Tokyo Year Zero

I will see him again …

I walk over to Detective Hattori’s desk and I bow low and I congratulate him on his promotion and I wish him luck in his promotion and with the investigation and I thank him for all his hard work and all his help –

I hate him…

Finally, I stand before them all and I bow deeply and I apologize to them for my lack of leadership, my lack of organization, my inability to command, my inability to delegate and my absences –

‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘And I hope to earn your forgiveness.’

*

It is night now. They are following me. It is hot still. They are following me. I have places to visit, people to see before we leave for Tochigi tomorrow afternoon. They are following me. The sound of a balladeer and his guitar trails me up the hill as I walk away from Shibuya station. They are following me. I don’t recognize the words of the song, I don’t recognize the music. They are following me. I stop at the mouth of the dark alley. They are following me. I glance back down the hill. They are following me. I sit down on a broken wall. They are following me. I take off my hat and I fan myself –

They are following me. They are still following me …

I put on my hat and I stand back up. I walk down the alley and I knock on the door. I slide it open and I make my apologies –

‘But I have some good news,’ I tell her –

Tominaga Noriko’s landlady looks up from another shabby low table in another shabby little room in another shabby little house in another shabby neighbourhood –

‘Noriko’s not dead.’

There are questions and doubts in her red eyes now, questions and doubts among the tears, the tears she has wept since she glanced up at the clothing lain out on that autopsy table –

‘The clothes were not hers,’ I tell her –

Hope among the questions now, hope among the doubts, hope that cries, ‘Really? So Noriko is still alive?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw her today.’

Hope that asks, ‘Is she coming back, then? Back here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I tell her. ‘But I don’t think so…’

No more questions, no more doubts and no more hope now, only rage and only grief that shouts and screams out –

‘Then she’s still dead to me, detective!’

*

The Shimbashi New Life Market is back in business. But among the kettles and the pans, the crockery and the utensils, among the clothes and the shoes, the cooking oil and the soy sauce, among the fruit and the vegetables, the sardines and the second-hand suits, the coffee and the silk, in their patterned shirts and their American sunglasses, Senju’s men are still licking their wounds, still counting their dead –

Sharpening old blades and swearing new oaths –

Exchanging sake cups with any old soldier –

‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song’

These are desperate times…

But defiant times –

‘Let them come in their hundreds,’ Senju Akira is telling me. ‘Let them come in their thousands. For I am assembling the largest organization of patriotic Japanese men this country has seen since the end of the war. Then let the Chinese, the Koreans and the Formosans try to take away what has been left us, the little that has been left us by the many that sacrificed themselves before us –

‘For I tell you this, in the centuries to come, generations of Japanese, generations who will be living only because of our stand, these generations will hear tales of the things we did to protect our fellow countrymen and save the Japanese nation and they will shed tears for us under the cherry blossoms and raise their glasses under the full moon and pray for our souls at Yasukuni, honouring us as the true keepers of the Japanese spirit…’

I have no time for this –

Chiku-taku …

I bow lower on the tatami. I say, ‘I am very sorry to trouble you at a time like this…’

‘I am always happy to see an old friend,’ says Senju now. ‘And I was worried about you, detective. I’d begun to think you might be avoiding me. I’d even begun to think that maybe we weren’t really friends, that maybe you only came to see me when you wanted something from me, when you wanted money or wanted drugs…’

‘I do need money,’ I tell him. ‘And I do need Calmotin.’

‘That’s very honest of you, detective,’ says Senju. ‘And also very refreshing in such duplicitous and deceitful times as these –

‘I admire your honesty, Inspector Minami…’

I bow. I thank him. I start to speak but –

‘But did you just come with a shopping list, detective?’

I bow again. I apologize again. I tell him, ‘It isn’t easy for me. There’s an investigation into the murder of Hayashi…’

‘You sound surprised?’ laughs Senju. ‘It’s your job, isn’t it?’

‘But it’s not my case,’ I tell him. ‘And there’s a problem…’

‘A problem for who?’ asks Senju. ‘For you or for me?’

‘For both of us,’ I tell him. ‘Fujita is missing…’

‘And why is this a problem for either of us?’

‘Do you know where he is?’ I ask him.

‘No,’ says Senju. ‘But I’ll ask you again, why would a missing Detective Fujita be my problem?’

‘He’s wanted for questioning about the death of Hayashi Jo,’ I say, and then I pause, I swallow, and now I say, ‘He’s wanted for questioning because Hayashi Jo left behind a letter, a last testament, in which he claims to have information putting Fujita in the New Oasis with Nodera Tomiji on the night of the hit on Matsuda…’

Senju has stopped listening. Senju is stood up now –

Senju showering me with money and with pills –

‘This is not a problem,’ Senju is shouting –

‘This is going to be a pleasure!’

*

It will be hours before I lie again here upon the old tatami mats of her dim and lamp-lit room. It will be hours before I stare again at her peeling screens with their ivy-leaf designs. Hours before I watch her draw again her figures with their fox-faces upon these screens –

I cannot stay tonight. I cannot take the Calmotin –

I do not want to close my eyes tonight –

For I have one last place still to go.

‘I wish it would rain,’ she says –

‘I cannot stay tonight,’ I tell her. ‘I won’t be here tomorrow. But, as soon as I return to Tokyo, I’ll come straight here…’

Now Yuki puts down her pencils and reaches for a piece of tissue paper. Now she covers both her eyebrows with the paper and stares at me in the panels of her mirror –

‘Does this become me?’

I leave her money –

I leave her pills.

10. August 24, 1946

Tokyo, 90°, fine

The Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane is on the border between the Setagaya and Suginami wards, half-way between my own house in Mitaka and the house of Murota Hideki in Kitazawa. I thought you would have seen enough of that place. I know the Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane well, but I’m not sure why I’m here today –

I thought you would have seen enough of that place…

The Matsuzawa Hospital was built during the reign of the Emperor Meiji and survived the fires and the famines of the last two years to still be standing in the reign of the Emperor MacArthur –