Banzai! Ninety Calmotin, ninety-one. Four in the morning, the eastern sky is whitening. The road wet with dew, we march towards the hospital. The streets are deserted, the Sun in the Blue Sky flag already fallen. Lieutenant Shigefuji leads the charge inside the hospital. The Chinks robbed the Japanese. Nurses in white cower before us, patients still lain in their beds. The Chinks raped the Japanese. Muddy boots now jump upon the beds, upon the white uniforms. The Chinks murdered the Japanese. A child stabbed against a wall, blood gushing from his chest, crouches on the floor. Masaki, Banzai! A pale woman sleeping in her bed, mouth open, never to awaken. Daddy, Banzai! We kick the corpses of the Chinese dead as they would kick the corpses of our dead. Banzai! Tomorrow the main units will move out but we shall remain. Acacia leaves fly down the streets. To keep the peace. In the dust and the dirt. To maintain law and order. On the yellow wind. Among the corpses. One hundred Calmotin, one hundred and one. Kasahara and I transport the three bandits by rickshaw down the T’ai-ma-lu Road. The old mother grows weary. The first bandit groans. A cigarette! Give me a cigarette! Their arms are twisted behind them, their legs locked with large shackles. Beggars and coolies, Germans and Japanese swarm around the rickshaw. Waiting for the return of her beloved child. The second bandit cries. Give me a P’ao-t’ai-pai! No cheap shit! The crowd pour wine into the mouths of the bandits. The rickshaws enter the square in front of the station. The young wife adorned in red. The third bandit screams. The rickshaw pullers lower their staffs. Soldiers push back the black crowds. Kasahara and I order the three men to be dragged out of the carriages. Keeps a lonely watch over the empty bed. The eldest bandit begins to sing a song of war. Sons of bitches! Did I murder anyone, you sons of bitches? These Chinks robbed Japanese settlers. Kneel! I shout. Go ahead and do it! I’m not scared! These Chinks raped Japanese settlers. Turn to the west! I shout. Bring me pork dumplings! Give me pork dumplings! These Chinks murdered Japanese settlers. The crowd surges forward again. That fat bastard cries like a little baby. The smell of garlic, the metallic whispers. Do it! Do it! I give the order. Two soldiers are covered in steaming blood as the headless corpse pitches forward. Hurrah! Hurrah! My mouth full of bile. The crowd applaud. I swallow the bile. Hurrah! Hurrah! Three women, their feet bound in black, totter out of the crowd. Hurrah! Hurrah! The women carry peeled buns impaled on the ends of three long chopsticks. Don’t let her see! My mouth full of bile again. The three women press the three buns into the wounds of the three dead bandits. Don’t let her see! I swallow the bile. The white buns soak up the blood and turn red. Don’t let her see! My mouth fills again. The three women eat the three blood-soaked buns. Don’t let her see! I vomit behind a rickshaw. Yuan-na! A woman has fought her way through the crowds. Yuan-na! An older man checks her in his embrace. Yuan-na! He was innocent, she cries. It was the Japanese! It was the Japanese! One hundred and ten Calmotin, one hundred and eleven. Fields of pampas grass, mountains of pine woods. Down with Japanese Imperialism! Every wall of every house of every town
Tochigi Prefecture, 89°, very fine
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The sound of hammering, the hammering on a door –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I open my eyes. I don’t recognize this ceiling –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
Now I recognize this room, and this door –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I get up. No Ishida. I go to the door –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I don’t open it. ‘Who is it?’
‘The Kanuma police…’
I curse and I curse again …
I slide open the door –
‘I am Tachibana, the chief of police for Kanuma,’ says the small, fat, youngish man who now bows. ‘Pleased to meet you —’
His uniform too tight. His buttons polished too bright …
‘Detective Minami,’ I tell him. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Has he spoken to Tokyo? Has he heard about Fujita?
Tachibana says, ‘I am sorry to have woken you…’
‘Don’t apologize,’ I tell him. ‘It was difficult to sleep with the heat and all the insects. I should have been awake hours ago…’
Tachibana says, ‘We were expecting you in Kanuma but…’
‘My mistake again. I am sorry. I should have called you…’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ laughs Tachibana. ‘The telephones are often down; you probably wouldn’t have got through to us.’
He has not spoken to Tokyo, not heard about Fujita …
‘Have you met Detective Ishida yet?’ I ask him –
Tachibana shakes his head. ‘Your colleague?’
He hasn’t met Ishida, not spoken to Ishida …
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘He’s here somewhere…’
‘He might have gone for his breakfast…’
Now I ask Tachibana, ‘How did you know we were here?’
‘Inns are obliged to report all guests,’ laughs Tachibana again. ‘Even guests from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.’
Welcome to the countryside! Welcome to Tochigi!
I smile now and I nod and I say, ‘Of course…’
‘I’ll wait for you in the entrance, inspector.’
I bow again and I excuse myself. I turn back into the room –
The room dark. The windows and the screens still closed –
I close the door. No Ishida. I look at his folded-up futon –
His knapsack gone. I go over to my own bag. I open it –
I root around inside until I find the boxes and bottles –
I count all the pills. Enough. They are still there –
Now I lie back down. I close my eyes again –
I still itch and so I scratch. Gari-gari … I want to forget these dreams …
I sit back up again and I open up my bag again. In the half-light. I root around again until I find my notebook, until I find my pen. I cannot forget these dreams. I must write them down. In the half-light. These dreams, these half-things. I cannot forget. These things I dream, these dreams I remember; all these half-things I remember –
These things that don’t make sense, these things that do …
Now I put my notebook away and I put my pen away –
I go into the small toilet. I piss. I wash my face –
I get dressed. I itch and I scratch again –
Gari-gari. I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari …
I pick up my bag. I leave the room –
I walk down the corridor –
The corridor still dark …
Ishida is here now –
His knapsack …
Ishida sat at the low table in the entrance to the inn, talking with Chief Tachibana, nodding and smiling along to his conversation. They both stand up and bow when they see me and Detective Ishida says, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I went looking for breakfast without you…’
I no longer know who this Detective Ishida is. This man …
‘That’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘I must have needed the sleep.’
Has he spoken to Tokyo? About Fujita? About his orders?
‘I tried to wake you,’ nods Ishida. ‘But you were dead.’
This man I don’t know. This man I don’t recognize …
Now Tachibana asks me, ‘Would you like some breakfast?’
‘They have miso soup,’ says Ishida. ‘You should have it.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m not very hungry, thank you.’
Who is this man who calls himself Ishida?
Tachibana nods. But Tachibana says, ‘You’ve paid for the breakfast. You should eat something while we talk…’
‘I am fine, thank you,’ I tell him but this Chief Tachibana is already on his feet, walking over to the reception desk, banging on the wood and shouting for my breakfast to be brought out –
I don’t look at Ishida. Ishida doesn’t look at me –
No one is who they say they are …
Tachibana comes back over. Tachibana sits back down. Tachibana picks up his briefcase. Tachibana opens it up. Tachibana takes out two thin files. Tachibana places the two files on the table –
One marked Baba Hiroko, the other Numao Shizue —
‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ says the young maid, the same maid as last night, as she puts down a bowl of rice-porridge topped with a thin slice of pickle on the low table before me, then a second bowl of green leaves floating in some miso-flavoured water, and now places a pair of chipped chopsticks beside the two bowls of food –
I suddenly feel very hungry. I apologize to Tachibana and Ishida. I excuse myself as I begin to eat the cold porridge and the pickle, to wash them down with the tepid brown soup and leaves –
I am a stray dog, his house lost and his master gone …
I swallow. I say, ‘Tell us about Numao…’
‘She was a local Nikkō girl,’ he says, opening the file out on the table. ‘On the evening of the second of December last year, she told her family she was going to visit her friend’s house. She never arrived there and she never returned home. Just over one month later, on the third of January this year, her body was found –
‘Numao Shizue had been stabbed to death.’
I put down the chipped chopsticks. I wipe my mouth and I say, ‘I thought Numao was found on the thirtieth of December?’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Tachibana. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’
I ask, ‘Was there any evidence at all that she’d been raped?’
‘None,’ says Tachibana. ‘She was found fully clothed.’
I lean forward. I push the file away. ‘It’s not Kodaira.’
Tachibana bows his head. Tachibana nods his head –
I tell him, ‘Kodaira Yoshio only murders for sex.’
‘There are some other cases,’ he tells me –
I ask, ‘Do you have the files with you?’
‘No, they are back at Kanuma.’
Back at the police station …
‘All right,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you. We’ll take a look at them later but, for now, we have two requests to make of you…’
‘Please,’ he says. ‘We are here to help you…’
‘We’d like to visit a girl named Okayama whose mother is an acquaintance of Kodaira Yoshio. We’d like to talk to her and anybody else who may have met Kodaira up here. Then we’d like to examine the site where the body of Baba Hiroko was found…’
‘Of course,’ says Chief Tachibana, getting to his feet now. ‘These places are not far and I have a small truck we can use. I’ll bring it round to the front while you settle up with the inn.’
I nod my head. I say, ‘Thank you for your help.’
Tachibana gathers up the files from the table and puts them back in his briefcase. Tachibana then bows and leaves us.
I wipe my mouth again. I wipe my neck.
‘He seems very helpful,’ says Ishida.
‘Because he’s afraid,’ I tell him –
‘Afraid of what…’
‘Does he need a reason?’ I ask him. ‘This is Japan. This is the twenty-first year of Shōwa. The Year of the Dog –
‘Everybody is afraid, detective…’
Now Ishida suddenly asks, ‘What happened to your hair?’
I rub my scalp. I say, ‘I shaved it a few days ago…’
‘But it’s growing back grey,’ says Ishida.
I touch it again. I shrug my shoulders –
‘I almost didn’t recognize you.’
*
The truck is ancient and small and there is an old policeman in the driving seat in a frayed and soiled cap. Tachibana gestures for me to sit up in the front on the small seat to the left of the driver while he and Ishida climb into the back where there is some corrugated iron and what look to be carpenter’s tools. The driver starts the truck –
Now I hold on tight as off we set. No windscreen or hood, the daylight is blinding, my eyes squinting as the sunlight illuminates the Tochigi countryside; this Land of the Living. This Land of Plenty –
There are mountains. There are trees. There are fields –
There are leaves and there are flowers here –
There are rivers and there are streams –
There are greens and blues here –
In the Land of the Living –
There are colours.
*
The truck labours up the side of one small mountain and down its other side and then up another until it pulls up outside a detached house that faces out onto the road and we all climb out. There is a dog asleep in the shade of the wall but it is still tethered to a pole –
It is not a stray, its house not lost, its master here …
Black and large, better fed than most of the people of Tokyo, I watch its belly rise and fall, its eyes closed, tongue hanging out –
‘That lazy dog is a guard dog,’ laughs Chief Tachibana.
‘Do you get much burglary round here?’ asks Ishida.
‘There are always the Scavengers,’ nods Tachibana. ‘And before that were the Chinks, always escaping from the factories…’
‘He’d have been a hunting dog, then,’ says the driver.
Tachibana looks at the dog and laughs again. Then the chief excuses himself as he goes into the house ahead of us –
The old driver lights a cigarette and tells us, ‘A lot of them old hunting dogs are running wild now, in packs…’
Tachibana returns with the mother of the Widow Okayama, who bows and welcomes us as Tachibana introduces us and explains to the old woman why we have come as Ishida and I apologize for the early hour and abruptness of our visit, calling on her unannounced.
The mother of the Widow Okayama bows again and invites us into her house. The mother is very old and her granddaughter is not here today. But the mother is not alone. An old man is sat in the empty fireplace. The mother of the Widow Okayama rents this house from this man. This man named Koito. This man Koito doesn’t usually much like the police and he doesn’t usually much like city folk. The mother of the Widow Okayama doesn’t really remember anyone called Kodaira Yoshio but this man Koito remembers him –
‘I liked Mr. Kodaira because he was born round here, born up in Nikkō. He came here a number of times hunting for supplies –
‘He was a friendly fellow was Kodaira, very friendly. He always had money to buy with or things to exchange, did Kodaira. I introduced him to a number of other people round here, folk I knew would be willing to trade with a local fellow like him…’
I ask him for their names and their addresses –
‘I know it’s not strictly legal,’ he says, looking at Tachibana. ‘But everybody does it. If they didn’t they’d starve…’
I ask him again for names and addresses –
‘Not all as lucky as the likes of you…’
I hate the countryside. I hate it…
I crack my knuckles and I ask him for their names again, their addresses. I ask him one last time and now Koito sighs and begins to list the names, the names of local farmers and their families, every local farmer, every family he can think of, he can remember –
Kashiwagi, Kiyohara, Fujisaki, Yoshimura …
‘How many times did Kodaira come up here?’ I ask him but this man Koito shrugs his shoulders and says he can’t be sure, he didn’t keep a record, did he? Then I turn to the old grandmother –
The grandmother asks again, ‘Who is this Kodaira?’
Dr. Nakadate estimated that the second body in Shiba Park had been killed sometime between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh of July, and the advertisement found in the pocket of her dress was dated the nineteenth of July, so I want to know if Kodaira Yoshio came here again after the nineteenth of last month, if he was here and what he brought, what he brought and exchanged …
I turn back to Koito. I ask, ‘When was his last visit?’
But Koito just shrugs his shoulders again and says he can’t be sure, that he doesn’t keep records, does he? But now I crack my knuckles again and I lean forward and I hiss, ‘Then think!’
‘Her granddaughter would know better than me,’ he says. ‘There may have been times when he was here and I was not, for all I know, and it was her he came to see anyway…’
And the grandmother asks again, ‘Who is this man?’
I need to speak to the granddaughter but they don’t know where she is or what she’s doing though they swear she will be back tonight, that she will be here if we come back tomorrow…
‘We’ll be back then,’ I promise them.
*
The Kashiwagi family lives further up the same mountain. He walks behind me. There is only so far the truck can go so then we walk, Tachibana showing me the way, Ishida walking behind –
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
Up the mountain and through the heat –
No one is who they say they are …
Through the insects and their teeth –
No one is who they seem …
The Kashiwagi family makes fuel for the hand-warmers that are used in the winter. Last winter was the worst winter on record. The Kashiwagi family made a lot of fuel for hand-warmers last winter. The Kashiwagi family also made a lot of money last winter. And a lot of visitors called upon the Kashiwagi family last winter –
Kodaira called upon the Kashiwagi family last winter –
Baba Hiroko was murdered last winter.
Baba Hiroko was found dead on the third of January this year. Baba Hiroko was last seen alive on the thirtieth of December –
Kodaira was here last winter. Kodaira was here …
The Kashiwagi family is a nervous, sullen family. The Kashiwagi family just sits and stares and offers us no tea or water –
‘Do you remember exactly when Kodaira came here…?’
But the Kashiwagi family does not remember exactly –
‘You remember if it was before or after New Year…?’
The Kashiwagi family does not want to remember –
‘But you remember what he traded…?’
The Kashiwagi family claims not to remember what Kodaira Yoshio traded for their hand-warmer fuel. But the Kashiwagi family is lying because country-folk never forget anything –
I hate the countryside. These country-folk …
Because country-folk remember everything; every last piece of fuel and every last grain of rice; every single coin and every single note they have ever received; every single item accepted in a trade –
I hate them. I hate them all…
That is why their unmarried daughter is fiddling with her wristwatch. That is why she has been fiddling with it since we sat down. That is why I reach across their hearth to grab her wrist –
Why I hold this watch on her wrist up to her face –
‘Is this what friendly Mr. Kodaira gave you?’
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
This watch I now tear from her wrist. This watch I turn over in my hand to the light. This watch with an inscription on its back –
An inscription that states, Miyazaki Mitsuko …
This watch that was not Kodaira’s to trade –
That screams, Miyazaki Mitsuko…
This watch. This watch…
Not theirs to keep –
This watch …
That I stuff into my knapsack as I get to my feet to leave –
Tachibana asking, ‘But who is Miyazaki Mitsuko?’
*
The daylight blinding, my eyes squinting, in this Land of the Living, in this Land of Plenty, before their mountains, before their trees, before their fields, their leaves and their flowers, their rivers and their streams, their greens and their blues, in this Land of the Living –
Before his mountains, his trees, his fields –
I say, ‘Miyazaki Mitsuko was a nineteen-year-old girl from Nagasaki whose naked body was found on the fifteenth of August last year in an air-raid shelter of the Women’s Dormitory Building of the Dai-Ichi Naval Clothing Department near Shinagawa in Tokyo.
‘The autopsy revealed that she had been raped and then murdered around the end of May last year. At that time, Kodaira Yoshio was working at this Women’s Dormitory.
‘The autopsy on Miyazaki was performed by a Dr. Nakadate of the Keiō University Hospital. Dr. Nakadate also performed the autopsies on the body of Midorikawa Ryuko and on the unidentified body found near Midorikawa in Shiba Park. Dr. Nakadate believes that all three women were murdered by the same man; Kodaira Yoshio. As you know, Kodaira Yoshio has already confessed to the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko…’
Tachibana nods. ‘But not to the second unidentified body from Shiba Park?’
‘No.’
‘And not to this Miyazaki Mitsuko…?’
‘He’s not been asked.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I have not mentioned Miyazaki to either Chief Kita or Chief Inspector Kanehara, who is leading the interrogation team.’
‘But why not?’ asks Tachibana again.
I look at Ishida as I say, ‘Two reasons; the Miyazaki case is officially closed and, secondly, the case file is missing.’
Tachibana is shaking his head, glancing from me to Ishida and back again. ‘Someone was actually charged?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘They were.’
Tachibana asks, ‘Who?’
‘A Korean labourer…’
A Yobo …
‘And so what happened to this Korean labourer?’
‘He was shot and killed resisting arrest…’
‘Shot by whom?’ asks Tachibana. ‘An officer from the Kempei.’
‘Case closed, then?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him, still looking at Ishida; Ishida saying nothing, Ishida asking nothing. ‘Until today…’
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
Her watch in my hand –
Chiku-taku.
*
Beyond another pine grove, beyond more dwarf bamboo, the next house, the next family, the same as the last house, the same as the last family. The grove after that, the house after that, the family after that, the same as the last grove, the same as the last house, the last family –
I look back down the mountainside, at the mainly thatched roofs and the odd tiled one on the odd two-storey house, at the crops in the fields and the leaves on the trees and I wonder where I am, where this place is, this place of plenty, this land of the living –
No dead without name, dead without number …
This place of mountains. This place of rivers –
Piled up high along the riverbanks …
In this place of greens and blues –
No stench of rotten apricots …
In this place of colour where Kodaira came with his many pickings from the dead, with his trophies and his spoils, the trophies and the spoils he had brought to barter –
From the dead…
Every house Kodaira ever visited, every family he spoke to, every thing he traded, every single house, every single family, every single thing he showed them –
His trophies…
But in the next house, the next family, the house after that, the family after that, they sit in shame, sit in silence and they will not remember, will not try –
His spoils …
‘Because so many people come,’ they tell us. ‘So many people, so many things, every day a different person comes, every day with different things…’
So many people…
And in the next house, the next family, the house after that, the family after that, they shake their heads when we say his name, they shake their heads when we describe his face, they shake their heads when we ask for dates, they shake their heads and tell us –
‘So many people come, so many things…’
*
We stand beside the truck and wipe our faces and wipe our necks, the cicadas deafening and the mosquitoes ravenous, the sun high in the sky but there is a darkness here now, in the shadows from the mountains, from the trees and in the fields, darkness and shadow –
The slopes are purple, the leaves black now, the grass grey …
In the rivers that do not flow, the streams that stand still –
There are no currents and there are no fish, only insects …
Tachibana asks, ‘What do you want to do now?’
Insects feasting in the still and stagnant pools …
I look up at the sun then back down at the shadows and I say, ‘Take me to the place where you found Baba Hiroko.’
*
Up the side of another small mountain and down its other side, then up and down another until the truck stops on the narrow road where the woods at the foot of this small mountain look out over a ditch onto a patchwork of fields and ditches, more fields and more ditches, and Tachibana says, ‘These are the woods. This is the place.’
Nishi Katamura, Kami Tsuga-gun, Tochigi …
Tachibana, Ishida, and I climb out of the truck and wipe our faces and wipe our necks and turn away from the fields and the ditches to stare up into the woods on the slope of the mountainside, up into the shadows of the black trunks of the trees –
Their branches and their leaves …
Tachibana points up the slope and says, ‘It’s that way…’
‘But I thought Baba was found in a field?’ I ask him –
‘It seems that she was attacked down here,’ he says. ‘But then her body was dragged from the field up this way…’
Now I follow Tachibana as he climbs up off the narrow road and into the woods, waving away the mosquitoes and the bugs with the file in his hands, Detective Ishida following behind –
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
Tachibana leads us through the trees to a slight hollow in the side of the mountain; a slight hollow surrounded by fallen logs and filled with broken branches and dead leaves –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
‘This is the place,’ says Tachibana now, handing me the file –
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry …
In this place, in this hollow, I take her case file –
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
I open the file. I take out the photographs –
Their branches and their leaves …
Now I see her in this place –
Her white, naked body …
Her face in this place –
Her beaten face …
Her face –
Black …
In this place, in this hollow, beneath these trees, I close my eyes and I see her face; I see her say farewell to her uncle, with her gifts for her mother; I see her take the Ginza Line to Asakusa; I see her climb with the crowds up the stairs to the second floor of the Matsuya Department Store; I see her join the queue for her ticket –
How long did you stand in that queue? How long did you wait?
That cold and desperate queue of cold and desperate strangers, pushing and shoving, those desperate, defeated strangers with their desperate, hungry eyes, pushing and shoving –
Is this where you met him? Is this him behind you now…?
In his ancient winter suit that is far too loose beneath his frayed army coat with its Shinchū Gun armband, his hair tight against his scalp, skin tight against his skull –
Did he offer you a piece of bread? A rice-ball? Candy?
In that cold and desperate queue of cold and desperate strangers, pushing and shoving, this one smiling, friendly man, this one small, friendly act of kindness –
Did you eat it there and then? That one small gift?
Now he asks you where you are going, this smiling, friendly man and between your hurried, grateful mouthfuls, you tell him you are going to visit your mother in Nikkō. He asks you where your mother lives in Nikkō and you tell this smiling, friendly man about the Furukawa Denki apartments. Now he says he once worked for Furukawa and he tells you Nikkō is where he’s from and he tells you he knows a farmer from whom you can buy some very cheap rice, some rice to surprise your mother with, some rice to take back for your uncle in Kyōbashi. And he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this friendly man with his small acts of kindness and he even makes you laugh, this smiling, friendly man in that cold and desperate queue, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man he puts an arm around you now to guide you through the crowds, the pushing and the shoving, to shepherd you onto that train, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man, he helps you to find a place to stand on the train among those desperate, hungry eyes, among the ringworm and the lice, on that train with its windows of cracked plywood and bits of tin through which blow the wind and the snow as the train crosses over the Sumida River and steams up through Kita-Senju, on and on, up and up the Tōbu Line –
Does he press against you now, on that cold, cold train?
All the way up and up the Tōbu Line he smiles and he smiles and he smiles and you laugh and you laugh and you laugh as he talks and he talks and he talks, and it’s like you’ve known him all your life, this smiling, friendly man, like he’s your uncle, this smiling, friendly man, or even the father you lost so young, for you feel so safe in his smile, this one smiling, friendly face on this cold, cold train, among these strangers, these desperate, defeated strangers who stare at you with their hungry eyes and their dried lips, their sunken cheeks and their frayed collars on this cold, cold train that takes forever –
Is his smile too close? Are his hands too free…?
But now the train is pulling into Kanazaki and he’s telling you this is where you should both get off, that this is the quickest way to the farmer he knows, the farmer with the very cheap rice he’ll sell you, the rice for your mother, the rice for your uncle, and now you’re not so sure because you do not know this place, this land, and it’s getting darker and darker and darker but you’ve eaten his bread, taken his rice-balls and sucked on his candy, and now he takes you by your arm and leads you through these cold and desperate strangers, through the pushing and through the shoving, and off that cold, cold train and onto that cold, cold platform and now the train is gone and the platform is gone and you’re walking through the ticket gates and now the station is gone and soon the town is gone because you are walking and walking and walking away, minute after minute, hour after hour, and now the day is gone and the road is narrow, walking and walking and walking, and the mountains are dark and the fields are lonely and still he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this smiling, friendly man, but his teeth are pointed now, his eyes hungry now –
Is this when his grip tightens? His words harden…?
His lips wet and his tongue long, this man is not smiling now, this man is not friendly now, this man with his pointed teeth and his hungry eyes, his wet lips and his long tongue whispering what he wants from you now, in those woods or in that ditch, telling you exactly what he wants from you now and you’re turning away from this man, turning away from him now, on this narrow road, beside these lonely fields, beneath that dark mountain, below those black woods, but he’s pulling you back and he’s slapping your face, punching your face and kicking your legs, and you’re asking him to stop and you’re begging him to stop and you’re pleading with him to stop, but he’s pulling you off that narrow road and away from those lonely fields, up this dark mountain, into these black woods, putting a hand around your neck and another between your legs and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you’re trying to tell him to take it and you’re begging him to take it and you’re pleading with him to take it, to take it and then leave you alone, please leave you, please leave you alone but he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, snot in your nose and piss down your legs and shit from your backside, as he squeezes your throat tighter and tighter, the mountain darker and darker, the woods blacker and blacker –
As black as your hair that will never turn grey …
Now you open your eyes and you know you are still living, lying on your back on broken branches and dead leaves in a hollow in these woods, you have survived, you are one of the lucky ones, freezing and bleeding on these branches and these leaves, but you have survived, you are lucky and now you raise yourself up from the branches and the leaves, but this is when you know you have not survived, you are not one of the lucky ones, when you see him sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, staring at you and smoking a cigarette, this once smiling, friendly man who now finishes his cigarette and gets up off the trunk of this fallen tree, walking towards you over broken branches and dead leaves as he unbuttons his trousers again –
You try to speak but you cannot speak, you cannot scream …
Because this once smiling, friendly man has your scarf in his hands and he is pulling it tighter and tighter as the mountain turns darker and darker, the woods blacker and blacker again –
Freezing and bleeding and choking here …
Here on these broken branches and these dead leaves, here in this hollow, in these woods, on this mountainside –
As he fucks you again and again …
Beside those lonely fields –
Again and again …
Kodaira fucks the dead.
*
I hate the countryside. He walks behind me. I hate the countryside. Back down the slope. I hate the countryside. Back to the truck. I hate the countryside. Ishida walks behind me. I hate the countryside. Ishida says nothing. I hate the countryside. I say nothing. I hate the countryside. Tachibana says nothing. I hate the countryside …
I hate the countryside. I hate the country-folk –
By these ditches. In this terrible place …
There is nothing else to say.
*
Down the side of another mountain and into a valley, we follow the signs for Kanuma, a river to our right and a railway line to our left –
Lines of people making their way back towards the station …
‘Local people call it the Scavenging Line these days,’ shouts Chief Tachibana from the back of the truck. ‘Because the only people who ever use the trains on that line now are city people from Tokyo, up here to scavenge after our rice and our sweet potatoes…’
Lines of people with their supplies on their backs …
‘They’ve turned them into freight trains,’ agrees the driver. ‘No panes of glass in the windows, old boards for doors…’
Lines of people with their backs bent double …
‘Difficult to tell what’s human and what’s luggage…’
Lines of people under the setting sun …
‘The early morning trains are the worst, packed…’
Lines of people all reduced to this …
‘Infested as well, with fleas and with lice…’
Lines of people, beaten to this …
And on and on they drone, on and on about city-folk; how it was city-folk who had brought all these problems onto Japan, how it was all the fault of city-folk, but now city-folk demand and expect the country-folk to help them and look after them when it was city-folk who had brought this mess on Japan, the city-folk who got us into this mess, and on and on they drone, on and on about city-folk –
I hate the countryside and I hate the country-folk …
But I’m not listening to them. I am looking out for Kanuma police station. They are looking out for us too. The Kanuma police –
They are waiting for us. They are waiting for me …
They are watching for us. They are listening out for the sound of Tachibana’s battered old mountain truck coming through the town towards their quaint old rural police station –
We are here. I am here …
The driver pulls up right outside the pristine police station, right outside the eight pristine police officers who have lined up in the sinking sun to greet us, to bow, to salute and welcome us to Kanuma police station. Detective Ishida and I bow back and salute and thank them and then we follow Chief Tachibana up the clean little steps and into his police station where two officers behind the front desk bow and salute and welcome us again to their station –
‘I have a telegram from Tokyo for a Detective Ishida,’ announces one of the two men. Ishida quickly steps forward –
I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse!
Ishida takes the telegram from the officer behind the desk. Ishida steps to one side to open and read the telegram –
My heart is pounding. My heart is pounding …
But Tachibana is taking me down the side of the front desk, leaving Ishida to his telegram, and leading me along a corridor to his office, telling me the local history of Kanuma –
I curse him! I curse him! I curse him!
Police Chief Tachibana sitting me down and promising me tea, searching for the other files, the other dead women he feels might have been murdered by Kodaira Yoshio –
Other women, other deaths …
There is a soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into the room, excusing himself –
Eyes blank, eyes dead …
‘Here we are,’ says Chief Tachibana, handing me two thin files across his desk. ‘In the face of any initial evidence to the contrary both these deaths were originally recorded as ikidaore, accidental deaths due to injury or disease, mainly because of the deterioration of the corpses. But, to be honest, I’ve always felt that there might have been more to their deaths than simple accident or disease and now, with this Kodaira suspect you have in Tokyo…’
I open the top file as he speaks, Ishikawa Yori…
‘Thirty years old and the wife of a tailor, Ishikawa was an evacuee living at Imaichimachi, Kami Tsuga-gun. She was last seen on the twenty-second of June last year, waiting for a train at Shin-Tochigi station and then travelling on a bus from Tochigi station to Manako station, which is near to where her body was found. We believe that Ishikawa died some time towards the end of June last year but her body was not discovered until…’
‘The tenth of September,’ I read –
‘Yes, the tenth of September,’ continues Chief Tachibana. ‘Thank you. An old farmer had gone up into the woods at Manako-mura to pick leaves to smoke as a tobacco substitute and that’s when he found the body, or the skeleton as it was by that time…’
‘But it was never treated as murder?’ asks Ishida.
‘Difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘Because of the state of the body and also, of course, there are many animals in these woods.’
I pick up the second file. There is no name on this second file. I hold up the second file. I ask Tachibana, ‘And this one?’
‘Even more difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘The owner of a small mountain at Kiyosu-mura, again this is Kami Tsuga-gun, he’d gone up onto the slopes to prune away some of the branches around his cypress trees and he came upon a perfect skeleton. This was only last month and we think the body may have been there for over a year.’
I ask, ‘Did you find out anything else about the body?’
‘Yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘The autopsy was conducted in Utsunomiya and although we were unable to determine the exact cause of death we do believe it to have been the body a young woman aged approximately twenty to twenty-five years…’
‘But again you had it listed as ikidaore?’
‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘Ikidaore.’
‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘You find many such bodies, do you?’
Tachibana nods. Tachibana says, ‘In the last three or four years, yes. Older people particularly, they come out here from Tokyo to scavenge and they get lost in the woods. They have never been out here before. In the summer, some simply collapse of exhaustion. Others, in the winter, lose their way and freeze in the night…’
‘But these two weren’t old,’ says Ishida. ‘You often get young women walking in your woods, dropping down dead, do you?’
‘They were younger, yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘But we do get younger ones, but for different reasons. Only two days ago, for example, in some other woods, we found the body of a twenty-three or twenty-five-year-old woman. Dead about one month and animals had been there but we know it wasn’t murder. It was suicide.’
‘How do you know?’ asks Ishida. ‘If animals…’
‘Well, this one had at least left us a suicide note.’
‘What did it say?’ I ask. ‘This suicide note?’
‘That she had lost all her relatives during the war. That she was completely alone. That she saw no point in living any more –
‘She was from Tokyo too,’ he says. ‘Mitaka.’
Please let my daughter’s eyes be open now.
*
Below another dark mountain, with its overhanging eaves and the shade of its hearth, this inn seems much grander than the one we stayed in last night. This place in the shadows. At the foot of the mountain, with its pond and its bridge in the garden round the back, this inn seems much older but is better maintained. This place from the past. This inn still accepts Ishida’s rice but they are able to offer us a hot bath in their bathhouse and the room we are shown seems much bigger and cleaner too, with its fresh mats and its rosewood table, the tasteful alcove and the red camellia in a celadon vase. This place from another century, this place from another country …
Because of the chief of the Kanuma police, because of Tachibana. He tells us he will join us for the evening meal. He promises there will be fresh food, and even some sake –
In this other country, in this other century …
Tachibana tells us to enjoy our baths, that the water will be hot now. Then he leaves us alone, Ishida and me –
In this place, so very far from home …
Ishida and me in this beautiful room, alone and silent –
No talk of messages from Tokyo. No talk at all…
Until Detective Ishida says, ‘Please take your bath first.’
*
The inn has been built around the garden and the room we have been given is at a right angle to the long plank walkway which separates the bathhouse from the main building. Sara-sara. It would also be possible to reach the bathhouse by crossing the small garden and the bridge over the pond, but I choose to walk across the planks, oak and zelkova trees to my right, the magnolia and camellia bushes in the garden on my left, listening to the sound of running water. Sara-sara. There is a room of toilets and basins before the door to the bathhouse. Sara-sara. The taps in the basins are all running and I can smell the scent of heated bathwater. Sara-sara. I open the door to the bathhouse and I step into the changing room. Sara-sara. It is dark and windowless in here, the only light coming from a small lamp in one of the corners. Sara-sara. The bathtub must be on the other side of the second door. Sara-sara. I unbutton my shirt. Sara-sara. I take it off. Sara-sara. I unbutton my trousers. Sara-sara. I take them off. Sara-sara. I am ashamed of this shirt and these trousers. Sara-sara. This shirt and these trousers that my wife has tended and mended, stitched and re-stitched. Sara-sara. I take off my undershirt. Sara-sara. I take off my undershorts. Sara-sara. I fold and pile up these clothes. Sara-sara. I place them in one of the changing-room baskets. Sara-sara. I never want to wear these clothes again. Sara-sara. I pick up one of the clean white bathing cloths. Sara-sara. I go through the second door and I close it behind me. Sara-sara. The room is filled with steam. Sara-sara. The only windows are narrow and high in one of the walls and admit little light. Sara-sara. The bathtub though is big and raised. Sara-sara. I pick up a small wooden bucket. Sara-sara. I climb up the three small steps to the bath. Sara-sara. I fill the bucket with water from the tub. Sara-sara. Now I crouch down and tip the bucket of hot water over my body. Sara-sara. I find the soap and the brush and I begin to scrub myself clean. Sara-sara. Then I take another bucket of water and I rinse myself. Sara-sara. Now I climb the small steps for a third time. Sara-sara. Now I get into the bath. Sara-sara. I put my cloth upon the edge of the wooden tub and stretch myself out. Sara-sara. The water is hot. Sara-sara. The water is pure. Sara-sara. I do not itch. Sara-sara. I do not scratch. Sara-sara. I fold the bathing cloth into a small pillow. Sara-sara. I rest the back of my neck on the edge of the tub. Sara-sara. I close my eyes. Sara-sara. I listen to the sound of the running water. Sara-sara …
I am sleeping not waking, I am waking not sleeping –
Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara —
The sound of the running water has stopped –
I hear the door open. I feel the air change …
I open my eyes but there is only steam –
I think I see the figure of a woman …
I cannot stand. I cannot breathe –
The figure of a woman facing away from me, staring into a mirror that is not there, she is dressed in a yellow kimono with a dark-blue stripe, its skirts dripping onto the tiles of the floor, her hair tied up with silk threads which expose her pale neck …
The water is cold. The water is black –
The woman holds a hairbrush in one hand as she leans forward to stare at herself in the mirror, suddenly turning to face me now, dropping the hairbrush to the floor, ton, she puts her hands to her face and covers both her eyebrows —
‘Does this become me?’
*
Ishida looks up startled and embarrassed when I come back from the bath. He is sat cross-legged on the floor of the room by the table. He has already changed into the same yukata provided by the inn that I am now wearing. He quickly stuffs something back into his knapsack and shoves it under the table. Now he picks up a towel from the mat –
‘Excuse me,’ he mumbles, telling me he’ll take his bath now.
I listen to his feet trail off down the corridor. I wait a moment before I look out the door to make sure he has gone. Now I pull his bag out from under the table to see what he’d been so quick to hide –
And here it is, lying on the top inside his knapsack; his underwear and a needle. Detective Ishida had been hunting fleas in his underwear with a needle, piercing and spearing flea after flea on the end of the needle. But the old army pistol is still here too –
The old army pistol at the bottom of his knapsack –
I fight back the visions. I fight back the tears …
Here waiting for something, there waiting for someone.
*
It is dark and it is silent outside when Tachibana joins us for dinner. Tachibana has changed out of his uniform and into an evening kimono. Tachibana summons two maids who serve the food in our room on three small lacquered butterfly-legged tables, the food as good as he promised; bonito, smoked eggs, soba, and a bowl of fishcake in a cold soup of grated arrowroot. Ishida and I eat it up like a pair of hungry dogs. The sake is equally fine and we lap that up until Ishida begins to worry about the expense of all this food and all this drink, but Police Chief Tachibana just claps his big hands –
‘It’s my inn,’ he laughs. ‘And you’re my guests…’
And after the dinner, after the two maids have cleared away the tables but left us with three fresh bottles of sake, Tachibana suddenly gets to his feet and begins to dance, this small, fat, youngish man whose eyes are now old and hard as he performs the violent, jerky dance of a warrior, lungeing at Ishida with an invisible sword –
This dance from the shadows, this dance from the past …
Then, just as suddenly, his violent, jerky dance is over and Tachibana is sat back down, his face still red and angry –
In the half-light, no one is who they seem …
Filling our cups and offering up a toast –
From the past and from the shadows …
‘To Japan and to the Emperor…’
*
We have pissed and we have washed our faces. I switch off the electric bulb and now, in the dark of the room, before I say goodnight, I ask him, ‘What was the message they gave you back at the station?’
Ishida is silent for a time before he says, ‘What message…?’
‘The one you got when we arrived at Kanuma police station.’
Ishida says, ‘It was just from Inspector Hattori. That’s all.’
‘And what did Inspector Hattori have to tell you?’ I ask –
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘He just wants any leads we find…’
‘What do you mean, he wants any leads we find?’
‘He wants me to telephone or telegram him…’
‘Telephone him about what?’ I ask again –
‘Just if we find any new leads, that’s all.’
‘There was no other request or news?’
‘That was all the message said.’
‘Goodnight, then,’ I tell him –
But now, in the dark and in the silence of this room, Detective Ishida asks me, ‘Do you think we are the only guests in this inn?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m just tired…’
‘No, tell me,’ I say. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I just don’t like it here,’ he says. ‘I wish we’d never come.’
Tochigi, 87°, fine
In the night, he shrieks. In the night, he howls. In the night, he wails. In the night, the grinding of teeth. In the night, the weeping of tears –
Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking –
Ton.
Before the dawn, before the light, the dull thud upon the mat –
Ton.
The only sound as it hits the floor, just beyond my pillow –
Nothing before, nothing after, the dull thud on the mat –
Ton.
I lie on the futon and I do not, dare not move –
What was that noise? What was that sound?
Ton.
Ishida is awake now. I can feel him –
He asks, ‘What was that noise?’
Ton.
I turn over on the futon. I raise my head up. I look beyond my pillow. I can see it now. In front of the alcove –
It lies on the matting. It lies neck up –
Like an inverted, severed head –
The red camellia –
Ton.
*
It is dawn now and it is light. I get up from my futon but I do not wake Ishida. I take off my yukata. I pull on my undershorts. I put on my undershirt. I pull on my trousers. I put on my shirt. I gather up my jacket, my knapsack, my hat. I leave the room. I walk down the corridor to the reception area. There is no one here. In this place of shadows. The hearth deserted. This place from the past. I pick up my boots from the genkan. I squat down beneath the eaves of the inn. In this other century. I pull on my old army boots and I leave this inn –
This other country, so far from home …
I walk back towards the town, back towards the station; the first train must have already arrived as there are Scavengers walking past me out of town, mumbling and muttering and moaning –
Their clothes are almost rags, half of them have no shoes …
‘This is a bad place to buy anything, a terrible place…’
They are weighted down and they are sweating …
‘These farmers have us where they want us…’
The weight of the bundles on their backs …
‘They won’t take money, only goods…’
Dirty towels tied around their faces …
‘They’re getting choosier by the day…’
Or old yellow caps on their heads …
‘Used to be just fabrics or cloth…’
The weaker ones slowing down …
‘Now only jewellery will do…’
Falling behind the others …
‘Kimonos or shoes…’
Resting already…
‘It’ll be much better in autumn,’ they convince themselves –
But it’s not autumn yet, the tips of the branches still green –
The persimmons on the trees still to fatten and brighten –
To ripen, to fall and to splatter …
There is an old man still dressed in his civil-defence uniform sat down at a curve in the road. His trousers tied with a rope and his jacket already soaked through with sweat, he has propped his backpack up under a nettle tree and sits rolling a cigarette from old dog-ends, staring vacantly ahead at a clump of flaming daisies –
He looks up as my shadow falls on his face –
I ask him if we might share a match –
He nods and we share the light as he tells me, ‘The shoddier these matches get, the more expensive their price becomes…’
I nod and I agree. Then I start to walk away –
But the old man asks, ‘What time is it?’ I stop now and I turn back to him –
I ask, ‘Is your watch broken, sir?’
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
The man has taken out his pocket watch and is winding it up. The man shakes his head. The man shows me his watch –
The old man says, ‘It keeps stopping dead…’
This watch. This watch. This watch …
His watch says twelve o’clock –
Now I show him my watch –
I say, ‘It’s eight o’clock.’
‘I’m already late, then,’ he sighs. ‘Missed all the good stuff.’
I nod and I agree. I start to walk away again but again he calls after me and again I stop and I turn back to him as he asks me –
‘Do you know the roads around here, do you?’
I shake my head and I apologize. ‘I’ve not been here before.’
‘I think I came here once before,’ he says. ‘But that was with someone from the neighbourhood and so it must have been quite a time ago now. I think it was here. The war had started, I know that. But not the air raids. I’m sure it was before the air raids…’
I nod again but I don’t know what to say –
‘I lose track of the time,’ he sighs. ‘Because there’s no end, is there? They tell us that it’s over, that we’re at peace, but it doesn’t feel like peace, doesn’t feel like it’s ended to me. What about you?’
I shake my head. I say something like, ‘You’re right.’
‘I’m sixty-nine years old,’ he tells me. ‘What good am I to anyone any more? I might as well be dead and be done with it. But I remember when I could carry sixty or seventy pounds, no trouble…’
‘But you look like you’re doing all right to me,’ I say –
He thanks me and asks me where I am from –
‘Mitaka,’ I tell him. ‘What about you?’
‘Kinshi-chō originally,’ he says. ‘But not any more, of course. I tell you, I was lucky to get away with the clothes on my back. I’m staying with my daughter-in-law in Hakozaki now. But you can’t depend on anyone these days, can you? And now they say my son is dead, she’ll be looking to remarry and then what will I do …?’
I nod and I watch him untie the towel from around his face and wipe the sweat from his forehead and then from his neck –
Now the old man gets to his feet and he looks at me –
‘Forgive me,’ the old man says. ‘But are you ill?’
I shake my head. I say, ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’re just very pale.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m fine…’
I pick up his bundle for him –
I hoist it onto his back –
It is a heavy load …
‘Thank you,’ he says as he walks off. ‘And good luck…’
I raise my cigarette to wave and I watch him go –
‘Don’t give up,’ he shouts back. ‘Never!’
*
I walk up the clean little steps into Kanuma police station where the two officers behind the front desk bow, salute and welcome me back.
‘I have a message from Tokyo for a Detective Ishida,’ announces one of the two men behind the desk –
‘Thank you,’ I say as he hands me the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket and thank him again –
‘Is Chief Tachibana here yet?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Maybe he’s gone to the inn…’
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll go for a walk…’
‘Where will you go?’ he asks me.
‘To the river,’ I say. ‘The…’
‘The Black River?’ he asks.
‘The Black River,’ I nod.
I walk out of the police station. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I walk down the clean little steps. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I walk across the road. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I turn down another road. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I see the Black River –
And now I run. My pocket on fire. Now I run. My pocket on fire. Now I run. My pocket on fire. Down the banking –
My pocket on fire. And then I stop –
I take out the piece of paper:
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi. Return to HQ. Inspector Adachi.’
Then, suddenly, a shout, ‘There you are, Inspector Minami!’
‘I look up. Tachibana and Ishida coming down the banking –
Ishida; I no longer know who this Detective Ishida is …
‘Thought you’d run back to Tokyo,’ shouts Tachibana –
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I just needed to go for a walk…’
‘Don’t apologize,’ says Tachibana. ‘I bet you’re not used to so much sake and good food these days, are you now, inspector?’
‘You were very generous,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘We’re all policemen…’
I look at Ishida as I nod, ‘All policemen…’
‘Where to first, then?’ asks Tachibana, clapping his hands.
*
The same ancient small truck. The same old policeman in the driving seat. Tachibana gestures for me to sit up in the front while he and Ishida climb into the back again. The corrugated iron and the carpenter’s tools gone today. The driver puts out his cigarette, straightens his cap and he starts up the truck as I hold on tight again –
I hate the countryside and I hate the people who live here –
This Land of the Grasping. This Land of the Greedy …
My eyes squinting in pain as the sunlight blinds me –
Everything black today. Everything black here …
The mountains black. The trees black –
No grey, no green and no purple …
No leaves and no flowers here –
There are no colours here …
Here, here, here, here –
In Kodaira country …
Here in Ōaza-Hosō, in Nikkō-chō, where our small truck now pulls up outside the family home of Kodaira Yoshio, the ramshackle, broken-down family home where the uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio still live, still working for Furukawa –
The uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio who know why we are here, who know why we will keep knocking –
Until the cousin finally opens the door to invite us in, in through their rotting door and filthy genkan, through their stinking, fetid kitchen and into their dark and humid hearth and home –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
The aunt scuttling off on her hands and her knees down another dark corridor. The uncle cross-legged in the hearth with a pipe. The uncle is an old man. The uncle does not speak –
‘He hates the police,’ says his son, the cousin. ‘He thinks the police have got it in for him, got it in for our family…’
‘Shut up, idiot!’ shouts the uncle as he picks up his pipe and gets to his feet. He walks off into the other half of the room, closing the screen doors behind him, still shouting, ‘Idiot!’
‘What do you want?’ asks the cousin –
‘I want to know how often your cousin Yoshio comes back here,’ I tell him. ‘I particularly want to know how often he came back here in the last two years, the dates he came and the things he might have brought back with him. It’s important you remember…’
‘Well, that’s easy to remember,’ laughs the cousin now. ‘Easy because we never saw him. He never came back here…’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t believe you because I have already met six or seven other families near here who do remember that he came back, who do remember the dates and the things he brought back. So, I’ll ask you again, to remember…’
‘And I’ll tell you again,’ says the cousin. ‘He was never here. We heard he’d been back to Tochigi, but we never saw him.’
‘You never saw him?’ I ask. ‘He never came here?’
‘Why would he come here?’ asks the cousin. ‘We’ve nothing to sell him, nothing to buy from him. Why come?’
‘Because you’re his family.’ I say. ‘That’s why.’
‘He never came back here,’ repeats the cousin –
In the dark, humid hearth and family home –
‘That’s all I know, so that’s all I’ll say,’ the cousin says now. ‘If you want to hear more, just knock on any door in the village.’
*
His father was the eldest of the brothers, the neighbours tell us. He was a drinker, a gambler and a womanizer. He’d had a farm, he’d had an inn, the Hashimoto-Ya, the best in the village. But he lost them all through his gambling, his drinking and his womanizing. Even his horse. He ended his days at Furukawa Denki with the rest of them –
The father’s first younger brother worked there all his life, the neighbours tell us. He was a slow worker but he was never absent. He worked only nights and he handed over all his pay to his mother. He was a stutterer and an idiot and he was the best of them –
The second younger brother is the uncle you met, the neighbours tell us. He was once the most dangerous man in the village; drank heavily and carried a knife. He has been in prison. He is still a short-tempered and aggressive man, but now he rarely speaks.
The eldest brother of Kodaira Yoshio is not long dead, the neighbours tell us. He worked at Furukawa with the rest of them but he was fired because he stole from the other workers and he slept on the job. He went to Tokyo but soon came back, wandering from job to job, living off odd jobs and handouts. He was another one who rarely spoke. Even made his own wife and children eat their meals outside so he could eat in peace. In April last year he was arrested for stealing potatoes but he died before the case ever came to court –
His elder sister was much the same, the neighbours tell us. She worked at Furukawa Denki too, just like the rest of them. She married a man who was working there, but it didn’t last more than a year. Then she married a Korean, again for less than a year. She was often hysterical and always a liar and died in January this year –
He was a bad lad himself, the neighbours are quick to tell us. But he wasn’t the worst of the family. He was poor at his schoolwork, lazy and careless, but he never drank and he never gambled. He had the Kodaira family temper but he never fought with strangers –
It was a shock, then, when he killed his father-in-law –
He has a bastard son, the neighbours whisper to us. He must be about sixteen years old. Not a nice boy, a creep to the older kids and a bully to the younger ones. This was the son he had by the woman he had his affair with. This was the affair that made his first wife’s family ask him to divorce her. That was the request that caused him to attack her family and murder her father –
That got him sent to prison –
That broke his mother’s heart, the neighbours tell us now. For his mother was kind and honest, a loving and long-suffering woman –
‘But she lived her life in tears,’ they tell us. ‘In tears…’
*
These mountains and valleys, these forests and fields, all look the same to me. Up the side of one small mountain and down the other side, a short tunnel here, a longer tunnel there, then up and down another slope and along another narrow road until the truck stops outside another small farm set back from the road by another small ditch at the foot of another small mountain. Now, again, Tachibana climbs out of the back of the truck and goes inside the house while Ishida, the driver and I sit and sweat inside the truck until Tachibana returns with another old farmer and introduces us to Mr. Samura –
‘The man who found the body,’ he says. ‘Ishikawa’s body.’
Then the driver starts the ancient truck again and slowly, very slowly we climb up the narrow road that leads up the small mountain slope behind the farm until Mr. Samura nods and grunts and Tachibana calls out to the driver who pulls up on the mountainside –
‘This is where he found her,’ says Tachibana. ‘This place.’
Ōaza Mizuki-chi, Manako-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
Everyone climbs out the truck. Everyone wipes their faces, wipes their necks and looks back down the mountain at the patchworks of fields and ditches, of farms and houses, and then everyone turns back round to stare up into another wood on another slope of another mountain, up into more shadows and more trees –
More black trunks, their branches and their leaves …
Samura points into the woods, ‘It’s that way…’
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
Now Tachibana and I follow the old farmer as he clambers up off the narrow road and into the woods, pointing this way and that as he goes, mumbling things we can’t catch as the trees and their trunks stand closer and thicker together, Ishida following behind –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
Samura comes to a stop up ahead and looks round for us, shouting, ‘This is the place. This is the place. This is the place…’
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry again …
‘Last September,’ he says. ‘I was looking for leaves…’
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
‘Leaves to dry out and to mix with tobacco…’
Their branches and their leaves …
‘I trod right on her bones,’ he says –
Her white, naked body …
‘I’d smelt her too,’ he says. ‘As I was gathering up my leaves. But I’d thought it was an animal, same as when I first trod upon her bones, then I slipped, I fell and I saw it wasn’t no animal bones…’
‘I look like bones … I look like bones…’
‘I knew they were human bones…’
I turn round and around, among these trees and these branches, and I ask Samura, ‘Are you sure this is the exact place?’
Samura nods. ‘Can’t you feel her still …?’
Round and around, among these black trees and their trunks, asking Tachibana, ‘Was this place ever examined as a crime scene?’
Tachibana lowers his eyes. Tachibana bows his head –
‘Shit,’ I curse, again and again, as I turn round and around, the black trunks and their branches turning round and around –
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry …
As I drop to my knees to begin to search –
Digging and digging and digging…
To search, again.
*
‘Over here,’ shouts Ishida. ‘I’ve found something here. Look…’
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …
Police Chief Tachibana and I clamber over fallen tree trunks and duck under broken branches to get to where Detective Ishida is on his knees, bent over the decaying log of another fallen tree –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …
‘Look at all these,’ he says, standing and holding up bones, white and obviously human bones wrapped in rotting cloth –
Namu-amida-butsu …
‘This must have been where he hid her body,’ says Ishida, kneeling back down to peer under the log. ‘The bones the old man found last year had probably been pulled out of here by animals…’
I look back through the trunks and the branches, back over towards the road where the old farmer Samura has gone to wait and smoke with the driver. I turn back to Chief Tachibana and I ask him, ‘Which of Ishikawa Yori’s bones have you got listed in the file?’
Tachibana opens the Ishikawa Yori file. He flicks through the papers until he reaches the autopsy report. Now he begins to list aloud the bones they found here last year as Ishida and I lift up the decaying log, lift it up to stare down into the damp black soil at more cold white bones, cold white bones that were lost and now found –
Ishida and I on our knees, with our hands, to dig –
To dig and to clean. To clean and collect –
Her bones once lost and now found …
To put them in my army knapsack –
In my bag and upon my back …
‘We’ll take these back with us to Tokyo,’ I tell Tachibana. ‘Where I’ll give them to Dr. Nakadate at the Keiō University Hospital. But please, still try to track down the other bones that were found here and listed as belonging to Ishikawa Yori…’
‘They’ll be in Utsunomiya,’ says Tachibana –
‘Maybe,’ I tell him. ‘But it’s been almost a year since they were found and, because she was listed as ikidaore, Utsunomiya will probably have returned her remains to her family for cremation…’
Tachibana bows very low. ‘I am truly very, very sorry…’
‘Don’t be,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve done what we can for her.’
*
The truck goes back down the mountain and drops Old Man Samura back outside his farm. Then the truck labours up the side of another small mountain and down the other side, through one tunnel and through another, and then up another slope until it stops again outside the detached house of the mother of the Widow Okayama, the black dog still asleep in the shade of the wall, still tethered to its pole –
Not a stray, its house not lost, its master still here …
Police Chief Tachibana looks at the dog again but today he does not laugh. He excuses himself and goes into the house ahead of us again as the driver takes off his cap and lights another cigarette –
‘Not short of tobacco round here these days,’ says Ishida –
But the old driver doesn’t speak. The driver just smokes.
Tachibana returns with the mother of the Widow Okayama who bows once more and welcomes us again and invites us into her home as Tachibana tells us that the old woman’s granddaughter, the daughter of the Widow Okayama, is waiting for us inside –
Okayama Kazuko bows as we enter the house –
In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore …
Kazuko invites us to sit around the unlit hearth and offers us cold tea and apologizes that they have no snacks and we all thank her for her hospitality as we take our seats and we drink our drinks and we cannot help but stare at her face and her eyes –
Her worried face and her red, red eyes …
‘I am so sorry,’ she says. ‘My grandmother, my mother and I, we had no idea about the kind of man Mr. Kodaira really was…’
She is not a country person. She was born in the city –
She heard the bombs. She saw the fires –
She hands a box to Ishida and says, ‘These are all the things that Mr. Kodaira brought. These are all the things he gave me…’
There are tears in her eyes –
Tears down her cheeks –
‘I had no idea…’
Ishida opens the box. Ishida takes out a large arabesque-patterned furoshiki cloth, a bentō box, another wristwatch and an elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch –
Nakamura Mitsuko …
I stand up. I reach across. I snatch the brooch from Ishida –
‘The other body?’ I am asking Tachibana. ‘The unidentified body you mentioned yesterday? It must be Nakamura Mitsuko –
‘How far are we from where it was found …?’
But before Tachibana can answer me, Ishida has picked up the wristwatch and turned it over in his hand to read the inscription on its back and now he is holding it out towards me –
Another watch. Another stolen watch …
I take it from him and I hold it up –
This watch. This watch …
Up to the light and I read –
Tominaga Noriko …
‘I had no idea…’
The watch still turning in my hand. I had no idea. The hearth and the room turning. I had no idea. The house and the gate turning. I had no idea. Turning and turning and turning. I had no idea …
My hands in the dirt outside their house. Day is night. In the dirt on my hands and on my knees. Night is day. Turning and turning round and around. Black is white. Round and around in the dirt and the sun. White is black. Turning and turning round and around and cursing and cursing. No truth, only lies. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
The mountains and mountains of lies –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari…
These lies that make no sense –
No one who they say they are …
No sense, no sense at all –
No one who they seem.
*
Detective Ishida has stayed behind with the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama to go through the dates of each of Kodaira’s visits, to list each day that he visited and each item he brought, to write down each of these dates, to catalogue each of these items –
My hands are still dirty. My knees are still bloody –
I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I scratch. I itch –
I am in the truck again, going up another mountain and down its other side, through another tunnel and up another slope, until we stop in front of another farm where Tachibana returns with yet another old man and says, ‘This is the man who found the skeleton.’
Then this old man leads us on foot up another small mountain and into the cypress woods behind his farm, this small mountain and cypress woods that his family have tended for generation after generation, and where, for generation after generation, his family have come to chop and to cut and to clear away the dead wood and branches so that their cypresses might grow, their cypresses through which Tachibana and I follow him now, between trunk after trunk until the old farmer comes to a stop up ahead and turns back round –
‘This is where I found it,’ says the old man. ‘Right here…’
Ōaza Fukahodo, Kiyosu-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
‘A month ago,’ he says. ‘A perfect skeleton…’
‘So there was no clothing here?’ I ask him –
‘None that I could see,’ he tells me –
And again I turn and I turn, round and around again, I turn and I turn, among the trees and the branches, I turn and I turn, round and around, among these trees and their trunks, I turn and I turn –
The cicadas deafening, the mosquitoes still hungry …
As I drop to my knees and begin to search –
Again and again, again and again …
To search on my hands and –
Again and again …
On my knees –
Again …
On my hands and my knees, among these trees and these branches, searching for the only daughter of Nakamura Yoshizo –
‘But what are you looking for?’ asks Police Chief Tachibana. ‘She was a perfect skeleton. There were no bones missing…’
Does he stand behind you in the queue for tickets at Shibuya?
‘No bones missing,’ I agree. ‘But where were her clothes?’
Does he befriend you with tales of farmers and cheap rice?
Her brown monpe trousers and her pale yellow blouse –
Do you go to Asakusa? Then the train to Kanasaki …?
Her sandals, her socks and her underwear, all near –
This is the way, he says. This is the way, he says …
Here among these trees, among these branches –
He walks behind you. He walks behind you …
To the neatly chopped logs piled over there –
His hair stretched tight against his scalp …
Through these trees and these branches –
But it’s not the way. Never the way …
On my hands and on my knees –
His skin tight against his skull …
I’m lifting up log after log –
He looms and he leers …
Looking for her clothes –
Kodaira, Kodaira …
Under log after log –
Looms and leers …
This one last log –
Here, here …
Here, buried deep in this pile of neatly chopped logs, one rotting wet pair of brown monpe trousers, one pale yellow blouse much better preserved through last autumn and winter to this spring and this summer, preserved and protected from the seasons and their weather by these neatly chopped logs, piled one on top of another among these well-tended cypress trees, in the midst of this small wood on the side of this small mountain, in this other world, this other country, so very, very far from home, his only daughter here –
This is where Mitsuko died on the twelfth of July, 1945 …
I am still on my hands and on my knees among the logs –
This is where Mitsuko was beaten unconscious …
On my knees and with my hands, I begin to dig –
This is where she was stripped and raped …
To dig and to clean. To clean and to collect –
This is where she was throttled …
To collect all the pieces of her clothing –
This is where she was killed …
To put the pieces in my knapsack –
This is where Nakamura Mitsuko died and then was raped again, again and again, raped and then robbed of her money, her wristwatch, her round silver spectacles and her brooch …
Her elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch …
To take them back to Tokyo –
The gift from a father to …
To take it back –
His only daughter …
Back home.
*
Detective Ishida climbs into the back of the truck and we all bow and thank the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama for their help and for their hospitality. Now we drive back down the mountain, then up and down another until we come back out into the valley, the Black River to our right again, the Scavenging Line still to our left –
More lines of people making their way back to the station …
But today there is no talk of city-folk. No talk of Scavengers –
Lines and lines of people with their supplies on their backs …
No talk of potatoes and rice. No talk of fleas and lice –
The bones of one dead girl and the clothes of another …
Today there is only silence in the front and back –
In an old army knapsack upon my knee …
They are looking out for us again, listening out for the sound of Tachibana’s battered old mountain truck coming to a stop outside their quaint old police station, uniforms running out to bow and salute and to welcome us back, Detective Ishida and I bowing, saluting and thanking them again. Then we follow Chief Tachibana up the clean little steps into his station where the two officers who are stood behind the front desk bow and salute and welcome us again –
‘I have another message for Detective Ishida,’ says one of the men. Ishida steps forward and takes the message –
Another message. The final message …
Ishida asking to use their telephone –
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi…’
Police Chief Tachibana leading me away, down the side of the front desk, along the corridor to his office where he talks about train timetables and the journey back to Tokyo and home –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
There is another soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into Police Chief Tachibana’s office –
Detective Ishida; this man I don’t know …
Tachibana asks, ‘Everything all right?’
‘Everything is fine now,’ says Detective Ishida. ‘Thank you.’
*
The entire police force of Kanuma has accompanied us down to the train station, here to wish us a safe journey and to bid us farewell. Tachibana has even held up the departure of the train for us –
Now his officers bow and then he bows –
Tachibana apologizes for the failings of himself and his men. Then he bows again, thanking us for our hard work and our help –
‘And we hope to work with you again,’ he says –
Detective Ishida and I salute Tachibana and bow to him and thank him for all his hard work and for all the hard work of his men, for all his assistance, for all his generosity and for all his hospitality –
Police Chief Tachibana salutes and bows one last time –
Then, finally, Ishida and I board the Tōbu train –
The Kanuma police clearing a path for us –
The doors close and the whistle blows –
No seats, so Ishida and I are stood –
The locomotive jolts as it starts –
In the small of Ishida’s back …
Ishida and I stood pressed together again, both of us staring through a window without glass, watching Kanuma disappear –
In the small of his back, something cold and metallic …
I try to turn from the window, away from Kanuma –
This other world, this other country …
The carriage packed tight with people and their baggage, the people not meeting our eyes, afraid for their baggage –
We are the police. We are the law …
There is no glass in any of the windows but still there’s no air in this carriage, just the stench of soiled babies –
The stench of human shit …
‘This Tōbu Line train will stop next at Momiyama station,’ begins the conductor. ‘Then Niregi, Kanasaki, Ienaka, Kassemba, Shin-Tochigi, Tochigi…’
Suddenly Ishida says, ‘I want to get off at Ienaka.’
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi. Return to HQ…’
I ask him, ‘Why do you want to do that?’
Something cold and metallic …
‘I want to look over the Baba crime scene again,’ he says. ‘We found so much they had missed at the Ishikawa and Nakamura sites that I think we should look again…’
He walks behind me …
I have a bagful of bones, scraps of clothing on my back –
I curse him…
I nod. ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want to do…’
*
The sun is setting now and soon it will be dark in Ienaka –
The shadows of the mountains lengthening …
Ishida and I pass through these ticket gates for a second time in three days and walk out of the station into the town –
No one is here, no one here at all …
The town is deserted again as I lead Ishida up the slope out of town, past the Beautiful Mountain Inn where we stayed –
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
‘Are you sure this is the right way?’
I do not answer him because he knows it does not matter, because he knows it could be any woods on any mountain and so up and down we go, up and down again we walk until we come to another narrow road, perhaps the same narrow road up which Kodaira Yoshio led Baba Hiroko on the thirtieth of December, last year –
‘Are you sure this is the place?’ he asks again –
Nishi Katamura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
I do not answer him because it does not matter. I put down my old army knapsack. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck –
I turn away from the fields and the ditches –
I stare up into the woods on the slope of the mountainside, up into the shadows of the black trunks of the trees –
Their branches and their leaves …
I point up the slope. ‘It’s that way…’
Detective Ishida follows me now as I climb up off the narrow road and into the woods, waving away the mosquitoes and bugs with my hand as Ishida walks behind me –
He walks behind me…
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, I lead him towards the slight hollow in the side of the mountain –
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, he follows me to this slight hollow surrounded by fallen logs –
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, he walks behind me to this slight hollow in the side of the mountain, this hollow filled with broken branches and dead leaves –
He walks behind me through the trees to here –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
‘This is the place,’ I tell him but I do not turn around –
The cicadas silent now, the mosquitoes sated here …
In this place, in this hollow, I can hear him now –
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
I can hear him behind me. I can feel him –
Beneath the branches and their leaves …
I can hear him raise his army pistol –
I can feel him point it at my back –
I can hear him cock the pistol –
Cold and metallic …
Now I hear him shout, ‘Get down on your knees, detective!’ I do not speak. I do not turn around. I get down on my knees –
On my knees, in these woods, in this hollow, in this place –
I feel the nose of the gun against the back of my skull –
In this place, in this hollow, in these woods –
I close my eyes and now I see her face –
I see her face and all their faces –
Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai!
Then I hear him pull the trigger. Click. I hear him pull it again. Click. I hear him pull it again –
Click. Click.
And again –
Click —
Now I get up off my knees. Click. Now I turn around. Click. Now I take his pistol by its nose. Click. Click …
Now I have his pistol in my hands –
Bang! Bang! Into his face –
Bang! Bang! And again –
The stench of shit.
*
In this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, Ishida tries to open his eyes now as I bend down over him to wipe away some of the blood and now he tries to speak, to thank me, and I smile, a friendly man with my small acts of kindness, a smiling, friendly man who puts an arm around him and smiles again and laughs as he talks and he talks, talking about this and talking about that, telling me that and telling me this, this about that man and that about this man, and it’s like we’ve known each other all our lives, this crying, bloody man and this smiling, friendly man, like I’m his uncle, this smiling, friendly man, or even the father he lost so very young, but I know he does not feel so safe in this smile on my face, this one smiling, friendly face between these trees and beneath these branches, this desperate, defeated man who stares up at me now with pleas for mercy and pleas for forgiveness in his black and blood-soaked eyes in this place, in this hollow he does not know, this land, this country getting darker and darker, hour after hour, and now the day is gone and the mountain is gone and there is only this place, this hollow now, between these trees, beneath these branches, but still I smile and I smile, a smiling, friendly man between the trees, beneath the branches, in this hollow, in this place, but now my teeth are pointed and my eyes are hungry, my lips wet and tongue long –
Is this when my grip tightens? My words harden…?
My lips wet and my tongue long, I am not smiling now and I am not friendly now, this man with my pointed teeth and my hungry eyes, my wet lips and my long tongue whispering what I want from him now, in this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, telling him exactly what I want from him and he’s turning away from me now in this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, but I’m pulling him back and I’m slapping his face, punching his face and kicking his legs, and he’s on his hands and on his knees among the branches and the leaves, asking me to stop and begging me to stop and pleading with me to stop, to spare his life, to let him live, to let him get away but I cannot hear him asking, I cannot hear him begging, I cannot hear him pleading because I’m pulling him deeper into this place, into this hollow, this land and this country, putting a hand around his neck and another inside his chest and he knows what I want and he knows what I want and he knows what I want and he’s telling me to take it, begging me to take it, pleading with me to take it, to take it and then leave him alone, please leave him, please leave him alone but I’m squeezing his throat, I’m squeezing his throat, I’m squeezing his throat, snot in his nose and piss down his legs and shit from his backside, as I squeeze his throat tighter and tighter, this place blacker and blacker –
As black as his hair that will never turn grey …
Now you open your eyes and you know you are still living, lying on your back on broken branches and dead leaves in this hollow, in this place, you have survived, you are one of the lucky ones, bleeding and beaten on these branches and leaves, but you have survived, you are lucky and now you raise yourself up from these branches and leaves, but this is when you know you have not survived, you are not one of the lucky ones, when you see me sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, staring at you and smoking a cigarette, a once smiling, friendly man as I finish my cigarette and get up off the trunk of this fallen tree, walking towards you beneath these branches and over these leaves, putting the bullets back into your gun –
You try to speak but you cannot speak …
Because a once smiling, friendly man has your gun in his hand and now I’m putting it into your mouth –
Bleeding and beaten here …
Here on these branches and leaves in this hollow, here in this place, I pull the trigger of your gun –
Bang!
*
In the night, he shrieks. I walk back down the mountain. Leave Minami in Tochigi. This mountain of lies. Tell me who you are working for! I hear snatches of Ishida’s confession. Not sleeping, not waking. I do not run. Return to HQ. A man could live on this mountain. Tell me! Names and places and dates. In the night, he howls. I walk across the ditches and the fields. Inspector Adachi. A man could hide on this mountain. Tell me who wanted me dead! Ishida’s confession and Ishida’s lies. I can hear him crying. I do not run. Leave Minami in Tochigi. A man could renounce the world. Tell me! Ishida mumbles about Fujita. In the night, he wails. The whistle of a train coming down the line. Return to HQ. A man could forget the world. Tell me who ordered you to kill me! Ishida moans about Senju Akira. In his sleep. Now I run. Inspector Adachi. But I cannot forget this world. Tell me! Now Ishida lies and he lies about Adachi –
The bloody mouth from which the gag has been ripped …
Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies –
In the night, the grinding of teeth, the weeping of tears …
It is time to come down from this mountain of lies –
I can hear Ishida crying. I can hear him weeping …
To come down from this mountain of bones –
In the half-light, I can hear them all …
It is time to go home.
*
I struggle but manage to get on board at the couplings between two of the carriages. I struggle but manage to get from the couplings into the freight wagon. The freight wagon full of people packed like cattle –
Human cattle. Human cattle. Human cattle …
There is a woman attacking a rice-ball, another crunching a pickle, little kids crying and old folk snoring, itching and scratching, gari-gari, the reek of human piss, the stench of human shit –
Human shit. Human shit. Human shit …
‘No luck at all,’ someone is saying. ‘Nothing at all…’
‘They’re all so rich now they’ve no need to sell…’
‘They keep the good stuff hidden out of sight…’
‘Or they just ask for whatever they want…’
‘They aren’t satisfied with money…’
‘Some of the older ones want a fuck and if you put some effort into it and promise to come back again, they’ll give you a quart for a hundred and fifty yen, not bad for ten minutes’ fucking…’
‘You could sell it in Tokyo for two hundred yen…’
‘Your rice and your cunt,’ they laugh, ha, ha …
I stare out of the wagon, between the boards –
There is no hindsight. No foresight …
Just blindness, just darkness –
Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he! Ho, ho, ho, ho!
Tokyo, 85°, fine
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The bodies rock from side to side with the motion of the train as the dawn begins to pick them out through the holes in the boards and the gaps by the doors. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. There is an old white-haired woman sat across from me, wedged between a younger man and woman. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The younger man and woman both trying to wake her up now, whispering, ‘Wake up. We’ll soon be in Asakusa. Wake up…’
But there is no movement or answer from the woman –
‘Wake up!’ hisses the other woman. ‘I can’t move my arm.’
The train jumps a joint now. The old woman falls forward –
The man on her left, sensing something is not quite right, lifts up her head to the light. The old woman’s eyes are still closed –
There is froth round her mouth and down her chin –
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks the man. ‘Wake up!’
The train jumps another joint. The old woman rolls over –
‘She’s dead,’ says the woman to the man. ‘She’s dead…’
Now they both try to push the old woman’s body off them, to push her away, but the woman’s body won’t move because it is held in its place by the weight of the bundle strapped to her back –
The weight of the bundle, the supplies on her back …
‘Take it off,’ the man is whispering to the young woman as they struggle with the body. But the young woman has had a better idea as they separate the body of the old woman from the bundle on her back, the younger woman opening the bundle and the man doesn’t need telling and now he joins her picking through the ropes and the knots, each of them glancing this way and that to check that no one else is awake, the ropes and the knots now gone, that way and this to make sure no one is watching as they take the polished rice and the sweet potatoes from out of the bundle on the dead woman’s back and hide it in the bundles on their own backs –
This way and that, that way and this …
I lower my head and I close my eyes –
I turn their shoes to face the door …
But not for long –
The other bodies in the freight wagon begin to stir now. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The whispers with them. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The rumours that the police will be waiting at Asakusa to search the passengers and their bundles for any black-market goods –
People thinking about getting off at Kita-Senju station –
People saying Kita-Senju will be just as bad –
People talking about jumping off –
I have heard enough –
I put my knapsack of bones and fragments of clothes on my back and I jump down from the freight wagon at Kita-Senju station –
But I do not go through the ticket gates at Kita-Senju. I walk up the stairs and down another flight to another platform. Then I stand on the roofless platform and I wait for the train to Ueno –
It is the twenty-seventh of August. I think. It is just gone 7 a.m. It is hot and humid and the sky is a dirty grey stain –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …
Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
Gari-gari …
This platform for Ueno and Tokyo is not very busy but across the tracks the platforms for Saitama and Chiba are both crowded –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch and I scratch –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
I hear my train approaching now. I step forward towards the edge of the platform. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The train pulls in and hundreds of people get off, pushing and shoving. I get on board, the carriage still full of hundreds of people, still pushing and shoving. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I stand by the door as the train pulls out. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. There is silence inside the carriage. The people are nervous. The people are worried. The people afraid –
I am nervous. I am worried. I am afraid. I am scared …
There are always police at Ueno station, always searches of clothing and baggage. But I will not go through the ticket gates here. I will change to another platform. I will change to another train –
They will not see me. They will not stop me …
I will take the Yamate Line to Kanda –
They will not find me. Not catch me …
The Chūō Line to Shinanomachi –
I will be safe this way …
But there are police at Shinanomachi station. I curse. I am on the platform now. I curse. I am walking towards the ticket gate. I curse. They are stopping people. I curse. They are searching people. I curse. I can’t show my notebook. I curse. I can’t tell them my name. I curse. I am stood in the line for the gates. I curse. I am in the queue now. I curse. I hand my ticket to the station staff. I keep walking –
‘You there,’ commands the voice of a policeman. ‘Stop!’
I curse and I curse. I stop. I curse again. I turn around –
There are two uniformed policemen. ‘Come here!’
I curse. I curse. I curse. I curse. I curse …
I bow before them and I ask, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What have you got in your knapsack?’
I curse. I curse. I curse. I curse …
‘Just my clothes and things…’
‘Show us then,’ they tell me.
I curse. I curse. I curse …
‘But it’s just clothes.’
‘Just open it then.’
I curse. I curse …
‘Really, just…’
‘Open it!’
I curse and I curse but I nod. I take off my knapsack and I start to open it up but one of the officers snatches it from out of my hands. He sets it down on the floor and he starts to go through it –
I can feel the gun in the small of my back …
‘What is all this?’ he asks now, dropping the pieces of cloth and the fragments of bones onto the floor and standing back up –
Ishida’s gun tucked in my belt…
The other man bending down to look at the cloth and the bones, now staring back up at me with horror in his eyes –
I have no choice now …
I take out my keisatsu techō, my police notebook, and I hand it to them. I tell them, I’m taking this evidence to the autopsy department at Keiō
No choice …
But the two policemen are both smiling at me now, their caps in their hands, wiping their faces and wiping their necks –
‘Why didn’t you just say you were one of us?’
‘I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.’
‘Just show your techō next time …’
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘My mistake.’
‘We’re not looking for policemen,’ they laugh as I walk out of the station with the clothes and the bones in the bag on my back.
*
It is still early but the Keiō Hospital is still busy; queues through the gates, queues to the doors, queues in the corridors. I walk through the gates, through the doors and down the corridors; past the queues, past the patients and past the gurneys to the elevator. I push the button –
I hate hospitals. I hate all hospitals. All hospitals …
I step inside. I press another button. The doors close –
I have spent too long in hospitals …
I ride the elevator down in the dark –
I have spent too long here …
The doors open. Light returns –
In the half-light …
I walk past the tiled walls of sinks, of drains, the written warnings of cuts, of punctures, down the corridor to the mortuary and the autopsy room. I knock on the door to the office –
‘Yes,’ shouts Dr. Nakadate from inside –
I open the door. I step into his office –
The smell of death, then disinfectant …
Dr. Nakadate sat at his desk, his face unshaven, his eyes red –
‘What happened to your hair?’ he asks. ‘It’s gone grey.’
‘I almost didn’t recognize you…’
I say, ‘I’ve brought you some souvenirs from Tochigi…’
Dr. Nakadate puts down his pen. He shakes his head –
I put the knapsack down on his desk. I open it up –
I take out the clothes. I take out the bones –
Nakadate looks at them. Then he looks up at me. ‘Kodaira?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘But I think it’s going to be hard to prove, unless he confesses when faced with the evidence we have…’
Dr. Nakadate asks, ‘Why? Where’s the rest of it?’
‘Utsunomiya,’ I tell him. ‘There are three cases but only one of them was ever treated as a crime. I have asked Utsunomiya to send any remains and any reports they can find here to you.’
‘What are the names of the victims?’ he asks.
‘These bones here were taken from the scene where the body of a woman named Ishikawa Yori was found in September last year. The Kanuma police believe Ishikawa died in June. Then, at a second site, I found these pieces of clothing which I believe belong to a girl called Nakamura Mitsuko, who was reported missing last July. Just last month, Kanuma police found a skeleton which I believe to be hers, though I have not seen the autopsy report. However, I am going to take these pieces of clothing to her family to try to confirm her identity. The third case is that of a young woman named Baba Hiroko who was murdered in January this year…’
Nakadate stops writing. Nakadate nods.
‘You know about that one?’ I ask. ‘Then I can also tell you that we found no evidence to connect Kodaira to a fourth case, that of a Numao Shizue and which had been forwarded to us by Nikkō.’
‘You’ve been very busy, detective,’ says Dr. Nakadate now. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re after a promotion…?’
‘So you heard what happened to me?’
‘Yes,’ says Nakadate.
‘Who told you?’
‘Chief Kita himself,’ he says.
‘When did you see him?’
‘When I took him the Miyazaki Mitsuko autopsy report.’
‘You told me you were going to wait a few days…’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says. ‘But I had no choice.’
I have no choice. I have no choice …
‘There’s always a choice,’ I hiss –
‘Not this time,’ says Nakadate. ‘The Public Safety Division came here asking to see all reports involving the Kempeitai…’
‘So you gave them the Miyazaki autopsy report?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I gave it to Chief Kita.’
‘And what did Chief Kita say?’
‘He already knew about it.’
‘But he hadn’t connected it to Kodaira?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Nakadate.
‘Did Chief Kita say what he was going to do about it?’
‘He said they would question Kodaira about it.’
‘What about Chief Inspector Adachi?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did Chief Kita say anything about Chief Inspector Adachi and the Miyazaki case?’
‘No.’
‘Did the Public Safety Division ask you about Adachi?’
‘No.’
‘So what did they ask you about then?’
‘Kempeitai cases,’ he tells me again.
‘About me?’ I ask him –
Nakadate nods –
‘What…?’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says again. ‘But they have statements. They have witnesses, detective. There was nothing I could do…’
I had no choice. I had no choice. I had no choice …
In the corridor of tiled walls and written warnings, I push the button and I wait for the elevator to come. Dr. Nakadate bows. Nakadate apologizes again. He wishes me luck and then he asks –
Finally he asks, ‘What will you do now?’
‘I have debts to pay,’ I tell him –
‘You owe them nothing…’
‘Not to the living,’ I say. ‘Debts to the dead.’
*
The last streetcar hit a youth and a woman jumped in front of a train so the streetcar is late and the trains have stopped and so I am stood in the queue next to a woman of about fifty in a pair of brown monpe work trousers similar to the rotten pair in the knapsack on my back. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. To my left is a youth of about fifteen or sixteen. There is a tear in the shoulder of the coarsely woven factory uniform he is wearing and beneath the visor of his army cap his eyes are closed and his jaw hangs open, his body swaying slowly back and forth in the morning heat, back and forth. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Back and forth, back and forth until, just as it seems he’ll fall forward flat onto his face, the youth pulls himself up –
‘Is he drunk or is he sick?’ asks the woman –
‘Probably just tired and hungry,’ I say.
The woman leans across me. She puts a hand on the youth’s shoulder. She asks him, ‘Are you all right? Where are you going?’
The youth does not answer. The woman asks him again –
This time the youth says, ‘I’m going to Ueno.’
‘Then you’re on the wrong side,’ says the woman. ‘You need to go and wait on the other side of the road for Ueno. Over there…’
The youth stares at the streetcar stop on the other side of the road. But he does not move. Under his cap, he closes his eyes –
‘Over there,’ says the woman again. ‘Can you see?’
Now the youth’s jaw hangs open again.
‘You’re on the wrong side,’ the woman persists –
But still the youth doesn’t open his eyes.
‘This bus won’t take you to Ueno…’
The youth sways back and forth again.
Now she turns to me. ‘He’s going the wrong way.’
I nod. I say, ‘But it makes no difference.’
*
I walk down the street to the Nakamura house but keep on past it and do not stop until I reach the corner. Then I stand there and I stare back at the house, the bad news I bring in the knapsack on my back. Now I turn and I walk back down the street towards the house. I stop in front of the latticed door to the entrance. I reach up to open it but it is locked and will not move. I knock on the doorframe but no one comes. I knock again, louder this time, calling out in apology –
‘Who’s there?’ asks Nakamura Mitsuko’s father.
‘Detective Minami,’ I say. ‘From the Metropolitan Police.’
I hear his slippers in the genkan. Then the door opens –
‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ I say. ‘But I have some news…’
Nakamura Mitsuko’s father does not ask me what kind of news I have brought them. Nakamura Mitsuko’s father does not ask my anything. He just nods once and invites me into their house –
These things I have brought. These things I will leave …
I feel sick as I take off my boots, nauseous as I follow Mitsuko’s father into the reception room at the front of the house, as I set down my army knapsack, as I sit down on the tatami across the low table from Mitsuko’s father, as I open the knapsack –
The pain I have brought. The pain I will leave …
I take out the rotten pair of brown monpe trousers. I take out the pale yellow blouse. Finally, I take out the elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch. I place each of the items on the table before him –
Nakamura Mitsuko’s father reaches out his hand –
I tell him about the skeleton in the woods …
Mitsuko’s father picks up the brooch –
I tell him about the cypress trees …
He brings the brooch to his chest –
I tell him where she is now …
He holds the brooch there –
How she’ll soon be home …
He bows his head –
‘She was my only daughter,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’
*
I sit down on a pile of broken concrete. I take out a cigarette. I light it. There is a row of barrack housing on the other side of the road. I watch a young woman hanging out a futon from one of the second-floor windows. I watch her beat the futon with a stick, dust coming off. Every now and again she turns to say something to someone inside the house. She says it with a smile or a song in her voice. But now the woman sees me watching her and quickly pulls the futon back inside the room and closes the window. I see her peep again at me from inside the room, a small child in her arms, her eyes filled with hate and fear. I want to ask her who she thinks she is to look at me with such contempt, such fear, to ask who raised her up to look down on me. But I look away from the window. I look down at my boots, my soldiers’ boots. There is the corpse of a pregnant collie dog lying on its back just a metre or so from my right boot. Its stomach has been split open by some other animal. Half-rotten but fully formed puppies have been dragged from out of her stomach and savaged, staining the soil and the stones a deep, dark and bloody red. Now I stand up. In the Year of the Dog, I sweep dirt and dust over the black dried fetuses with the side of my soldier’s boot –
Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai!
*
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I walk through Kyōbashi Ward. I come to the battered board fence, the huge pile of rusty iron and the cabin with its glass door and tin roof. Behind the fence, two men in labourers’ clothes, one short and one tall, are carrying the small stool and the empty packing cases out of the cabin. I go through the opening in the boarding into the scrapyard. I say who I am and ask if Kobayashi Sōkichi is around –
In the sunlight and shadows, the white and the black …
‘Don’t you know?’ asks the tall one. ‘He died yesterday.’
‘Mr. Kobayashi is dead?’ I repeat. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was killed about eight o’clock last night,’ says the man. ‘He’d gone in his truck to pick up some scrap in Ōmiya and on the way back his truck turned over on a narrow bridge. Both Kobayashi and the other man who was with him were killed…’
‘I heard one of the Victors’ trucks ran them off the road,’ says the shorter man. ‘That they couldn’t get out of the way…’
‘You don’t know that,’ says the tall man. ‘It’s just gossip.’
‘No, it’s not,’ says the short one. ‘This old man who lives by the bridge, he saw the whole thing and made a statement to the police and he said that there was a convoy of four or five US army trucks heading for the bridge, which is just this old wooden bridge, that it is so narrow that it’s impossible for two vehicles to pass, and that the US army trucks were sounding their horns and flashing their lights but Kobayashi’s truck was almost on the bridge, so he couldn’t turn back but the US army trucks were coming too fast and so it looked to this old man like Kobayashi tried to pull over at the side of the bridge but that the first army truck that came across the bridge, it clipped Kobayashi and sent his truck rolling right down the banking…’
‘And he told all this to the Ōmiya police?’ I ask –
‘Yes,’ says the short man. ‘But the police said there was nothing they could do, not when it’s Shinchū Gun…’
I shake my head. I thank them for telling me the details of what happened. I ask if I might step inside the cabin for a moment –
They nod. ‘We’re just here to tidy things up.’
Now I step inside the cabin. The old colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine is still tacked to the wall. The potted sakaki tree sat on the butsudan before the three framed photographs; the three photographs and now one small candle burning on the shelf –
‘Perhaps he’s already just another ghost…’
Now I kneel down before the butsudan. I make my report –
To the three photographs and to the burning candle –
I tell them I have found justice for Hiroko –
I promise there will be vengeance.
I stand back up. I take the old colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine down from the wall. I turn it over. It’s from Hiroko –
A school trip in a happier time …
I put the postcard in the pocket of my jacket. I walk back out of the cabin, into the sunlight and the scrapyard, the two men still talking, the taller man saying, ‘You live through all that he lived through, you survive all that he survived, the war, the bombs, the fires, you survive all that just to die in a stupid traffic accident…’
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ says the short one –
‘Except when your time comes, it comes…’
I thank them again and then I step back through the boarding and out into the street. I look at the buildings going up, the offices and the businesses, and I think about Kobayashi’s son, still chopping wood on the Amur River, not knowing his father died in a traffic accident at eight o’clock last night, not knowing his aunt died of a broken heart, not knowing his cousin was raped and murdered, not knowing he is better off dead, he’s better off dead, better off dead –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
*
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I am hungry and I am starving. I need a drink and a cigarette. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I walk through another makeshift market, through its stalls and its stands. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I stop before a stall where a young woman is selling sweet potatoes. I stare at the potatoes and now at the woman –
Her sunburnt skin and her short skirt …
The frayed hem of her skirt hiked up, the woman sits on a crate with one leg crossed over the other –
‘Are you just going to stare up my skirt, old man?’ she asks. ‘Or are you going to buy a potato…?’
I blush now and I look away.
The woman uncrosses her legs and stands up. She wipes her face and she wipes her neck. She looks at me and she laughs –
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘They’re just two yen.’
I take out the money and I hand it to her –
‘Help yourself,’ she laughs now.
I pick up a sweet potato and I begin to walk away. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I glance round at the woman but she has already sat back down on her crate, one leg crossed over the other –
Her sunburnt skin and her short skirt …
And now I see him; I see him among the crowds, among the stalls; caked black in rags and filth, his face and his hands covered in blisters and boils, the boy is weeping pus and tears. I keep walking through the crowds, through the stalls. I glance back again. I see him again, among the crowds, among the stalls, caked black in rags and filth, covered in blisters and boils –
He walks behind me …
I keep walking. I am hungry and I am starving. I need a drink and a cigarette. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I turn a corner and I turn another. I glance back over my shoulder but I cannot see him. Now I stop walking. I sit down in another ruin, among another pile of rubble. I bite into the potato –
It is cold, it is old …
But it still tastes hot, it still tastes fresh to me. Now a shadow falls across my face and hands and I look up. The boy is stood before me, caked black in rags and filth, covered in blisters and boils, just centimetres before me –
He points …
His belly distended, his bones protruding, he smells of rotten apricots. Now he raises his hand and he points his finger at me –
His yellow eyes, stained a deep, dark and bloody red …
I start to break the sweet potato in half, to give him one half, but the boy snatches the whole potato out of my fingers and now, with his other hand, he throws dirt and dust into my face –
Dust into my eyes as he turns and he runs –
Runs away weeping and laughing –
Tears and pus, Ha, ha, ha, ha …
Daddy, Banzai!
*
I knock on the door of the old wooden row house in Kitazawa, not far from the Shimo-Kitazawa station. There is no answer. I knock again. There is still no answer. I try the door. It is not locked. I open it. There is silence. I step inside the genkan. The kitchen is deserted –
I call out, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Murota? Excuse me…?’
But there is still no answer, still only silence –
I take off my boots. I step inside the house. I walk across the old tatami mats. I go through the shabby curtain that partitions the downstairs. Nothing but stale air and shadows –
Nothing but shadows here …
I go up the steep, narrow wooden stairs. There are two rooms, one at the back and one at the front of the house. The room at the front is the larger one. There is a chest of drawers stood in one corner on the dirty mats. I open the drawers. They are empty. The window in the back room has been left open. There are mosquitoes here. There is also a closet but, again, it is empty –
Nothing but shadows now …
I go back down the wooden stairs. Back through the shabby curtain. I stand in the kitchen. There are mosquitoes here too. The smell of old meals. Murota Hideki and the woman who called herself Tominaga Noriko are long gone –
No one who they seem …
I sit down at the low wooden table on the old worn tatami. I take out one of the two wristwatches from my pocket. I turn it over in my hand. I hold it up to the light. I read its inscription –
Tominaga Noriko …
I place the watch on the low wooden table –
I take out my notebook of rough paper –
I lick the tip of my pencil stub –
In the half-light …
I write, over and over –
I write my name –
Over and over –
My name.
*
The sky has turned a darker shade of grey now. Not you. The air is heavy with dread and heat. Not you. The branches and their leaves hang low. Not you. The street stalls have all been covered over with straw mats. Not you. Men and women squat among the rubble, watching the sky and fanning themselves. Not you. Jeeps and trucks roll past with their huge white stars on their doors, their canvas canopies rolled up. Not you. Men with white faces and men with black faces sat in the backs of the jeeps and the trucks. Not you. They have guns in their hands or guns on their knees. It was not you. They are smiling and they are laughing. It was not you …
It was not you we were waiting for …
*
They are searching for me, on the trains and at the stations, but I have found them first, back here where they least expect me, back here at the Atago police station. I stand across the road and I watch and I wait, I watch and I wait. I watch them come and I watch them go and I wait. I wait until I see Detective Nishi and now I move –
Nishi on his own coming down the road –
Ten quick steps and I’m behind him –
The pistol pressed into his ribs –
Eyes in the back of my head –
‘This way,’ I tell him and force him to turn around, to turn back and walk across the road, to stand him up against the trees, here among the weeds and the garbage, the black metal drums full of ashes and remains, an army-issue pistol pressed into his belly –
He looks like shit, like he still hasn’t slept –
I am looking in a mirror, in a mirror …
‘Where is everyone?’ I ask him –
Nishi stares at the pistol stuck in his stomach. Nishi says, ‘They’re all celebrating, aren’t they?’
‘Celebrating what?’
‘A case closed.’
‘Which one?’
‘Kodaira.’
‘So they couldn’t even wait for me to get back from Tochigi. They couldn’t even wait to see the evidence I found, to read my report. They couldn’t care less about all the others, could they?’
There have been others. There have been others …
‘But they’ve been looking for you, you know that don’t you?’ he tells me now, still staring down at the pistol stuck in his stomach. ‘You should go to Daimon. You should go and join the party. Talk to Chief Kita, but you should go now before it’s too late…’
‘Shut up!’ I tell him. ‘It’s already too late.’
Nishi shakes his head. ‘No, it’s not.’
Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar! …
‘Shut up!’ I hiss again. ‘And just answer my questions…’
Now Detective Nishi bows his head. Now he nods –
‘What happened to Detective Fujita?’ I ask him.
‘Nishi looks up. You don’t know?’
I push the pistol deeper into his gut. ‘Just tell me!’
‘They found his body in the Shiba Canal,’ says Nishi. ‘Hands and feet nailed to the back of a door, drowned face down, just…’
‘Just like Hayashi Jo,’ I say for him –
Nishi nods again and says, ‘Yes.’
‘And whose case is it?’ I ask –
‘Chief Inspector Adachi’s.’
I curse him. I curse him …
‘And so who does your great inspector think killed Fujita?’
‘The chief inspector thinks that Fujita was somehow involved with Nodera Tomiji in the murder of Matsuda Giichi, that Hayashi Jo tried to blackmail Fujita and so Fujita killed him to silence him, that Boss Senju then somehow found out about it and had Fujita killed.’
‘This is not a problem … this is going to be a pleasure…’
‘And me?’ I ask him. ‘What’s he saying about me…?’
Nishi shakes his head. Nishi says, ‘Nothing…’
I raise the pistol so it is level with Nishi’s eyes, the space between his eyes, and I say, ‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying…’
‘But it’s the truth,’ pleads Nishi. ‘Please…’
I ask, ‘Then what about Ishida?’
‘What about Ishida?’
‘What has Adachi said about Ishida?’ I ask. ‘Where does Detective Ishida fit into all this?’
Nishi shakes his head again. Nishi says, ‘I have no idea…’
‘Ishida was working for Adachi all along,’ I tell him –
But Nishi is still shaking his head, ‘I don’t know…’
‘Adachi had him spying on me, on you, on us all.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’
‘Maybe now it’s you, now he’s gone…’
‘Now who’s gone? What’s me?’
‘Ishida’s not coming back.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Hell,’ I tell him –
Nishi staring down the barrel of the gun. Nishi sweating. Nishi telling me now, ‘That’s between you and Detective Ishida –
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ he begs. ‘Please…’
‘Is that what Adachi told you to tell me…?’
‘He’s told me nothing,’ shouts Nishi –
I touch the barrel to his forehead –
‘Nothing!’ shouts Nishi again –
I press the barrel into him –
‘Adachi is trying to help you,’ cries Nishi. ‘To save you!’
‘Liar! Liar!’ I whisper as I pull the trigger. Click —
‘No! No!’ he screams. ‘It’s the truth…’
‘Adachi sent Ishida to kill me!’ I tell him as I pull the trigger, again and again, as I pull it. Click. Click —
Nishi dropping to his knees –
Click. Click —
Nishi on his knees –
‘Please, no…’
I lower the pistol now. I take out my notebook of rough paper from my jacket pocket. I bend down over him. I lift his face up to the light. I push the notebook into his face. I force open his mouth –
Now I stuff the notebook inside Nishi’s mouth –
‘That’s the truth in there,’ I say. ‘My truth…’
In the half-light, the half-things …
‘Read it and remember it!’
*
The nighthawks under the tracks are out early tonight. Asobu? Asobu? In their yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dresses. Asobu? Asobu? They have had their radios on, their newspapers open, and have heard there is a typhoon approaching. Asobu? Asobu? In their white half-sleeved chemises. Asobu? Asobu? They know there will be no business later, only rain and only wind. Asobu? Asobu? In their dyed-pink socks. Asobu? Asobu? They know they have to earn what they can now. Asobu? Asobu? In their white canvas shoes with their red rubber soles. Asobu? Asobu? But they do not try to grab my hand –
In their yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dresses …
They do not try to lure me into the shadows tonight –
‘Get away!’ they scream. ‘Get away from here!’
They look into my eyes, then hide their own –
‘We don’t fuck the dead! We don’t fuck ghosts!’
*
Potsu-potsu, the rain is beginning to fall now, hot fat drops on the kettles and the pans; potsu-potsu it falls in a terrible rhythm on the crockery and the utensils; potsu-potsu as the stall-holders still left outside the Shimbashi New Life Market struggle to cover the clothes and the shoes; potsu-potsu on the cooking oil and the soy sauce; potsu-potsu as the canvas and the straw mats are hauled out –
Potsu-potsu as it drowns out even the ‘Apple Song’ –
‘If two people sing along, it’s a merry song…’
Potsu-potsu on the patterned shirts and American sunglasses of the goons guarding the foot of the stairs to Senju Akira’s office –
Potsu-potsu on the patterned shirts and American sunglasses as they frisk my body and clothes for guns and knives –
Potsu-potsu on the patterned shirts and American sunglasses as they only glance inside my old army knapsack –
Potsu-potsu as it falls on the corrugated tin roof which covers the stairs up to Senju Akira’s office –
Potsu-potsu on the blue-eyed Victor coming down the stairs; potsu-potsu as he winks at me –
‘Good evening…’
Potsu-potsu as I push past him up the staircase to the office; potsu-potsu …
Senju Akira sat cross-legged before his long low polished table; bare-chested again with his trousers unbuttoned at the waist, there are revolvers and short swords lain out on the table before him –
Senju Akira is preparing for war, preparing for another war –
I put down my knapsack. I bow low on the tatami mats –
‘There’s always a war somewhere,’ he tells me –
My face to the floor, I do not answer him –
‘At home or abroad,’ he says. ‘There’s always war and always profits to be made for the bold and the brave among us!’
I raise my head. ‘Always war…’
‘The great Matsuda Giichi taught me this,’ continues Senju. ‘He was among the very first to see the opportunities on the continent; first he went to Shanghai, then he went to Dairen. He made money. He invested money. In transportation. In industry. His efforts supported the Kantō army in northern Manchukō. And the Kantō army appreciated and rewarded him well. But, when he returned home in the sixteenth year of Shōwa, was he rewarded for all he had done for the Japanese army, for the Japanese Empire?’
I shake my head. I say, ‘No, he wasn’t…’
‘No, he wasn’t!’ thunders Senju. ‘This man who had built railways for the Japanese army, this man who had provided supplies for the Japanese army, that the Japanese army might expand and protect the Japanese Empire on behalf of the Emperor, what welcome did this man receive upon his return home…?’
I shake my head again. ‘None…’
‘Worse than none!’ shouts Senju. ‘No parades. No medals. No honours. They sent him to prison for assault and battery!’
I bow my head low again and I say nothing –
‘But was this great man defeated?’ cries Senju. ‘Was this great man reduced to nothing?’
‘No, he wasn’t…’
‘Of course, he wasn’t!’ laughs Senju. ‘Matsuda Giichi organized the inmates of the prison, he protected and he helped them, no matter what their trouble, no matter what their background –
‘Matsuda Giichi became their leader –
‘So then, on his release, each of these men he had protected, who he had helped inside the joint, each man came to thank him and to pledge their undying loyalty to him –
‘I was one of those men!’
I nod. ‘I know…’
‘In defeat…’
‘I know…’
‘That was how the Matsuda gang was born,’ says Senju. ‘From the ashes of his own personal defeat, Matsuda rose up again. Because you could not defeat a man such as Matsuda Giichi. You could not beat him down. You could not hold him down. Because Matsuda Giichi was a bold man. Matsuda Giichi was a brave man. And, most importantly of all, Matsuda Giichi was a man of vision –
‘A man of vision!’ shouts Senju Akira. ‘A man of vision!’
I do not speak, my head still low against the mats –
Low until Senju says, ‘But you are a blind man –
‘And so you are a defeated man! Defeated!’
I still do not speak. I still wait for him –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku…
Now Senju Akira puts a bundle of money on the table. Now Senju puts a bag of pills on the table. I lean forward –
I curse myself, I curse myself…
I bow. I thank him –
And I curse him …
But now Senju moves the money and the pills just out of my reach and says, ‘You kill Adachi, you get all these and also these…’
Ishida mumbles about Fujita. Ishida moans about Senju …
Now Senju holds up a file in one hand and a piece of paper in the other; the Miyazaki Mitsuko file and a demobilization paper –
‘The end of one life and the start of a new one…’
I curse him, I curse him and I curse myself…
I ask him, ‘But how did you get that file?’
‘I’ve told you before,’ he winks. ‘Those in the know, know, and those who don’t, don’t, eh, corporal…?’
I look down at the tatami –
And I curse him …
‘You do this one last job for me, then you run,’ smiles Senju. ‘You burn this file, you fill in this paper, then you live again –
‘A new name in a new town with a new life –
‘A new life among the living, detective –
‘A third and final chance!’
I bow low. I thank him –
And I curse myself…
Now Senju throws some cash down onto the mat by my face. Now Senju says, ‘You do the job and you get the rest. But do it soon, before you’re picked up by the Public Safety Division…’
Ishida lies and he lies about Adachi …
I nod. I clutch my knapsack. I start to shuffle backwards towards the door, on my hands and on my knees –
Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he …
Senju laughing at me now as he asks, ‘You didn’t bring me back any souvenirs from Tochigi, then? Not very thoughtful…’
‘I am very sorry,’ I tell him and I bow again –
But now Senju has said too much …
On my hands and on my knees –
He has said too much …
I get off my knees.
*
Every station, every platform, every train, every carriage. Zā-zā, za-za. The rain is coming down in sheets of sheer white water now, bouncing back off the train tracks and the umbrellas on the platform at Shimbashi. Zā-zā, za-za. Now the headlights of the Shinjuku train appear and the pushing begins, the shoving begins, the umbrellas adding to the confusion and the chaos of the bundles and baggage everyone carries. Zā-zā, za-za. I push my way forward and I shove my way on board. Zā-zā, za-za. I have food in my knapsack now. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I have money in my pocket now –
But Senju has said too much …
The train doesn’t move and the doors don’t close so there is still pushing, still shoving, one man asking another, ‘Excuse me, can I put this up there next to your bag?’
He has said too much …
‘There isn’t room, is there?’ snaps the other man, looking up at his knapsack on the rack –
Now the doors close and the train starts. Zā-zā, za-za. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Pushed and shoved as we crawl along the tracks through the rain. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Passengers get off at Hamamatsu-chō and Shinagawa but just as many push and shove their way inside. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. But now I cannot see the passengers any more. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I cannot see their bundles and their baggage. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I cannot see this train at all. Zā-zā, zā-zā. Now I do not itch and I do not scratch. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I close my eyes –
Zā-zā, zā-zā. Zā-zā, zā-zā…
I am not here any more –
I am sat cross-legged on a cot, a blood-flecked scroll on the wall above my bed. My head shaven and my belly bandaged.
*
I have no umbrella and I have no raincoat so, with my hat pulled down tight upon my skull and my jacket stretched over that, I run past the crooked, impotent telegraph poles down the road to my usual restaurant, half-way between Mitaka station and my own house –
The one lantern swinging in the rain and in the wind –
Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he! Ho, ho, ho, ho!
I pull back the sheet that acts as a door on a night like this and the jokes, the smiles and the laughter stop dead. Dead. No more jokes. No more smiles. No more laughter. Everyone stares at me and then glances up at the master behind the counter –
I ignore them. I shake the rain from my jacket and from my hat. I sit down in a space at the counter –
I order yakitori and sake –
‘Men were here again,’ says the master. ‘Asking about you.’
‘Who were they?’ I ask him. ‘Good guys or bad?’
‘What do you mean, good guys or bad?’ asks the master. ‘How would I know? You tell me. All I know is that they weren’t friendly and they were asking after you…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t like to see you frightened…’
‘I’m not frightened,’ says the master. ‘But I don’t want trouble with the Yankees and I don’t want trouble with the gangs and I don’t want trouble with crooked cops either…’
I take out some money. I put it on the counter and I tell him, ‘I know I have run up debts…’
Debts to the dead …
The master picks up the money from the counter. The master puts the money back into my hand. He closes my fingers round it –
‘I don’t want your money and I don’t want your custom either. The slate’s clean but, remember, you’re not welcome here any more.’
‘Idiot!’ I shout and storm out of his little shithole of a bar –
I walk down my own street cursing him, over and over –
‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!’
In the rain and in the wind, over and over again –
‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!’
Hat on tight and jacket up over my head –
‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!’
I scratch and I scratch and I scratch –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
‘Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!’
In the rain and in the wind. Idiot …
On my hands, on my knees –
Idiot. Before the gate –
The idiot …
*
The gate to my house is closed. I open it. The door is locked. I open it. The house is dark. The house is silent. I stand in the genkan —
The rotting mats, shredded doors and fallen walls …
The house still sleeping, always sleeping –
I wipe my face and I wipe my neck –
The house smells of children –
Their shoes face the door …
It smells of pain –
‘I’m home…’
My wife comes out of the kitchen, her face is stained with soot, her hands brushing dust from her worn monpe trousers –
She smiles and she says, ‘Welcome home…’
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
I have brought cherries home, cherries for my children, their stems tied in a necklace around my neck –
Home. Home. Home. Home …
I never want to leave again –
Home. Home. Home …
I close my eyes –
Home. Home …
Now I am –
Home.
Tokyo, 79°, rain
Night is day again. I open my eyes. No sleep. Night is day. I can hear the rain falling. No pills. Night is day. I can see the sun shining –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
I walk out of the sunlight and into the shadow. Investigation is footwork. I walk back up the hill to the scene of the crime. The good detective visits the crime scene one hundred times …
The scene of the crime. Hide from sight. The white morning light behind the black Shiba trees. The corpses of the dead. The black trees that have seen so much. In the long, long grasses. The black branches that have borne so much. The dead leaves and weeds. The black leaves that have come again. Another country’s young. To grow, to fall, to grow again. Another country’s dead …
I walk away from the scene of the crime. Another country. To stand beneath the Black Gate. Another century …
In the half-light, I can’t forget…
The day is finally here. Oh so bravely, off to Victory. I leave for the front tomorrow. Insofar as we have vowed and left our land behind. My wife and family wake early and head for Shiba Park. Who can die without first having shown his true mettle? In the inner compound of Zōjōji Temple a large crowd has gathered to say goodbye. Each time I hear the bugles of our advancing army. They leave the compound and make their way through the crowds of school excursions to stand before the Black Gate. I close my eyes and see wave upon wave of flags cheering us into battle. My son has a little flag in his hand, my daughter has a little flag in hers. The earth and its flora burn in flames. My parents are here. As we endlessly part the plains. Friends from school, teammates from my high school baseball club, and colleagues with whom I graduated; each holds aloft a big banner, each banner bearing my name, each before the Black Gate. Helmets emblazoned with the Rising Sun. The clock strikes noon, the cries rise as my truck approaches and stops before the Black Gate. And, stroking the mane of our horses. I jump down from the back of the Nissan. Who knows what tomorrow will bring — life? I stare into the crowd, up at the banners and the flags, and I salute. Or death in battle? Now the departure signal sounds –
No one is who they say they are. No one …
Beneath the Black Gate. Another country. Day is night again. Another century. Huge scorched trees, their roots to the sky. A different world. Nothing but the ruin of the old Black Gate. A different time. Branches charred and leaves lost. Another country. In this place, I stand beneath the dark eaves of the gate. A different world. We have seen hell. Another century. We have known heaven. A different time. We have heard the last judgment. In the half-light. We have witnessed the fall of the gods. I can’t forget. Night is day, day is night. In the half-light. Black is white, white is black –
But the good detective knows nothing is random …
Under the Black Gate, the stray dog waits –
The detective knows in chaos lies order …
His house lost and his master gone –
He knows in chaos lie answers …
The stray dog has no feet –
Answers, answers …
The dog is dead.
*
I put my daughter on my back. I take my son by the hand. In the half-light, I lead them down the garden path, down the street to stand in the queue for the post office, in the hope that the government insurance has arrived, in the hope I can cash the last of our bonds.
The queue moves slowly forward. The bench outside becomes free. I sit my daughter and my son down upon the bench next to an old man who stinks of drink. He winks at my daughter and he smiles at my son. Now he turns to me and holds out a withdrawal slip and asks, ‘Will you fill this out for me…?’
I nod. ‘For how much?’
The old man opens his post office savings book and says, ‘Forty yen should do today.’
I write forty yen on the withdrawal slip. Then I copy down the number of his savings account and the address –
Now I fill in the name –
A woman’s name.
I hand the withdrawal slip and the savings book back to the old man and he thanks me.
The queue moves forward again. I pick my daughter and my son up from the bench. We follow the old man inside the post office. The old man presents his withdrawal slip to one of the post office clerks as I do the same at the next window along –
Now we all sit back down to wait.
The old man winks at my daughter and smiles at my son again.
Now the clerk at the payments desk calls out the name –
‘Are you Yamada Hanako?’ asks the clerk.
No one is who they say they are …
‘No,’ says the old man. ‘But she’s my youngest daughter.’
The clerk shrugs his shoulders. He counts out the forty yen. He hands over the cash and says, ‘Better if she comes in person…’
The old man nods, thanks the clerk and now walks past us –
The old man winks at my daughter, he smiles at my son –
‘She can’t come in person,’ he whispers. ‘She’s dead.’
The clerk at the payments desk calls out my name –
The clerk hands over our cash and I thank him.
No one is who they seem to be …
I put my daughter on my back. I take my son by the hand. In the half-light, I lead them up the street, up the garden path, to stand them in the genkan of our house, to watch me as I say goodbye –
I say goodbye, as I turn their shoes to face the door –
‘Please don’t go, Daddy,’ says my daughter –
‘I have to go back to work,’ I tell her –
‘But not tonight,’ says my son –
Now my wife comes out of the kitchen, her face is hot from cooking, her hands brushing water from her trousers –
‘Let your father go to work,’ she says –
I pat their heads. I say, ‘Goodbye…’
‘Please remember us,’ my daughter and my son call after me. ‘Please don’t forget us, Daddy…’
Daddy, Banzai!…
Now I walk down the path, through the gate, up the street –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
I do not turn around. I cannot turn around –
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
I am not going back to work –
No one is who they seem …
Tonight I am going to her.
*
Night is day again. There have been others. In the ruins, in the rain. There have been others. The children watch me, the dogs watch me. There have been others. I smoke a cigarette, I read a newspaper –
SEX MANIAC CONFESSES KILLING FOUR YOUNG WOMEN
Kodaira Yoshio, 41, a sadistic sex maniac who had been under investigation by the Metropolitan Police Board for the raping and strangling to death of Ryuko, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Midorikawa Isaburo of Meguro, Tokyo, on the sixth of August, has confessed to the raping and killing of three other young women in the past one year.
On the fifteenth of July last year, the sex crazy laundry man admitted killing Kondo Kazuko, aged twenty-two years old, in Saitama Prefecture while the young woman was on a food shopping trip to the district. Luring her into a forest with promises of leading her to a good place to buy food, Kodaira violated and killed the unsuspecting young girl.
On the twenty-eighth of September of the same year, Kodaira killed Matsushita Yoshie, aged twenty years, using similar means. The girl’s body was found stripped naked lying in a forest in Kiyose-mura, Kita Tama-gun, the same place where he had committed his previous crime.
In a similar manner, the maniac admitted killing Abe Yoshiko, aged sixteen years, in Shinagawa, Tokyo, on the ninth of June this year. This girl was also raped.
In all cases, rape accompanies the killing, and in each instance, the body was hidden or buried under dead leaves about thirty to fifty metres away from the scene of the crime. Each victim was strangled to death by her own haramaki sash.
The only case in which the murderer knew the victim and the family well was in the instance of Midorikawa Ryuko, the last of his victims, and which was the first clue to the identity of the killer and which eventually led to the arrest of Kodaira. All the rest of his victims were total strangers to the murderer.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Board plan to question the sex crazed killer about four further murders; seventeen-year-old Shinokawa Tatsue who was raped and murdered in the basement of the Toyoko Department Store in Shibuya and whose umbrella was found at the home of Kodaira’s wife’s family in Toyama, and the murders of Baba Hiroko, Ishikawa Yori and Nakamura Mitsuko, whose bodies were all found in Tochigi Prefecture near Kodaira’s family home.
I finish the newspaper. There have been others. I finish the cigarette. No mention of Miyazaki Mitsuko. The dogs wait for me. There have been others. The children wait for me. No mention of the second Shiba body. In the rain. There have been others. In the ruins.
*
In the half-light, I can hear the wind against the door, rattling around the roof and under the eaves of her house. But there is no rain, there is no thunder tonight, just the clatter of sandals and the calls of children in the streets outside. I shouldn’t have come here, not tonight. Tonight I should have stayed at home with my wife and children. My wife serving up their dinner of zōsui, my children’s bowls in their outstretched hands, asking their mother for more –
‘Okawari… Okawari… Okawari…’
Yuki stands hands on hips, barefoot on the earthen floor of the hallway, and looks out between the ribbons –
I should not be here, not tonight…
‘But you’ll stay awhile longer?’
I nod and I thank her.
Yuki opens a cupboard. She takes out a saucer of pickled radish and a small aluminum saucepan. She sniffs at the contents of the pan and shrugs. She places it on the charcoal embers –
‘And you’ll eat with me, won’t you?’
I nod again and I thank her again.
She lifts up the lid of the pan –
‘Are you married?’ she asks.
*
Night is still day here. The queues through the gates, the queues to the doors, the queues in the corridors. I have spent too long here. I run through the gates, through the doors and down the corridors. Past the queues, past the patients and past the gurneys to the elevator. Hours, days and weeks. I push the button, I step inside, and I press another button. The doors close and I ride the elevator down in the dark. Weeks, months and years. The doors open –
Here in the half-light, the half-things …
I run past the tiled walls of sinks, of drains, the written warnings of cuts, of punctures, to the mortuary –
She is here. She is here. She is here …
I read the names of the dead –
She is here. She is here …
I pull open the casket –
She is here …
No name –
Here …
I take out her clothes and now I take out her bones –
Half-things in the half-light, the half-things …
I put her clothes in my army knapsack –
Here, here in the half-light …
I put her bones in my bag –
Debts to the dead …
Down the corridor of tiled walls and written warnings, I push the button and I wait for the elevator. I glance into a mirror above a sink. I glance away. Now I glance back into the glass –
‘I almost didn’t recognize you…’
Her bones on my back, I stare into the glass –
No one is who they seem …
I vomit in the sink. Black bile. I vomit again. Brown bile. Four times I vomit. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey …
I stare into the mirror above the sink –
I scream, ‘I know who I am!’
Now I smash the glass, breaking the mirror into one thousand pieces, one thousand pieces falling, falling to the ground –
Broken and splintered …
‘I know who I am!’
*
I shouldn’t still be here. Not tonight. I should have gone home to my wife and children. But in the half-light, I watch Yuki at dinner. There is still no rain tonight, no sound of thunder, only the wind, louder than the radio now. She finishes her second bowl of rice. She rinses her chopsticks and then her bowl. She puts the utensils back into the cupboard. She puts a hand to her mouth, stifles a belch and laughs –
‘I suppose your wife is much more polite than me?’
My heart aches and my body stinks –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …
Behind the six-panel screen, two pillows placed side by side, she is dressed in a yellow kimono with a dark-blue stripe; the collar is off her shoulder, her hand upon my knee –
I think about her all the time …
I run my hand up her back –
She haunts me …
Her hairbrush in one hand, she leans forward to stare at herself in the three panels of her vanity mirror –
She turns to look at me and smiles –
She has dyed her teeth black –
She drops the brush, ton, and asks, ‘Does this become me?’
*
The chief has reserved the same room in the same recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, the one near the kitchens of the Victors. The chief is treating the whole of the First Investigative Division to a celebratory meal. The whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on the new mats –
There is no Ishida. No Fujita. No Adachi or me …
There is beer and there is food; zanpan from the Victors’ dustbins, the men grateful not to eat zōsui again –
Raising their glasses, taking off their ties, tying them around their foreheads and singing their songs; their songs of endeavour, their songs of courage, their songs of battle –
Their songs of victory –
Case closed!
But there are only the names of three detectives on the interrogation report; Adachi, Kanehara and Kai –
Three names and one signature –
Kodaira Yoshio.
The other detectives from Room #1 and Room #2, the uniforms from Atago, Meguro and Mita, the other detectives and uniforms from Saitama and Tochigi Prefectures –
Dogs starved at their masters’ feet…
Their names are all missing –
Beneath their tables …
But no one cares; everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Kondo Kazuko, twenty-two years old, of Jujo, Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom Kodaira had met queuing for a ticket at Ikebukuro station on the fifteenth of July last year, whom he took into the woods at Kiyose-mura, Kita Tama-gun, out in Saitama Prefecture, and throttled and raped and then robbed of sixty yen and her paulownia geta clogs –
Death is here…
Everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Matsushita Yoshie, twenty years old, also of Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom he had met in a queue at Tokyo station on the twenty-eighth of September last year, whom he took into the same woods at Kiyose-mura and throttled and raped and then robbed of one hundred and eighty yen, her handbag, her best black suit jacket and her mother’s umbrella –
Death …
Everyone now whispering about the rumours of purges, about Kempei in hiding, Kempei on the run. Everyone whispering about trials and hangings, Kempei taking new names and new lives, the names of the mad and the names of the dead. Everyone whispering about death and the dead, the dead and their ghosts –
Everyone now whispering about me –
Me and Ishida. Me and Fujita…
Me and Adachi …
In this room of this recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, the whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on these new tatami mats –
On the mountains and mountains of lies …
Chief Kita and Chief Inspector Kanehara –
On those lies upon lies upon lies …
Inspector Kai and Inspector Hattori –
Lies upon lies upon lies …
Their glasses raised, their ties around their foreheads, their songs sung, they look up at me now –
All their lies on my back …
They look up at me like they don’t know who I am, like they cannot see me standing here, standing here before them –
Her bones on my back …
I should not be here –
Debts to the dead …
Now I’m gone.
*
The wind is still blowing as the siren starts up, as the voice on her radio announces that enemy planes are at the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula, the sirens louder now, the voice more urgent as Yuki runs to the closet, sliding open the door, diving in among the bedding, heart hammering and eyes wide, listening for the rattle of the incendiary bombs or the swish of the demolition bombs –
First comes the rain, then comes the thunder …
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I tell her –
I should not be here, not tonight…
I go downstairs, out into the street –
People are running, digging –
I should be home …
Hiding things in the dirt –
In their shelters –
Boom! Boom!
The anti-aircraft batteries have begun, the searchlights crisscrossing the sky, catching the planes as the fires start –
People with suitcases now, people on bicycles –
‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’
I smell smoke. I put on my air-raid hood –
‘Red! Red! Incendiary bomb!’
Thousands of footsteps up on the road –
‘Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand!’
The deafening sound from above –
‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’
I fall to the ground, to the earth –
‘Black! Black! Here come the bombs!’
But there is only silence now –
‘Cover your ears…’
I get back up. I run inside –
‘Close your eyes!’
Up the stairs, into the closet, to gather Yuki up, to carry her out, into the street, the houses ablaze, the corner shop, as the wind rises and the sparks fly, I carry her across the bridge, the canal filled with people, one alley on fire, the next and the next, the crossroads blocked in all four directions with pets and babies, dogs and children, men and women, old and young, soldier and civilian, hustling and jostling, pushing and shoving, staggering and stumbling, now falling to the ground with every fresh rattle, every new swish, crushing and trampling the very young and the very old, letting go of a hand and losing a child, calling out and turning around, screaming out and turning back, hustling and jostling, pushing and shoving, staggering and stumbling, crushing and trampling –
I should not be here.
I have to choose which way to go, which way to run; the houses on three sides are now aflame, the people all pushing one way but that way lie no fields, that way lie only buildings –
‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’
I jump down into the ditch by the side of the road with Yuki still in my arms and I smear our hoods and our bedding with black mud and dark water. Now I lift Yuki up again and I carry her out of the ditch, back towards the fire, back into the flames but she is struggling to break free from my arms, desperate to flee –
‘Black! Black! Here come the bombs!’
‘Forget the fire,’ I whisper. ‘Forget the bombs and trust me. Through these flames is the river, through these flames is life…’
‘Cover your ears! Close your eyes!’
Now Yuki tightens her grip, and she nods her head, as we rush back into the fires, back into the flames –
Back into the war, my war …
*
The chiefs, the inspectors and all their detectives will still be at the restaurant in Daimon; their glasses empty and their songs sung now, they will be flat on their backs and out for the night; only the uniforms here tonight at the Meguro police station –
The uniforms and the suspect –
Kodaira Yoshio…
In their interrogation room, at their table, he sits in his chair –
Kodaira smiling. Kodaira grinning. Kodaira laughing …
‘I heard you were no longer with us, soldier…’
‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘It’s just you and me now…’
But Kodaira Yoshio leans across the table and smiles at me again and says, ‘Bit like an old regimental reunion.’
‘Here’s another reunion for you,’ I say and I pick up my army knapsack and empty the contents onto the table –
All her clothes and all her bones …
‘Recognize these?’ I shout –
Kodaira still smiling …
‘Or these or these?’ I shout again, picking up the yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress and the white half-sleeved chemise, then the dyed-pink socks and the white canvas shoes with their red rubber soles, now her bones –
Kodaira grinning …
‘Well those bones could be anybody’s, soldier…’
But now I take out the other wristwatch from my pocket. I put it down in front of him –
‘And that…’
Kodaira picks up the wristwatch from the table. Kodaira turns it over in his hand. Kodaira reads the inscription on its back –
The inscription that says, Miyazaki Mitsuko …
That screams, Miyazaki Mitsuko …
‘Could that be just anybody’s wristwatch?’ I ask him –
Kodaira laughing …
‘Now you got me, soldier,’ he says. ‘Because I did know a Miyazaki Mitsuko, back when I was working for the Naval Clothing Department near Shinagawa. Lovely thing she was too, pure clear skin and firm fresh body she had…’
Licking his lips …
‘And after I left there, I kept in touch with the old caretaker who ran the place and he did tell me that poor Mitsuko had been found naked and dead in one of the air-raid shelters…’
‘It was you, you dirty fucking animal!’
‘Hold your horses there, soldier,’ he says. ‘Because my old friend told me that she’d actually been killed by a Yobo who used to work there, that it was this Yobo who had desecrated her skin, violated her body; made me sick to think of such a dirty, filthy third-class person fucking a pure Japanese girl like her…’
‘It was you, you fucking monster!’
‘You’re not listening to me, soldier,’ says Kodaira. ‘The Kempeitai caught this Yobo; they caught him, they tried him and they executed him there and then on the spot, that’s what the old caretaker said. Made me proud to be Japanese…’
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Are you deaf, soldier?’ Kodaira laughs now. ‘You got shellshock, have you? It was a Yobo …’
‘It was you…’
Kodaira shakes his head. He puts the watch back down on the table and now he stretches his arms high above his head and says, ‘You know, none of it makes much sense to me…’
I ask him nothing. I say nothing –
‘Take the Kempeitai, or even me, for example; they give us a big medal over there for all the things we did, but then we come back here and all we get is a long rope…’
I still say nothing –
‘Come on,’ he laughs. ‘You were over there; you saw what I saw, you did what I did…’
‘Shut up!’
‘You know, soldier, you really do look like a man I once saw over there in Jinan…’
‘Shut up!’
‘Why?’ laughs Kodaira again. ‘It couldn’t have been you, could it, soldier? He was Kempei and he was a corporal.’
‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’
‘And his name wasn’t Minami…’
‘Shut up! Shut up! ’
‘I think it was Katayama…’
‘I know who I am,’ I shout. ‘I know! I know who I am!’
Now Kodaira leans across the table towards me. Now he puts his hands on mine. Now he says, ‘Forget it, corporal…’
No one is who they say they are …
‘But I know who I am,’ I hiss. ‘I know…’
No one is who they seem …
‘It was a different world,’ says Kodaira. ‘A different time.’
*
A century of change takes place in one night of fire; neighbourhoods bombed to the ground, their people burnt to death; where there were factories and homes, where there were workers and children, now there is only dust, now there is only ash, and no one will remember those buildings, no one will remember those people –
No one will remember anything …
Things that happened last week already seem as though they happened years, even decades before. Things that happened only yesterday, no longer even register –
This is the war now …
There are severed legs and there are severed heads, a woman’s trunk with its intestines spilt, a child’s spectacles melted to its face, the dead in clusters, pets and babies, dogs and children, men and women, old and young, soldier and civilian, each one indistinguishable from the other –
The smell of apricots …
Each burnt, each dead –
This is my war now …
The air warm and the dawn pink. The smell of apricots. Black piles of bedding, black piles of possessions strewn on either side of the road. The stench of rotten apricots. Their black bicycles lie fallen, their black bodies huddled together. The smell of apricots. Black factories and black bathhouses still smouldering –
That stench of rotten apricots …
The all-clear signal now –
I should not be here …
The orders to assemble at various elementary schools, the orders to avoid certain other schools. The smell of apricots. I stagger and I stumble on, Yuki still in my arms. I should not be here. I want to leave her, I want to go home, but I cannot. The stench of rotten apricots. I stagger and I stumble, through the black columns of survivors, their black bedding on their backs, their black bicycles at their sides. I should not be here. I stagger and I stumble on until we reach the Sumida River, the river now black with bodies. The smell of apricots. I carry Yuki across the black bridge. I should not be here. I stagger and I stumble past soldiers clearing the black streets, shifting the black bodies into the backs of their trucks with hooks. The stench of rotten apricots. I stagger and I stumble as the black flesh tears, the black bodies fall apart. I should not be here. Until the air is no longer warm, the dawn no longer pink. Just the smell of apricots …
Until I can look no more, I stagger and I stumble –
I should not be here. I should not be here …
Until hours, maybe days later, I carry her up the stairs of a deserted block of apartments in Shinagawa –
I should not be here …
Until I lay her down on the pale tatami mats of a second-floor room, frayed and well worn, the chrysanthemum wallpaper limp and peeling. Here in the half-light. I take the bottle out of my pocket. I unscrew the cap of the bottle. I take the cotton wool out of the neck of the bottle. I begin to count the pills –
I should not be here …
One Calmotin, two. I count and I count. I take out a second bottle. I count out the pills. Thirty-one Calmotin, thirty-two. I count and I count. I take out the third bottle. Sixty-one Calmotin, sixty-two. I count and I count. The fourth bottle and then the fifth –
One hundred and twenty-one Calmotin …
I should not be here, on my knees –
This is surrender …
I should not be here –
This is defeat …
*
Potsu-potsu, the rain is still falling, the hot fat drops on the kettles and the pans; potsu-potsu it falls in its terrible rhythm on the crockery and the utensils; potsu-potsu on the clothes and the shoes; potsu-potsu on the cooking oil and the soy sauce –
No ‘Apple Song’ here tonight –
Potsu-potsu it falls on the corrugated tin roof which covers the stairs up to Senju Akira’s office –
Potsu-potsu, potsu-potsu …
Heavier and heavier –
Zā-zā, zā-zā…
I clutch my knapsack. I start to shuffle backwards towards the door, on my hands and on my knees –
Ha, ha, ha, ha!
Senju laughing at me now as he asks, ‘You didn’t bring me back any souvenirs from Tochigi then? Not very thoughtful…’
‘I am very sorry,’ I tell him and I bow again –
But now Senju has said too much …
On my hands and on my knees –
He has said too much …
I get off my knees. He has said too much. I open my old army knapsack. Get off your knees! I take out the 1939 army-issue pistol. He has said too much. I raise it. Get off your knees! I aim and I point it at Senju Akira. He has said too much. Senju sat cross-legged before the long low polished table. Get off your knees! Bare-chested, with his trousers unbuttoned at the waist. He has said too much. Revolvers and short swords lain out on the table before him –
Get off your knees! Get off your knees!
‘It was you,’ I tell him. You who ordered Ishida to kill me. You who ordered Ishida to steal that file because Fujita told you it would buy Adachi’s silence. Because you knew Adachi would find out. You knew he would find out it was you; you who introduced Fujita to Nodera; you who set them up to kill Matsuda, your own boss, your mentor, the man you called brother; it was you…
‘You who ordered the hit on Matsuda…’
Now Senju looks up at me and smiles –
Senju laughing at me again now –
He, he, he, he! Ho, ho, ho, ho …
‘Suddenly you’re a brave man, are you? With your grey hair and your stench of death, suddenly you’re a hero again, are you? Suddenly, back from the dead. Go on then, corporal…’
The 1939 army-issue pistol pointed at him –
‘Corporal what …? What’s your name…?’
The 1939 army-issue pistol aimed at him –
‘What is it this week, corporal…?’
The army-issue pistol in my hand –
‘Who are you today, cor—’
I pull the trigger. Bang!
His forehead shatters –
I am off my knees …
I can hear feet coming. I pick up the file and the papers, the money and the drugs. Feet up the stairs, through the doors –
Through the doors, and I shoot again –
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The first one falls, the other turns –
I run to the door and I shoot –
Bang! Bang!
The man falls down the stairs as I follow him –
As I step over the bloodstained patterned shirt. Zā-zā, zā-zā. As I stamp on the American sunglasses. Zā-zā, zā-zā…
Now I run. Now I run away again –
Zā-zā, zā-zā. Zā-zā, zā-zā…
Run to the station –
Zā-zā, zā-zā…
The rain coming down in sheets of sheer white water, bouncing back off the train tracks and the umbrellas on the platform. Zā-zā, zā-zā. Now the headlights of the Shinjuku train appear and the pushing begins, the shoving begins. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I push my way forward and I shove my way on board. Zā-zā, zā-zā…
He said too much. He will say no more …
Now the doors close and the train starts. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Pushed and shoved as we crawl along the tracks through the rain. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. But I cannot see this train at all. Zā-zā, zā-zā. Now I do not itch and I do not scratch. Zā-zā, zā-zā. I close my eyes –
Zā-zā, zā-zā. Zā-zā, zā-zā…
I am not here.
*
My hat pulled down and my jacket stretched over, I run down the road to the restaurant, half-way between the station and my house –
The one lantern swinging in the rain and the wind –
Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he! Ho, ho, ho, ho!
I pull back the sheet that acts as a door and the jokes, the smiles and the laughter stop dead. Dead. No jokes. No smiles. No laughter. Everyone has gone. There is no one here –
No one but the man behind the counter –
No one is who they say they are …
‘Welcome home, corporal,’ says Chief Inspector Adachi –
‘This is not my home,’ I tell him. ‘This is not my home! ’
But Adachi nods. Adachi says, ‘This is all you have.’
‘Stop!’ I shout and scream, ‘You’re lying!’
‘They shipped you home from China in a strait-jacket,’ he says. ‘And they would have locked you up in Matsuzawa with your father, if it hadn’t been for me and Chief Kita.’
‘I don’t want to hear this!’ I shout.
‘I took you in as a favour to Kita and then, after the surrender, he repaid us both with these jobs —’
‘Stop!’ I shout again –
‘With these names —’
I can’t forget…
But I am not listening to Adachi now. Now I am ripping apart the walls of this shack. Now I am tearing off the roof –
And now in the light, here in the bright and shining light, Adachi is gone; this man is Captain Muto again –
‘And I am all you have,’ he says –
‘They are coming for you.’
And I can hear them. They are coming for me. Door to door. They are coming for me. I can hear them. They are coming for me. Kita is coming, the Victors are coming. They are coming for me …
Now Captain Muto puts down a razor on the counter –
I should not be here, not tonight. I should be home …
Next to the razor, the bottles of Calmotin –
‘Sweet dreams, Corporal Katayama.’
*
She is lying naked on the futon. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. Her head is slightly to the right. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. Her right arm outstretched. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. Her left arm at her side. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs. Her eyebrows shaved, her teeth black. She says –
‘Marry me, please marry me…’
Now she brings her left hand up to her stomach. She dips her fingers in my come. She puts her fingers to her lips. She licks my come from her fingers and she asks –
‘Does this become me?’
Dressed in her yellow and dark-blue striped kimono, I smile, ‘It more than becomes you…’
The pills all gone …
‘Marry me…’
I pick up the razor. Nobody knows my name. Everybody knows my name. I open up the razor. Nobody cares. Everybody cares. I untie the kimono. The day is night. The night is day. The yellow and dark-blue striped kimono. Black is white. White is black. It falls open. The men are the women. The women are the men. The razor in my right hand. The brave are the frightened. The frightened are the brave. I lower my right hand. The strong are the weak. The weak are the strong. I lower the razor. The good are the bad. The bad are the good. The blade touches my skin. Communists should be set free. Communists should be locked up. I lift up my cock with my left hand. Strikes are legal. Strikes are illegal. The blade is cold. Democracy is good. Democracy is bad. My mouth is dry. The aggressor is the victim. The victim is the aggressor. My stomach aches. The winners are the losers. The losers are the winners. My heart aches. Japan lost the war. Japan won the war. I start to cut. The living are the dead –
I cut and I cut and I cut and I cut and I cut…
Until the dead are the living. I cut …
I am one of the survivors!
Until the walls of her room are stained red with blood, the tatami mats soaked black, and now her walls are gone, her mats are gone, and I am running through the streets –
One of the lucky ones!
Down these streets that are no streets, past shops that are no shops. In this city of the dead –
The Shōwa Dead…
Their voices calling to me, their hands reaching out to me. The Shōwa Dead. The master of my usual restaurant. The Shōwa Dead. The friend from elementary school. The Shōwa Dead. The old man in the bar. The Shōwa Dead. My teammates from my high school baseball club. The Shōwa Dead. The woman at the streetcar stop. The Shōwa Dead. The colleagues with whom I graduated. The Shōwa Dead. The children, the children –
In the City of the Dead –
The Shōwa Dead…
They call me –
Home.
*
Running down my street, running towards my house. In the half-light, I can’t forget. The dirt on my knees, the blood on my hands –
The sun setting in the west, rain threatening –
The sides of the road littered with corpses on mats, men and women, young and old, soldiers and civilians, their eyes blank or closed, their flesh rotting and their bones dust –
The stench of rotten apricots …
But there are no cars upon my street, the bridge collapsed into the river, all the restaurants destroyed and the farms abandoned –
Endless burnt fields, burnt fields of ash and weeds –
I cannot tell which of these houses is mine –
I cannot see for the tears in my eyes –
Now I remember. I remember …
I have been away for too long –
I remember. I remember …
I have failed my wife –
Now I remember …
My children.
But then I recognize the gate to my house, now I recognize the path to my house. I open the gate, I go up the path –
Now I open the door to my house –
Their shoes face the door …
I stand in the genkan —
‘I’m home…’
Home …
My wife and my children step out of the half-light, their airraid hoods are scorched, the bedding on their backs is black, their faces blistered and their eyes sunken, but they are alive –
I rush towards them, my arms around them –
I fall to my knees as I bring them close –
‘I thought you were dead,’ I cry –
‘I thought I had lost you…’
But now they push me away, they step back into the shadows as they raise their fingers and point at me –
The rain falling on me now …
‘We’re already dead…’
Now there is no roof and there are no walls, only ashes, no mats and no screens, only ashes, no furniture and no clothes, only ashes, no genkan and no door, only ashes –
Their shoes are cinders …
My right hand trembles, my right arm, now my legs –
For I have no wife, I have no children, only ashes –
Masaki, Banzai! Sonoko, Banzai! …
I have no son and I have no daughter –
Daddy, Banzai! Banzai! …
I have no home. I have no family –
Daddy, Banzai!
I have no heart –
Banzai! …
In this House of Oblivion, I am death.
*
Through the buildings in disrepair and the grounds untended, the gates gone and the trees cut down, they are coming; past the faded paint and the worn linoleum, the stained uniforms and the grubby offices, they are coming; through the sounds of screams and sobs, the smells of DDT and disinfectant, they are coming now –
To the Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane –
They are coming now. They are coming …
Down these corridors and up these stairs, up these stairs and along another long corridor of locked metal doors, they are coming now; through locked metal doors into the secure wards, into the secure wards and down more corridors, they are coming now; down more corridors to the secure rooms, they are coming now –
They are here! They are here! They are here!
Dr. Nomura before the locked metal door –
Before the bolted metal hatch –
‘Here we are,’ he says.
Nomura slides back the bolts on the hatch. Nomura lowers the metal hatch. Now Nomura steps back and says, ‘There you are…’
I step towards the door. I look through the hatchway –
I stare through the hatchway back into their eyes –
Pairs of brown eyes and pairs of blue …
These men have looked into my eyes before –
My unblinking eyes and my shaven head –
Now I step away from the hatchway –
I sit back cross-legged on my cot –
In my shapeless gown of yellow and dark-blue striped Chinese silk, with my close-shaven head and my unblinking eyes –
The blood-flecked scroll on the wall above my cot –
‘It is time to reveal the true essence of the nation.’
A colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine –
My hands folded in my bandaged lap –
I am one of the survivors …
‘Have you seen enough?’ asks Nomura –
The men step away from the hatch –
‘We’ve seen enough,’ says Chief Kita. ‘Thank you, doctor.’
Dr. Nomura closes the hatch. Dr. Nomura bolts it –
The walls are white, but the cell is dark now –
In the half-light, the half-things move –
I close my eyes and I begin to count again; one hundred and twenty Calmotin, one hundred and twenty –
One of the lucky ones.
of every province through which we pass. Dato Nippon Teikokushugi! Trenches dug at six-metre intervals, strewn with hats, leather belts and birdcages. This is not conquest, this is emancipation! The unburied bones of the Chinese dead stand like sticks stuck in the soil. The Light from the East. Brown thighbones shine in the sunlight, vertebrae glisten. Bright Peace. The flies swarm, the air stinks. I lie among the corpses. One hundred and twenty Calmotin, one hundred and twenty-one. The Chinese couple are streaked with dirt, their faces expressionless. The interpreter spits out the match and shouts at the man. The garlic stench, the metallic words. The woman answers the question. The interpreter strikes her. The woman staggers. The interpreter nods. Kasahara and I march the couple to the outskirts of the village, the red sky reflected in the willow-lined creek. The trees are still tonight, the farmhouses abandoned. The couple stare into the waters of the creek, the clusters of wild chrysanthemums, the corpse of a horse, its saddle tangled in weeds. Kasahara draws his sword and I draw mine. The man and the woman drop to their knees. His hands clasped together, her frantic metallic pleas. The blade and then the silence again. Blood flows over their shoulders but neither head falls. The man’s body tilts to the right and topples into the wild chrysanthemums. Masaki, Banzai! I help the woman’s body into the creek, the muddy soles of her feet turned up to the sky. Daddy, Banzai! In the village by the riverbank, lined by willow trees, the group of young able-bodied men poses in front of a half-destroyed house. Our captain in the centre, he rests his hands on the heads of two small children. No tears for the rivers and mountains of their land, no sadness for their father and mother no longer here. I see your little figure, waving a little flag in your little fist. His body among the chrysanthemums, her feet turned up to the sky. Daddy cherishes that picture forever in his mind. By the riverbank, lined by willow trees. In a half-destroyed house, I lie among the corpses. Thousands of them, millions of them. One hundred and thirty Calmotin, one hundred and thirty-one. The sunlight streams in through the windows of the carriage, gaiters hang from the overhead baggage net. A child unsheathes a toy sword. Banzai! One hundred and forty Calmotin, one hundred and forty-one. In the House of Oblivion, there are no flags. Ton-ton. Death is a man from Tochigi. Ton-ton. There are no songs. Death is a man from Tokyo. Ton-ton. Death is a man from Japan. Ton-ton. There are only drums. Death is a man from Korea. Ton-ton. Death is a man from China. Ton-ton. Drums of skin, drums of hair. Death is a man from Russia. Ton-ton. Death is a man from Germany. Ton-ton. Beaten by thighbones. Death is a man from France. Ton-ton. Death is a man from Italy. Ton-ton. Beaten by children. Death is a man from Spain. Ton-ton. Death is a man from Great Britain. Ton-ton. Banging the drum, after we’re gone. Death is a man from America. Ton-ton. There are no exits, in the House of Oblivion. Ton-ton. Death is a man. Ton-ton. Cut off your cock! Masaki, Banzai! Death is a man. Ton-ton. Tear out your heart! Daddy, Banzai! Death is a man. Banzai! One hundred and fifty Calmotin…