Tokyo Year Zero

*

There is blood in the entrance to the Shibuya police station. There is blood on the floor of reception. There is blood down the corridor. There is blood on the stairs. There is blood on the walls. There is blood in the cells downstairs. The cells all full. The cells all silent –

There are men with buckets. Men with mops –

The Victors will be here at any moment –

Men with cloths and men with bleach –

Men with pistols and men with gags –

The Victors will demand answers –

‘They’re here! They’re here!’

We can hear the engines of the Victors’ jeeps. We can hear their trucks. We can hear them pull up outside the Shibuya police station. We can hear their doors slam. We can hear the Victors’ boots. Now we can see the Victors’ faces –

Here they come again …

Through the station doors, the Victors and their Nisei translators, waving their arms and shouting their orders –

‘What’s happened here?’ they ask the Shibuya police chief –

‘There was an attack by a group of Formosans,’ he says –

‘Where are these Formosans now?’ they ask him –

‘They have fled in their trucks,’ he tells them –

‘Did you make any arrests?’ they ask him –

‘Not yet,’ the Shibuya chief tells them –

‘You have no suspects in custody?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ he says –

The Victors look around at the entrance to the Shibuya police station. The sparkling clean entrance to the Shibuya station. The Victors look around at the reception. The sparkling clean reception. The Victors look down the corridor. The sparkling clean corridor. But the Victors don’t look down the stairs. The stairs that were covered in blood. The Victors don’t look at the walls. The walls that were covered in blood. The Victors don’t ask to see the cells downstairs. The cells that are full of men with gags in their mouths, full of other men with pistols in their hands, bloody gags and bloody pistols –

The Victors don’t see these men with bloody pistols –

These men with bloody gags in their mouths –

See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing…

The Victors go back out through the station doors. The Victors get back in their trucks. They get back in their jeeps –

The Victors start their engines. The Victors leave –

‘They’re gone!’

And now so are we, back down the stairs that were covered in blood, back past the walls that were covered in blood, back to the cells that are still all full, that are still all silent –

No one can save them now …

They have stripped the Formosans of their pistols. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their knives. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their staves. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their clubs. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their pickaxes. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their money. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their clothes. No one can save them now. Now they will strip these Formosans of one last thing –

Every man in Shibuya police station down in the cells –

The rumours of dead Japanese policemen …

Policemen with guns. Policemen with swords –

I don’t know why I came down here …

The cells have been opened –

I don’t want to watch …

The beatings begun –

I don’t want to see …

Chief Inspector Adachi with his short sword drawn; his lips are moving but no words are forming, tears rolling down his cheeks –

Adachi brings the blade of his short sword up close to his face. He stares into the blade, bewitched as the blade catches the light –

His eyes, red spots on white …

‘Revenge! Revenge!’

Blood on the blade …

‘Captain!’

There is fresh blood on the walls and there is fresh blood on the floors, on their knuckles and on their boots, on their shirt cuffs and on their pant legs, tonight the fresh blood is Formosan blood –

The blood on our hands and the blood on our lips …

There are lost teeth and bits of their bones –

We are the Losers. We are the Defeated …

There are screams and then silence.

They will drive their bodies out of the city, out beyond Kokubunji, beyond Tachikawa. They will turn their bodies into ash out among the trees of the Musashino plain. Then they will drive back into the city with the morning light. They will hose down the backs of their trucks. They will set fire to their arrest sheets. They will destroy the custody records. Then they will rewrite history –

Their history. Your history. My history. Our history …

They will tell lie upon lie, lie after lie, until they believe lie upon lie, lie after lie, until they believe there were no custody records. There were no arrest sheets. There were no beatings in the cells. There were no murders in the cells. There were no bloody bodies in the backs of their trucks. There are no ashes and bones out among the Musashino trees. They will tell lie upon lie, lie after lie after lie –

The caretaker and the boiler-man pick up their spades …

Until everyone believes these lies upon lies –

Pick up their spades and begin to heap the dirt …

These lies that everyone tells themselves –

Heap the dirt back into the hole …

Until everyone believes this history –

Back into the hole, over the man …

This history we teach ourselves –

Over the man, faster and faster …

Until I too believe these lies –

Faster and faster, as they …

Until I believe this history –

As they bury his cries …

My lies. My history.

*

Masaoka has heard the screams. Masaoka has heard the silence. Now Masaoka is ready to talk. Now Masaoka is ready to tell us whatever we want to hear. Now she will say whatever we want her to say –

But I am screaming now. Inside. I am shaking. Outside —

‘There were four of us,’ she is saying. ‘Yoshiko, Tominaga Noriko, Shishikura Michiko and me. But after what happened to Yoshiko, then we all went our own separate ways…’

I am shaking. I am repeating, ‘Aged approximately eighteen years old, wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and a pair of white canvas shoes with red rubber soles…’

Red rubber soles …

I am asking, ‘Does this sound like Tominaga or Shishikura?’

‘It could be Tominaga Noriko,’ says Masaoka. ‘It might be Tominaga. It could be her. Then again, it could be anyone. But…’

I stare at Masaoka Hisae and I ask her, ‘But what?’

‘But I heard that Tominaga is missing,’ she says.

I sit forward. I repeat, ‘Tominaga is missing?’

‘Since sometime in June,’ she says. ‘But…’

I am still staring at Masaoka. ‘But what …?’

‘But you hope it’s her and I hope it isn’t.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I tell her, but Masaoka Hisae is looking past me now, looking over my shoulder to the door –