‘They are all very pretty, aren’t they?’ says the manager. ‘But inside they are all very sad and they are all very lonely because General MacArthur won’t let them make friends with GIs any more and so the GIs are homesick and lonely too…’
She’s better off dead …
He takes us on a tour. He takes us to the girls’ rooms –
The girls’ rooms. In the two-storey barracks. Fifty cubicles to a building. Each tiny room separated by a low partition. Thin curtains or sheets for doors. Each entrance with a sign written in a child’s crayon, a sign that says, Well Come, Kimi. Well Come, Haruko …
Well Come Mitsuko. Yori. Kazuko. Yoshie. Tatsue …
Well Come Hiroko. Yoshiko. Ryuko. Yuki …
Inside each small cubicle is a futon and a comforter, a little make-up mirror on the floor, the odd yellowing photograph. The air humid and heavy with the smell of antiseptic –
Better off dead. Better off dead …
At the top of each stairway is one long, narrow room with a painted sign beside the door which says, in English and in Katakana, PRO Station; this is where the Victors get their prophylactics –
The smell of antiseptic. The taste of antiseptic …
Beside this room are two smaller rooms without windows where the girls rest after each visit from the Victor –
Antiseptic. Antiseptic. Antiseptic …
The tour has finished now –
The sights all seen –
Better off dead.
Back outside the two-storey barracks, the manager leads us down one of the covered passageways between the buildings to the company store where the girls buy their cheap cosmetics and their shoddy clothes on borrowed money at expensive prices –
The store is empty. The store is dead –
My heart empty. My heart dead …
‘Now you must meet the officers of our union here,’ says the manager. ‘It is a real union. It is very democratic. Very democratic. Please tell your American bosses this.’
The manager disappears inside the company store but quickly returns, bringing out with him three young women –
Two in Western suits. One in a kimono –
‘These ladies are the officers of the Women’s Protective League,’ he tells us. ‘This is the president, Kato Akiko, a former geisha. This is Hasegawa Sumiko, the vice-president and a former typist. This is Iijima Kimi, a former dancer.’
The three women smile. The three women bow.
I order the manager to leave.
‘We are from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,’ I tell them. ‘We are trying to identify the body of a young girl found recently in Shiba Park. We have reason to believe she may have worked here. We would be very grateful for your cooperation…’
The three women smile again. The three women bow again.
‘Do you know the Salon Matsu?’ I ask them. ‘In Kanda?’
The three women shake their heads.
‘Do you know anyone who has ever worked there?’
The three women shake their heads again.
‘Anyone who might have left here to work there?’
‘I am sorry,’ says Kato, the president in her bright kimono. ‘But nobody really talks about what they did before they came here or what they will do after they leave here. It is much better for us not to think or talk about the world outside of here…’
‘But you were a geisha. She was a typist. She was a dancer.’
‘Maybe we were,’ she smiles. ‘No one remembers.’
I don’t want to remember. In the half-light…
‘But what about new recruits?’ I ask. ‘Don’t you interview them? Don’t you ask them about their previous work?’
‘There are no interviews here,’ she laughs. ‘Only medicals.’
The chairs and the tiny curtains. Their concealed faces and their open legs. The two shallow pools. Every other day …
I ask all three, ‘How long have you been here, then?’
‘We all came in December last year,’ says Kato.
‘And how much do you owe the company?’
‘About five thousand yen each,’ she says.
‘And do you have any savings at all?’
‘Of course not,’ she laughs. ‘We have to buy our food and pay for our own medical expenses and then there are the new clothes and the cosmetics we need for our work.’
‘But how much do you earn?’
‘Before we were placed off-limits, we each had fifteen customers a day,’ she says. ‘Each customer paid fifty yen and half of that went to the manager and half to us.’
‘That’s almost four hundred yen a day,’ says Nishi, suddenly.
‘Almost four hundred,’ says Kato. ‘But that was before.’
‘And how many customers were coming a day?’
‘Almost four thousand a day back then.’
‘How many girls were there?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘That’s one hundred thousand yen a day for the company,’ exclaims Nishi. ‘One hundred thousand yen a day!’
‘But that was before,’ repeats Kato. ‘That was before we were placed off-limits to the soldiers.’
‘And now?’ I ask her. ‘How many come now?’
‘Maybe ten,’ she says. ‘Twenty at the most.’
I ask her, ‘Why do you have a union?’
‘To petition General MacArthur,’ smiles Kato. ‘The manager thought that if we wrote to General MacArthur as a union, asking him to let his lonely and homesick GIs come here, then the general would allow the International Palace to open again.’
I shake my head. We thank them –
They bow. We leave –
Leave. Leave …
I want to leave this place. This country. I want to flee from this place. This heart. I want to find the driver. Now …
I walk back inside one of the barracks –
Nishi follows me. Up the stairs –
There is a girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen, being penetrated up her backside by a Victor as she stares down the long, long corridor at Nishi and I with tears running down her cheeks, down her cheeks and into her mouth, saying, ‘Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, oh, Joe…’
She is better off dead. I am better off dead …
This is America. This is Japan. This is democracy. This is defeat. I don’t have a country any more. On her knees or on her back, blood and come down her thighs. I don’t have a heart any more …
Her legs apart, her cunt swollen with pricks and pus –
I don’t want a heart. I don’t want a heart…
Thank you, Emperor MacArthur –
I don’t want a country …
Dōmo, Hirohito.
*
Nishi plays the good monkey all the way back to Tokyo as field becomes ruin and ruin becomes shack and shack becomes building and I sit and I watch him and wish I’d had the foresight and the guts to walk back, to walk back barefoot into Tokyo through field and through ruin and not to be sat back here in the Victors’ jeep listening to Nishi mix up his r’s and his l’s while the Victors laugh and throw him cigarettes and chewing gum as childish smiles light up his grateful face and so when we get out at Headquarters and we both bow down as low as we can and thank them a thousand times and they have driven off laughing and joking, throwing their cigarettes and chewing gum, and though I know tonight they’ll burn and they’ll itch and they’ll weep and they’ll scratch it’s no consolation, and so I turn and I slap Nishi hard across his face, so hard across his face that he falls over in the road and does not get back up again –