephone. No car…
‘Boss?’ shouts Nishi. ‘What are you doing, Boss? Boss?’
I am walking towards the five trucks. I am taking out my police notebook. I am holding up my ID. I am approaching the passenger door of the first truck. I’m reaching up and opening the door of the truck and shouting, ‘I want you out of these trucks now!’
But now I’m looking up at a submachine gun –
Skin to the metal, metal to the skin…
Fingers on the trigger of the gun –
Bullet through my skin…
I am waiting to die –
Praying…
But the bullet never comes; not yesterday, not today and not tomorrow; not over there and not back here –
I can’t die. I can’t die…
It’s not a bullet to the gut that sends me sprawling back across the ground, it’s a boot to the gut as the trucks speed away down Sotobori-dōri towards Shimbashi –
Towards Senju Akira –
I’m already dead.
*
By the time I have got back to my feet, by the time Kimura, Nishi and I have started to run, by the time we have reached Headquarters, by the time we have repeated and reported our story four or five times, by the time we have been given a telephone that works, by the time we have requested reinforcements, by the time the reinforcements have been raised, by the time the reinforcements have been deployed, by the time we all get down to the Shimbashi Market –
It’s too late…
The Formosan trucks have been and gone –
The shots have been fired –
The blood spilled –
The battle over –
For now –
‘Kuso Formosan shits,’ Senju’s men, the former Matsuda men, all cursing. ‘Kuso American shits. Kuso police shits. Kuso Formosan shits. Kuso American shits. Kuso police shits. Kuso …’
‘Kuso … Kuso … Kuso … Kuso…’
Two dead. Eight injured –
But not Senju Akira –
Never Senju –
Senju with a short sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, his sleeveless white undershirt and the top of his haramaki spotted with fresh blood –
‘Lucky I was elsewhere on business,’ says Senju. ‘A stray bullet here, a stray bullet there and then where would we be?’
Senju takes off his American sunglasses now –
Senju stood before his men, before his troops; the Sho gun of Shimbashi beneath the night sky, outside his emergency field headquarters; the emperor of all he surveys –
‘Where would you be, detective?’
I shrug my shoulders but I do not reply to him. I say nothing –
Nishi, Kimura and half of Atago are here with me tonight –
I am here as a policeman tonight. I am not here to beg…
More to the point,’ continues Senju. ‘Where were the police? Nowhere, that’s where. These Koreans, Formosans and Chinese, they try to walk all over us and where are you? Nowhere…
‘And what do you do? Nothing …’ he sighs –
I curse him. I curse him. I curse him…
‘Nothing but beg…’
The stall-holders of the New Life Market, all risen from their sleep, roused from their dreams, are lining up to give Senju their support and their supplies for the coming war, bowing as they offer him their best sake, meat and polished white rice –
I am here as a policeman…
‘Because if I’ve got money, if I’ve got cigarettes, if I’ve got alcohol or some special food in, then I can always find a policeman, I can always count on meeting one or tripping over one grovelling around on his hands and his knees, begging for sleeping pills…’
And I curse myself…
‘The Formosans are hardly walking all over you,’ I tell him. ‘They just want stalls in your New Life Market, just like they had stalls in your old Black Market, but you won’t give them any…’
But Senju is not listening. Senju is just speaking –
‘They act like the Victors but they won nothing! Beat no one! They didn’t fight and they didn’t win. They just got lucky! Lucky to be allowed over here and lucky to still be here…’
‘There weren’t only Formosans in those trucks,’ I tell him. ‘There were Japanese too; I know because I saw them myself.’
‘When you were taking their money to keep away?’
‘No one wants another war,’ I tell him. ‘Not now.’
‘Another war?’ spits Senju. ‘It’s the same war…’
I shake my head. ‘GHQ will close you down.’
‘See?’ he laughs. ‘It’s always the same war!’
‘Then the Formosans will have won it.’
‘The Formosans win?’ laughs Senju again. ‘Never, and I’ll tell you why, detective. Thousands of people depend on this market. If I let the Formosans or the Yankees close me down or drive me out then this market will die and if this market dies then so will the thousands of people who depend on it and depend on me…’
‘If they close you down,’ I say. ‘You’ve lost.’
‘Never! Never! Never!’ shouts Senju. ‘I have never lost. I have never been defeated and I never will be. Not by the kuso Formosans! Not by the kuso Koreans! Not by the kuso Chinese! Not by the kuso Yankees and not by the kuso police and the likes of you!
‘I’ve never lost! Never been defeated! And I never will be!’
‘So what are you going do?’ I ask him –
‘You kill one of mine,’ says Senju –
‘I’ll kill ten of yours, I swear!’
I look up at the night sky above us all. There are no stars out tonight. I shake my head again. I bow to him. I start to walk away –
‘See you later, detective,’ he shouts. ‘Don’t forget…’
Nishi and Kimura following behind me –
‘Because I never forget,’ he says –
‘I never forget a debt; not to the living and not to the dead.’
*
Men talk about the dead in their sleep. Men remember the dead in their sleep. Their fathers, their mothers, their wives and their lovers. Their family and friends, their colleagues and comrades. There are over one million urns containing the ashes of the war dead still unclaimed by their bereaved families. These urns contain the ashes from all ranks of the military and naval war dead. The First and Second Demobilization Bureaus who are responsible for the issuance of death notices and for the care of the dead say that many of the ashes have been transferred to their institution in a haphazard fashion and they are increasingly unable to verify whether all the ashes and remains of the war dead in their care actually belong to those of military personnel. The Bureaus are also encountering numerous difficulties in returning the ashes of the dead to their relatives who have often moved from their former addresses or had them destroyed. Moreover, the absence of claimants is usually as a result of death –
Their stomachs empty, their dreams lost…
Up until this June, the Demobilization Bureaus also received a grant of fifteen yen for taking care of each individual urn. However, since June, these institutions have been deprived of this grant. Lack of these finances has made it impossible for the institutions to order the construction of new boxes for depositing the ashes. Presently, new boxes are still being made out of lumber in stock but the day will soon come when the ashes of the war dead will have to be returned to their relatives in ordinary plain brown wrapping paper –
They are hungry, they are starving…
Men talk about the dead in their sleep. Men remember the dead in their sleep; their fathers, their mothers, their wives and their lovers; their family and friends, their colleagues and comrades. Men talk about ghosts and demons in their sleep –
Their masters gone…
I have sat in this borrowed chair with my head on this borrowed desk through the rest of the night. I have closed my eyes but I have not slept. I open my eyes but I do not wake. I read their reports. I read old newspapers. Now the dawn is coming up but it still feels old. Dead. Like the last light at the beginning of a long night. Lost and dead. Not a new morning. No new mornings here. I sit up in my borrowed chair. I look around. No Fujita. I close my eyes again –
Tonight I will sleep. Tonight I will sleep. Tonight I will…
I open them. I look up at the uniform standing over me –
The uniformed officer has a telegram in his hand.
*
Four officers from Takanawa are unbuttoning their uniforms. The mosquitoes circle. The four officers strip down to their underwear. The mosquitoes attack. The four officers jump into the Shiba Canal. The water stinks. The four officers swim over to the wooden door floating in the canal. The water black. The four officers guide the door towards the side of the canal where we are all stood. In the sun. The chief nods. In the heat. The four officers turn over the door. I curse. The body of a drowned man, naked and bound to the door –
Hayashi Jo naked and bound to the back of the door…
Bound with his hands and feet nailed to the door –
His hands and feet then nailed to the door…
The door then thrown into the canal –
Hayashi face down in the water…
His mouth and lungs full –
He drowns as he floats…
Bound and nailed –
I kneel before him. I say, ‘Hayashi Jo of the Minpo paper.’
*
Was it Senju or Fujita? Nobody knows his name. Everybody knows his name. Fujita or Senju? Nobody cares. Everybody cares. Senju or Fujita? The day is night. The night is day. Fujita or Senju? Black is white. White is black. Senju or Fujita? The men are the women. The women are the men. Fujita or Senju? The brave are the frightened. The frightened are the brave. Senju or Fujita? The strong are the weak. The weak are the strong. Fujita or Senju? The good are the bad. The bad are the good. Senju or Fujita? Communists should be set free. Communists should be locked up. Fujita or Senju? Strikes are legal. Strikes are illegal. Senju or Fujita? Democracy is good. Democracy is bad. Fujita or Senju? The aggressor is the victim. The victim is the aggressor. Senju or Fujita? The winners are the losers. The losers are the winners. Fujita or Senju? Japan lost the war. Japan won the war. Senju or Fujita? The living are the dead. The dead are the living. Fujita or Senju? I am alive. I am dead –
Senju or Fujita? Fujita or Senju?
I am one of the lucky ones.
*
Two dead and eight injured down at Shimbashi; the body in the Shiba Canal; it has been a bad night and a bad morning. And the Victors want answers; the Victors have summoned the chief to the Public Safety Division. Now the chief wants answers; now the chief has summoned us all back to Metropolitan Police Headquarters –
The heads of all sections. The heads of all rooms…
‘There will be no gang wars,’ says the chief. ‘I’ll ask for the closure of all the markets. I’ll ask for Eighth Army reinforcements from GHQ. But there will be no gang wars in Tokyo…
‘They think they can do what they want,’ the chief continues. ‘But they don’t appreciate the help we give them. They don’t appreciate the protection we give them. They don’t appreciate the trouble we spare them. And all I ask for is peace.’
‘But it’s not our local gangs who started this,’ says Kanehara. ‘It’s the Formosans and the mainland Chinese muscling in…’
‘And the Koreans,’ adds Inspector Adachi –
‘And the Americans are protecting them,’ says Kanehara. ‘They let these immigrant people do what they want while they punish the ordinary tekiya who are just trying to run their stalls…’
‘And we can’t step in,’ says Adachi. ‘Because if the police are seen to step in on the side of the Japanese against the Formosans or the Koreans then we risk being purged for mistreating immigrants and reverting to our old Japanese ways, ignoring human rights and abandoning democratic freedoms but, if not us, if not the police, then who is there left but the gangs themselves to protect the human rights and democratic principles, the lives and livelihoods of the tekiya?’
‘Divide and conquer,’ says Kanehara. ‘Divide and rule.’
‘And I know all that and I will tell them that,’ says the chief. ‘But you tell your men in the gangs that they’ll have to choose…’
He is fighting for his rights, fighting for his freedoms…
‘Either open war,’ says the chief. ‘Or open markets.’
*
They will find Hayashi’s name. They will visit Hayashi’s address. They will talk to Hayashi’s family. They will visit Hayashi’s office. They will talk to Hayashi’s colleagues. They will find Hayashi’s stories. They will read Hayashi’s stories. They will talk to Hayashi’s contacts. They will find Hayashi’s notes. They will read Hayashi’s notes. They will talk to Hayashi’s snitches and they will tell them –
They will tell them my name and they will come for me –
Just like we have come today for Kodaira Yoshio –
Nothing moves on the streets of Shibuya. It is almost noon on the hottest day of the year. Nothing moves outside the house in Hanezawamachi. Ninety-one degrees in the shade now. Room #2 are here as back-up for Room #1. Pairs of men on every corner. Down every alleyway. In every doorway. Inspector Kai is in command. Inspector Kai has his whistle in his hand. Inspector Kai looks at his watch again. Chiku-taku. Inspector Kai puts his whistle to his lips –
Through the front door. Up the steps. Into the second floor room where Kodaira Yoshio is sleeping naked beneath a mosquito net, his wife covering her breasts, reaching for their child –
Kodaira Yoshio dragged out from under the net by his feet onto the mats and back down the stairs –
Kodaira pulling on his trousers. Kodaira pulling on his shirt. Kodaira buttoning up his trousers. Buttoning up his shirt as he goes, putting on his army boots –
In the back of the car. Another middle-aged man. Kodaira rubs the top of his skull. Kodaira scratches his balls. In the back of the car. Face gaunt. Kodaira blinks. Kodaira rubs his eyes. In the back of the car. Hair thinning. Kodaira grins. Kodaira laughs. In the back of the car. Kodaira looks like Kai, Kodaira looks like Kanehara and he looks like me…
Like me…
There are press all over the road and the steps outside the Atago police station. Kodaira accepts a cigarette. The car turns back onto Sakurada-dōri and then right onto Meguro-dori. Kodaira chats about the weather. The car turns right again onto Yamate-dōri and then follows the Meguro River along to the Meguro police station –
Kodaira speaks with maturity. He speaks with authority —
This is where Kodaira Yoshio will be interrogated –
Kodaira is grinning now. Kodaira laughing —
This is where Kodaira will confess.
But the Meguro police are angry. The Meguro police have been used for legwork since the two bodies were found in Shiba Park. Now the Meguro police are being kicked out of their own offices. In the dark and out of the loop, the Meguro police sulk and sweat –
Two men from Room #1 take Kodaira up the stairs –
They give him tea. They give him a cigarette –
Then they leave him to drink and to smoke –
They leave him to wait and to think.
Chief Inspector Kanehara, Inspector Kai and the rest of Room #1 take over another office down the corridor, clearing desks and emptying drawers, moving files and stealing pencils –
The Meguro police just watching and cursing, left sulking and sweating, in the dark and out of the loop –
I take an empty chair at the back by the window as Kanehara and Kai outline the strategy for the interview, the questions they will ask and the questions they won’t –
Then Adachi is back, back with a telegram in his hand and a smile on his lips. ‘This just got here from Nikkō. He’s killed before.’
‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember…?’
Kai is on his feet now. Kai saying, ‘Come on! Let’s go!’
‘Did you find that file, inspector? The Miyazaki file…’
‘Slowly, slowly,’ smiles Kanehara. ‘Step by step.’
*
I follow Adachi, Kanehara and Kai. Down the corridor. Into the interrogation room. No one invites me. No one refuses me. I sit by the door. I say nothing. The room is bright. Bare but for a table and six chairs. Adachi, Kanehara and Kai sit across the table from Kodaira, the stenographer to one side with a pen and some paper –
Kodaira Yoshio with his hands on the table, smiling –
Inspector Kai asks him, ‘When were you born?’
‘In the thirty-eighth year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji,’ says Kodaira. ‘In the first month, on the twenty-eighth day.’
That is the twenty-eighth of January, 1905 …
Kai asks, ‘And where were you born?’
‘Tochigi Prefecture,’ says Kodaira.
‘Where in Tochigi Prefecture?’
‘Kami Tsuga-gun, Nikkō-chō, Ōaza-Hosō.’
‘Are you the eldest son of your family?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m the sixth son.’
‘Is your father still alive?’
‘No.’
‘How did your father die?’
‘Brain haemorrhage.’
‘And when did he die?’
‘Ten years ago.’
Kai nods. Kai asks, ‘What kind of work did your father do?’
‘Well, he used to have land, a farm and an inn,’ says Kodaira. ‘But he drank heavily, bought women and gambled and lost it all.’
‘So he was a bankrupt?’ asks Kai. ‘Unemployed?’
‘No,’ says Kodaira. ‘He always worked. His last job was working as an oil-feeder at an iron-railings factory…’
Kai asks, ‘What about your eldest brother?’
‘He’s dead too,’ says Kodaira.
‘When did he die?’
‘This year.’
‘And what was his job?’
‘Nothing steady,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘He used to work in the copper-smelting factory in Nikkō. Then he left that and came to Tokyo but I don’t know what he did here. I never saw him in Tokyo.’
Kai asks, ‘So who is the head of your family now?’
‘It’ll be my other elder brother, I suppose,’ shrugs Kodaira. ‘But I never see them. I never really go back there now.’
‘But you still have family in Nikkō-chō?’
Kodaira nods. Kodaira says, ‘Yes.’
‘Let’s talk a little bit about you,’ says Inspector Kai now. ‘You were born in Nikkō—chō? Is that where you went to school?’
‘I graduated from school in Nikkō,’ says Kodaira. ‘Yes.’
‘And then what did you do?’ asks Kai. ‘After school?’
‘I left home and I moved down here to Tokyo.’
‘And so when was that? How old were you?’
‘I was about fourteen years old, I think.’
‘So that would be when?’ calculates Inspector Kai. ‘About the seventh year of Taishō. Does that sound about right?’
‘It sounds right,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But I can’t remember exactly. I know I was about fourteen though.’
‘And so where did you work?’
‘At a steel works in Ikebukuro,’ he says. ‘The Toyo Metals Corporation. But I didn’t work there for very long…’
‘Why was that?’ asks Kai. ‘Were you fired?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘I’d found a better job.’
‘Which was what? Where?’
‘The Kameya Grocery.’
‘The one in Ginza?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a very famous store,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘And so how long did you work there?’
‘Just two years.’
‘Why?’
‘I just got bored of working at the Grocery,’ says Kodaira. ‘The hours were too long, the pay was too poor and the work itself was just fetching and carrying, lifting boxes and so on…’
Kai asks, ‘And so what did you do then?’
‘I went back to Nikkō.’
‘Back home?’
‘Yes.’
‘And so what year is this now?’ calculates Kai again. ‘When you left Tokyo? Three years later? Tenth year of Taishō?’
‘Round about then,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘Yes.’
‘And did you have a job back home?’
‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘I worked for the Furukawa Company.’
‘This is the big copper-smelting works, yes?’
‘Where my brother had worked, yes.’
‘How long did you work there?’
‘I’ve worked there twice now,’ says Kodaira. ‘The first time I worked there until I enlisted.’
‘When was that?’
‘That was the sixth month of the twelfth year of Taishō.’
‘1923 then,’ says Kai. ‘Before the Great Earthquake.’
‘Yes,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘I had a lucky escape.’
‘Were you in the army or the navy?’
‘I volunteered for the navy,’ he says. ‘And I enlisted in the Marine Corps at Yokosuka.’
‘As what?’
‘First I was trained as an engineer on the Yakumo training ship, then I was stationed on the warships Yamashiro, Kongō and Manshu and I was also on the I-Gō submarine.’
‘You were always an engineer?’
‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Later I was an actual fighting marine. I was a member of the Ryojun Defence Force and then with the Rikusen Tai marines stationed in Shandong.’
‘And so you saw combat then?’
‘Of course,’ he laughs.
‘So you must have fought during the Jinan Incident?’
‘Of course,’ he says again. ‘During the Jinan Incident itself I was part of the initial assault on the Northern Railway Depot and then I was part of the defence of the Nissei Bōseki Company…’
‘And so you must have made a number of kills?’
‘Naturally,’ he smiles. ‘In Jinan I bayoneted six Chinese soldiers to death and then there were others…’
‘How long did you serve?’
‘I served my six years and then I was discharged as a petty officer, first class, and I received the White Paulownia medal of the Order of the Rising Sun.’
Inspector Kai says, ‘Congratulations.’
Kodaira bows his head.
Inspector Kai hands Kodaira a cigarette and then we all stand up and leave him to smoke –
In peace…
In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Adachi stares at the wall; Kanehara reads the telegram from Nikkō; Kai smokes –
Then Chief Inspector Adachi turns to me and smiles and asks, ‘You served in China too, didn’t you, inspector?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I was in the army.’
‘And how old are you now?’
‘I’m forty-one years old.’
‘The same age then.’
*
The light is already beginning to fade now. The shadows falling from the wall to the floor. Kodaira has finished his cigarette. Kodaira is looking at his fingernails. I sit back down by the door again. I say nothing again. Adachi, Kanehara and Kai sit back opposite Kodaira –
Inspector Kanehara leans forward in his chair and asks him, ‘So when you were discharged, you went back to Nikkō again?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I went back to work for Furukawa.’
‘And how was civilian life after the navy?’
‘It was good for a time…’
‘And why was that?’
‘I got a wife.’
Kanehara asks, ‘And so this was your first wife?’
‘Yes. My first.’
‘Not your present wife?’
‘No,’ says Kodaira.
‘So how did you meet your first wife?’
‘The manager of the factory introduced her to me,’ he says. ‘She was his sister’s child, his niece.’
‘How old were you both?’
‘She was twenty-one and I was maybe twenty-eight.’
‘And so what happened?’
‘We lived together for about six months,’ he says. ‘But then she went back to her parents.’
‘Why was that?’
‘She went to help them plant rice but she never came back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because her family wanted me to divorce her.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I’d had an affair with another woman and this woman had become pregnant.’
‘So you must have been happy then to divorce your wife?’
There is something now, something in his eyes…
‘No,’ he says. ‘I was humiliated.’
In his eyes something flashes, in his eyes…
‘And so what did you do?’
Torchlight in the dark…
‘You already know.’
Death…
Inspector Kanehara looks down at the piece of paper on the table before him. Kanehara nods and then says, ‘But please tell us again. In your own words. Tell us what happened…’
‘I went back to their house.’
‘Whose house was this?’
‘Her family’s house.’
‘When was this?’
‘Midnight on the first day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the reign of the Emperor Shōwa…’
July 1, 1932… ‘
And…’
‘I left my own house at nine o’clock in the morning. I went over to the house of my wife’s family. I checked the house out carefully in the daylight and then I waited until nightfall.’
‘And…’
‘I broke into their house at midnight.’
‘And…’
‘I went from room to room.’
‘And…’
‘I hit them as they slept.’
‘With?’
‘An iron bar.’
‘You still remember the iron bar?’ asks Inspector Kanehara. ‘Can you describe this iron bar for me?’
‘Of course, I can remember it,’ says Kodaira. ‘The iron bar was about eighty centimetres long, five centimetres in diameter and it weighed about four kilograms.’
‘How many of her family did you hit?’
‘I think it was either six or seven.’
‘How many did you kill?’
‘Just her father.’
Inspector Kanehara nods. ‘And so you were sentenced to fifteen years by the Tokyo High Court in February 1933…’
‘Fifteen years,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But later it was reduced.’
‘So how long were you in prison then?’
‘About six and a half years.’
‘In Kosuge? In Tokyo?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you were released under the Imperial Amnesty of 1940?’
‘Yes,’ says Kodaira. ‘By the mercy of the Emperor.’
‘And so what did you do upon your release?’
‘I went to the hot springs in Kusatsu.’
‘How long did you stay there?’
‘About half a year.’
‘Did you work?’
‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I was recuperating from prison.’
‘And then you came back to work in Tokyo?’
‘I worked as a boiler-man, yes.’
‘For which companies?’
‘Four or five,’ he says. ‘But I can’t remember the names of them all. This was before I went to Saipan.’
‘How did you get that job?’
‘I was recruited.’
‘Despite your criminal record.’
Kodaira Yoshio shrugs. Kodaira smiles. He says, ‘They never asked me and I never mentioned it.’
‘And so what kind of work did you do in Saipan?’
‘I worked in construction, building a runway.’
‘And how long did you work in Saipan?’
‘I was lucky again,’ he says. ‘I left in the April of 1942.’
‘And so you came back to work in Tokyo again?’
‘I worked for Nihon Steel in Kamata, yes.’
‘And for how long was that?’
‘About half a year.’
‘And then?’
‘I think it was then I worked for Suzuki Seihyo in Ōmori,’ says Kodaira. ‘Maintenance work on the refrigerators.’
‘And for how long was that job?’
‘Again about half a year.’
‘And then what?’
Now Kodaira pauses for a moment but then shrugs and says, ‘I was assigned to the Naval Clothing Department near Shinagawa.’
‘We’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember?’
‘Who assigned you to work in Naval Clothing?’ ‘Did you find that file, inspector…?’
‘I was assigned to the Naval Supplies Department by the local Labour Mobilization Office in Gotanda…’
‘And they assigned you as…?’
‘As a boiler technician.’
‘And when was this?’
‘August, 1944.’
‘And then?’
Kodaira shrugs again, then says, ‘I got married. I had a kid.’
‘This is with your present wife then?’ asks Kanehara.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you meet your new wife?’
‘Through a friend.’
‘And when did you get married?’
‘Last February.’
‘And you were still working for the Naval Supplies?’
‘I was then,’ he says. ‘Until June last year.’
‘What happened in June last year?’
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I just quit.’
‘Why?’
‘I had evacuated my wife and baby to her family home in Toyama and I was renting a house in Wakagi-chō in Shibuya…’
‘This is the same house that you’re in now?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘The old place we were renting burnt down in the May air raids, so that was when I decided to quit my job at the Naval Supplies and go live with my wife and kid in Toyama.’
‘And could you find any work in Toyama?’
‘We were staying with my wife’s older brother and he helped me get a job as a security guard.’
‘Where was that?’
‘At Fuji Seikō —zai in Higashi Toyama.’
‘So when did you come back here?’
‘About a week after the surrender.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Well, I’d borrowed some money from a broker,’ he says. ‘To set myself up selling Toyama Medicine Boxes door to door.’
‘And so how long did that job last?’
‘Not very long,’ he laughs. ‘Just until I paid back the money to the broker. In November last year…’
‘And so when did you start working at the Shinchū Gun laundry, for the Occupation Army?’
‘Well, my wife and my kid came back to Tokyo in December last year,’ he says. ‘So then I must have started at the Shinchū Gun laundry in March this year.’
‘Thank you very much,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Very cooperative. Now we’re going to give you a little rest and some tea and then we’re going to come back in here and we’re going to ask you some more questions.’
Kodaira Yoshio smiles. Kodaira nods his head.
‘But these questions won’t be about your life,’ says Kanehara. These questions won’t be about your family. These questions won’t be about your work. These questions will be different questions –
‘Do you know what these different questions will be about?’
Kodaira has stopped smiling. Kodaira is shaking his head –
Kanehara is smiling now. ‘But I think you do know…’
Kodaira shaking his head again. Again and again –
‘These questions will be about Midorikawa…’
Again and again. He shakes his head –
‘Midorikawa Ryuko…?’
Again and again –
Now Kanehara says, ‘Take off your shirt and your trousers and we’ll be back soon.’
In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Adachi stares at the wall again; Kanehara reads back over the notes; Kai smokes –
Now Chief Inspector Adachi turns to me again and asks, ‘Does the Naval Clothing Department in Shinagawa ring any bells?’
‘Not for me,’ I say. ‘Why, does it ring any bells for you?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘But I’m deaf to all bells these days.’
*
It is dark now. The table has gone. The chairs have gone. The stenographer too. The cigarettes are all smoked. The tea all drunk. The room all shadows. Ten policemen file into the room. Ten policemen with bamboo sticks. Ten policemen opposite Kodaira Yoshio. Kodaira Yoshio stood in his underwear. Kodaira Yoshio with his head bowed. Kodaira Yoshio with his tears on the floor –
Chief Inspector Adachi steps towards him –
Adachi says, ‘In your own words…’
‘I met Midorikawa Ryuko in Shinagawa station about two months ago. There had been a train accident that day and so the platform was crowded with people waiting. I saw Midorikawa Ryuko walking along the platform. I had some bread with me from the Shinchū Gun. As she walked past, I offered her half of the bread and she took it and ate it there and then. I felt sorry for her and so I gave her the other half and she stayed near me…’
Inspector Adachi says, ‘So it was Midorikawa who followed you. You didn’t follow her…’
‘We got on the train for Meguro together and while we were on the train I put my hand up her skirt and stroked her cunt. Ryuko didn’t object and when we got off the train she copied down my address from my pass. She then visited my house three times…’
Adachi says, ‘So she obviously liked your hand up her skirt. She must have liked you playing with her cunt…’
‘I met Ryuko again on the sixth of August at ten o’clock at the east entrance of Shinagawa station. I’d told her I could help her find a job with the Shinchū Gun but that she would first need to take a written test at the barracks; that to enter the barracks we would have to get a letter of permission; that to get the letter we would have to go to the American Club in Marunouchi. This was all a lie. But I told her to follow me and I took her up the hill in Shiba…’
‘But once again it was Midorikawa who followed you, yeah? You didn’t drag her up there, did you?’
‘We found a quiet spot and we sat down together, side by side, and we began to eat our bentō lunches, side by side. But all the time we were eating, I couldn’t stop staring at her tits, smelling her woman’s smell and all the time we were eating, I really wanted to have her, to have her there and then, but she said she didn’t want to do it then, said she didn’t want to do it there. I was angry and I was frustrated now and so I slapped her face and then I stripped her underwear and I had her then and had her there, even though I knew it was wrong. I just lost control…’
‘But you’d been down there before, you’d had your fingers up her skirt and in her cunt…’
‘Then after I’d finished, she just wouldn’t stop crying and crying so I strangled her.’
‘She’d never been upset before, had she? She’d still come to meet you, hadn’t she?’
‘I strangled her with her own haramaki.’
‘You’d not planned it that way…’
‘Then I stripped the body and…’
‘You were afraid…’
‘I ran away.’
*
In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai congratulate Chief Inspector Adachi. Case closed. Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai tell Chief Inspector Adachi what a great job he did. Case closed. In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Chief Inspector Adachi congratulates Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai. Case closed. Chief Inspector Adachi tells Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai what a great job they did. Case closed. Case closed. Case closed…
They will eat good food tonight, their glasses raised –
They will sing old songs, their songs of victory –
‘You saw how it was done,’ Kai tells me. ‘Good luck.’
*
They have switched on the light. They have brought back the table. They have given Kodaira Yoshio back his chair. They have given Kodaira Yoshio back his clothes. They have given Kodaira Yoshio tea to drink. They have given Kodaira Yoshio cigarettes to smoke –
Kodaira smiling. Kodaira grinning. Kodaira laughing…
I ask him, ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’
‘Like what?’ he asks. ‘Like about Midorikawa?’
‘That’s not the first time you’ve killed, is it?’
‘You know that,’ he says. ‘I told you.’
‘Then please tell me again…’
‘Why?’ he laughs.
‘Tell me!’
He shrugs his shoulders. He says, ‘I killed my father-in-law.’
‘And?’
He says, ‘And I’ve just told you I killed Midorikawa.’
‘And?’
He smiles now. ‘And I killed six Chinese soldiers.’
‘And?’
He shakes his head. He asks me, ‘And what?’
‘And how many more have you killed?’
He asks, ‘Killed where? In China?’
‘Just tell me about the others…’
Kodaira asks, ‘Were you a soldier, detective? Did you fight?’
‘I’m not talking about China,’ I say. ‘What about here?’
But he asks me again, ‘Did you fight, detective?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘In the army. In China.’
He says, ‘Then you saw what I saw. You did what I did.’
Half-thoughts form. In the half-light. Half-things move…
‘I’m not talking about China,’ I tell him. ‘There was another body found in Shiba Park. There was another murdered girl.’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Kodaira shrugs his shoulders again. He shakes his head –
‘Another dead girl aged seventeen or eighteen…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Kodaira shakes his head. He bows his head –
‘In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress,’ I tell him. ‘A white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Kodaira shrugs his shoulders. Kodaira shakes his head. Kodaira bows his head. Kodaira says, ‘It wasn’t me, detective…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
I get up to go –
Ton-ton…
‘I’m very sorry,’ says Kodaira. ‘But it wasn’t me, soldier.’
*
I stay away from Headquarters. They will have found his name. They will be having their parties to celebrate. They will have talked to his family. They will be eating good food. They will have found his office. They will be raising their glasses. They will have talked to his colleagues. They will be taking off their ties. They will have found his stories. They will be tying their ties round their foreheads. They will have talked to his contacts. They will be singing their songs. They will have found his notes. Their songs of endeavour. They will have talked to his snitches. Their songs of courage. They will have found my name. Their songs of battle. They will be coming for me …
Case closed. Case closed. Case closed…
Be singing their songs of victory –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku…
The night is heavy; the heat is dark; the Shimbashi New Life Market deserted except for a few stall-holders here and there, standing in small groups, watching the reed screens being torn down, drinking mechiru-arukōru and reading the signs while they still can:
Closed for the time being. Efforts being made to reopen …
No pots. No pans. No sardines or second-hand suits –
No tinned fruit or soldiers’ boots –
No Victors on the stairs tonight –
No red apple to my lips…
‘The boss has been waiting for you,’ says the goon in the new suit as two other goons in two other new suits take an arm each and march me past the empty mats and broken stalls, down the alleys and the lanes, through the shadows and the arches to the old wooden stairs and the wide-open door at the top of those stairs –
I wipe my face. Then I wipe my neck –
Now I walk up the stairs –
Into the light –
Senju Akira is sat cross-legged before the long low polished table, bare-chested with his trousers unbuttoned at the waist and a clean white haramaki belt around his belly –
Senju calmer than before –
Before the storm…
‘I attended a very interesting meeting today,’ he tells me –
There are ten police revolvers laid out on the long table…
‘All of the gang bosses and all of the police chiefs…’
There is ammunition for them. There are short swords…
‘I impressed upon them all that the traditional friendship between the bosses and the followers should remain untouched, but I agreed that the system itself should be completely altered otherwise it will not survive in this age of democracy…’
He picks up a gun. He picks up a cloth. He begins to clean…
‘I advocated that all of the gangs should abandon the practice of living upon protection money and other such outdated and parasitic practices…’
Bit by bit, piece by piece, he wipes, he polishes, he oils…
‘I advocated that the markets be drastically democratized and reorganized into modern business corporations with even their own labour unions…’
He sorts through the ammunition, he sifts…
‘I told the gang bosses and the police chiefs that the old Shimbashi Black Market has already been transformed into the Shimbashi New Life Market and that the old Matsuda gang has now been reorganized into the Kantō Matsuda Group, a modern commercial organization under my presidency…’
He chooses. He loads…
‘That all our members have doffed their traditional clothes for sack coats like all other white-collar workers. That unemployment insurance is being introduced…’
One bullet, two bullets, three bullets, four…
‘Relief money for workers who are sick…’
Four bullets, five bullets, six more…
‘And help for the families of the dead…’
He closes the chamber of the gun…
‘I told them that we were here to work with the police, shoulder to shoulder, brother to brother, Japanese to Japanese. I told them we were here to help the police…’
Now he cocks the gun …
‘But I also told them that we would never lie down, that we would never back down in the face of threats and intimidation from the Formosans and Koreans…’
Bang. Bang. Bang…
‘Never. Ever…’
Bang. Bang…
Now Senju aims the gun in my face. Now Senju asks me, ‘What do you think of that then, detective?’
Bang…
‘Hayashi Jo is dead,’ I tell him. ‘They pulled him out of the Shiba Canal early this morning.’
Bound and nailed…
Senju lowers the revolver. He smiles. ‘That’s lucky for you.’
‘How’s it lucky for me?’ I ask. ‘There’ll be an inquiry.’
‘But it’s lucky you gave me the name of a dead man.’
‘He wasn’t a dead man when I gave you his name.’
‘So you say now,’ laughs Senju. ‘So you say.’
‘But if I knew he was dead, why would I give you his name?’
Senju raises the revolver again. Senju says, ‘Because dead men don’t say very much, do they, Detective Inspector Minami?’
I curse him. I curse myself. And I curse my dependence…
I bow before him. I apologize to him. I tell him, ‘Hayashi was nailed to a door. I thought you might have killed him.’
‘So you came down here to arrest me, did you, detective?’
I bow to him again. I apologize to him again. I shake my head and tell him, ‘No. I came down here for the Calmotin.’
Senju reaches under the table. Senju brings out a small box –
‘And here you are,’ he says. ‘Sweet dreams, detective.’
I apologize again. I thank him. I take the box.
Senju Akira throws some banknotes across the table at me. Now Senju says, ‘But I still need a name, detective. Understand?’
I nod. I bow again. I apologize again. I thank him again –
‘A name from the living, not the dead…’
I start to shuffle backwards across the mats but then I ask, ‘What are you going to do about the market? About the Formosans?’
‘They tell me they’ve not finished with me,’ laughs Senju.
‘And what did you tell them?’ I ask. ‘What did you say?’
Senju raises the gun again. ‘I just told them the truth –
‘I told them I’ve not even begun yet…’
*
We have not found her name. I stay away from Atago police station. I stay away from Room #2. We have not talked to her family. My men will not be eating good food. My men will not be raising their glasses. We have not connected her to Kodaira. They will not be taking off their ties. They will not be singing their songs of victory. We have not got a confession. They will be asleep at their borrowed desks. Their stomachs will still be empty, their dreams still lost –
Our case not closed. Our case never closed…
I push my way off the train. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I go through the ticket gate at Mitaka. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I follow the telegraph poles down the road to my usual restaurant, half-way between the station and my house –
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
‘There have been more men looking for you,’ says the master. ‘They’ve been in here almost every night…’
No one is who they say they are…
I shrug my shoulders. I take off my hat. I order yakitori and a whisky. I put the glass to my lips. I knock it back –
No one is who they seem to be…
‘In here every night asking questions…’
It burns. I cough. I order another –
‘About your wife and children…’
I leave it. I leave the bar –
I walk and then I run –
I run up the road –
The house is dark. The house is silent. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. I take out my key and I open the door. The rotting mats. The house smells of boiled radish. The shredded doors. The house smells of DDT. The fallen walls. The house smells of pain –
The pain I have brought them. The pain I have left them…
I place the money and the food in the genkan —
The money and the food; the blood money…
I step back outside. I close the door again –
The blood money and the blood food…
I turn away. I walk away –
The tears in my eyes…
I hear the door open –
Tears of blood…
I start to run, to run away, away again.
*
I think about her all the time. Her head slightly to the right. In a white half-sleeved chemise. I think about her all the time. Her right arm outstretched. In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress. I think about her all the time. Her left arm at her side. In her pink socks. I think about her all the time. Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Her white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. I think about her all the time. My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs –
‘I look like bones,’ says Yuki, in the half-light –
In the half-light. I open the box of Calmotin –
I swallow some pills. In the half-light –
The dead are the living, the living are…
In the half-light. I close my eyes –
‘Does this umbrella become me…?’
‘I can’t remember the umbrella,’ I tell her. ‘But I remember your hair, your freshly dressed chignon tied up in threads.’
‘And you followed me,’ she smiles. ‘You followed me.’
Another flash of lightning. Another clap of thunder…
‘You were afraid,’ I say. ‘You reached for my hand.’
‘Worried you were lost. Worried you would lose me.’
She turns down the alleyway, crosses the little bridge over the ditch and waits for me before the reed awnings of her row-house…
‘You returned my umbrella then beat the rain from my coat.’
‘Your Western clothes were really very wet,’ she laughs –
The thunder is in retreat now but the rain falls harder still, bouncing off the buildings and our bodies in a shower of stones…
‘You were worried about my clothes, so you invited me in.’
‘I was only being polite,’ she says. ‘What else could I do?’
She leads me into a back room screened off by a lattice of unpolished wood and a curtain of long ribbons and little bells…
‘You wiped your bare feet while I untied my foreign shoes.’
‘But you wouldn’t take your coat off,’ she laughs again –
And sits me down at the long charcoal brazier as she then begins to make tea, her left knee drawn up to her left breast…
‘Was that well-water?’ I ask her again. ‘Or tap-water?’
‘You were more worried about typhoid than syphilis,’ she says. ‘Is that why you never drink the tea in my house…?’
Now she wipes oil from her forehead with a piece of clear paper and then goes off through the curtains to the wash basin…
‘You would have been twenty-three or twenty-four,’ I say. ‘And the skin on your face had been spoilt and dulled by cosmetics.’
‘But my lips were red,’ she says. ‘And my eyes were clear.’
I can still see her through the ribbons, beyond the bells, bowing to wash her face, her kimono pulled back over her shoulders, her shoulders and breasts even whiter than her face…
‘You were always alone,’ I say. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’
In the half-light, she does not answer me. In the half-light –
Her face to the wall. To the paper. To the stains –
In the half-light, Yuki sleeps. In the half-light –
‘Black! Black! Here come the bombs!’
I cover my ears. I close my eyes –
‘Cover your ears! Close your eyes!’
In the half-light, she is startled and wakes, clutching her hair. Now she sees a length of her hair has wound itself around my neck –
‘My hair only grows when we sleep together,’ she smiles –
I swallow some more pills. I close my eyes again –
‘But I don’t want to sleep,’ she whispers into my mouth. ‘Why do we have to sleep? Why should lovers ever have to sleep?’
‘A love that never sleeps would send us mad.’
‘We never slept before,’ she says. ‘When sleep was selfish.
When sleep was for the demons. When sleep was for the dead…’