The Cake Tree in the Ruins

by Akiyuki Nosaka

  “Belle, where do you think Mama went?” the little girl asked, and the wolf tilted her head inquisitively. It was the first time she’d ever heard of humans leaving a little girl alone in such a wilderness.

  The little girl’s name was Kiku. Kiku had been born in a big city in the north, where her father had been the director of a photographic studio. Japanese working in Manchuria often used to send photographs to their families back home, and soldiers too came to be photographed, so the business thrived and Kiku, her two elder brothers and their German Shepherd Belle wanted for nothing. But in January that year the call-up papers arrived for her father, even though he was already in his forties, and in no time at all he was enlisted.

  Their town, which had been relatively quiet even while the war was on, suddenly saw massive movements of troops. With Japan’s defences in the south under increasing pressure, the Kwantung Army, which prided itself on being Japan’s military elite, were being brought in as reinforcements. Kiku’s mother and her family didn’t know this, however. They all still believed that the northern defences were impenetrable, even if the Soviets had revoked the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact.

  By the time the Soviet forces attacked in overwhelming numbers on 6th August, the Kwantung Army was a mere shadow of its former self and made up only of older, raw recruits like Kiku’s father, while their artillery and tanks had all been sent to defend Okinawa. The Japanese population quickly evacuated and fled southwards in what amounted to a stampede. The only option left to them was to travel overland, hoping that if they could just manage to reach Korea they would be saved.

  The families of the military elite and the top executives of major Japanese firms in Manchuria had shrewdly assessed the situation before the Soviet invasion and had already left in a specially chartered train. The ordinary citizens had been left behind with no guarantees, and fled with just the clothes on their backs and whatever food they could carry, although at least to begin with they were able to take trains.

  Kiku boarded a freight train with her mother and brothers in high spirits, having forgotten in all the excitement that they had come without Belle. She could feel the movement of the train through the rush matting, and she and her brothers imitated its clickety-clack until hushed by the grown-ups, who all seemed on edge. Now and then the train stopped, before slowly setting off again. They could hear the sound of explosions in the distance, and eventually Kiku too felt the heavy atmosphere in the carriage.

  They were only given a little water to drink now and then, since they couldn’t go outside to pee, and nobody knew when they would next be able to get hold of more supplies. Seated on the hard floor, leaning against her mother’s knees, Kiku’s bottom hurt. But at least they were on the train.

  As they pulled into one station, they heard soldiers shouting, “All off the train! This train is stopping here.” There was nothing for it but to obey the order and continue their journey on foot, with only the train tracks to guide them southwards to Korea. The group of women and children now set off at a snail’s pace along the same route that until not so long ago the Asia Express had travelled at a speed of 120kph.

  Their journey was tougher than they had ever imagined possible. Being so weak they would easily fall prey to bandits, and the Manchu seemed to know that Japan had lost for they no longer felt the need to show them any kindness. They had to give up their wristwatches in exchange for water, and when they pleaded to be allowed to spend the night in a storage shed, they were flatly refused.

  They cooked by night to avoid any smoke being spotted by the enemy during the day, and drew their drinking water from a stream. Eventually some of them started falling ill. As long as they could walk, everybody rallied together, but if they collapsed then nobody had the strength to help them up again. Whenever they sensed that bandits were around they all held their breath, and if a baby started crying at that moment they had to cover its mouth to silence it, even at the risk of smothering it.

  Then, by a stroke of bad luck, Kiku came down with measles. Her mother noticed she had a fever but there were no medicines, and so she hoisted her onto her back and carried on walking. When red spots began appearing on her white skin, however, her mother knew it was hopeless. After all, there were so many small children in the group, and Kiku might give it to all of them. Her mother did her best to conceal them, but their elderly leader grew concerned about how listless Kiku had become, and the moment he saw her red spots he took her mother to one side.

  She already knew what he was going to say. “It’s awful, but we’ll just have to leave her behind. She’s not going to get better, anyway. If you really want to stay with her, then I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave the group,” he told her, his face expressionless. It was the obvious thing to do.

  If she took her three children and left the group, the entire family would probably perish. She considered having her two sons continue with the group while she stayed behind with Kiku, but they were only eight and six years old and still needed their mother too. She wept bitterly, but eventually decided that she would just have to abandon Kiku, who was now delirious with fever. That was the only way. She breastfed her and filled a basket with stale bread, then waited for the next rest stop to furtively place her, fast asleep, in the long grass.

  She prayed that she might be taken in by some compassionate being; perhaps someone from a nearby Manchu village would hear her crying. Doing her best to convince herself of this, she returned to the group and, holding her two sons by the hand, resumed the trek southwards. When the elder boy asked, “Where’s Kiku?” she told him, “A kind old lady is looking after her because she’s so cute.”

  When Kiku woke up she was taken aback to find herself all alone. Nevertheless, she felt reassured to see Belle, whom she’d thought they had left behind, at her side looking puzzled. As long as she was with Belle, she would definitely be able to find her way home—after all, Belle often used to disappear off somewhere and they would all worry about her, but she always came home.

  That night the wolf held Kiku close to her until she fell asleep, and the next day she put her on her back and set off northwards at a trot. To begin with she felt she’d been saddled with an annoying burden, and didn’t know what to do. At this rate, she’d never find a place where she could die in peace. But the child seemed unwell and was completely dependent on her, and she couldn’t bring herself to abandon her.

  Maybe it was the effect of the sugar candy Kiku had given her, but she decided to summon the energy to return to the pack. The lively young pack members would all take turns to bring food and look after them, and in their care even this sickly child was bound to grow strong. With the renewed faith of a mother wolf, she forced her shaky legs onward step by step, and at length came to the battlefield where the volunteer corps were desperately putting up a resistance against the Soviet forces in the hope of gaining a little more time for their families fleeing southwards.

  At last quiet reigned once more. The 15th of August in Manchuria was a cloudless day with clear blue skies.

  They left the sorghum field to find Japanese corpses scattered everywhere. They had just one more mountain to cross before they would reach the valley where the wolf’s pack lived. Even as the old wolf resented the curious turn of events that had disrupted her search for a peaceful place to die, ever since she had decided to take Kiku to the pack in the hope they would look after her, she had begun to lament keenly the fact of her own old age. But how heartless those humans were! Her own pack would never abandon a cub, whatever the circumstances.

  Eventually Kiku’s fever grew worse and she couldn’t hold onto the wolf’s back any longer. The wolf sank her few remaining teeth into the baggy trousers covering her limp body, braced her neck to avoid dragging her and staggered along northwards. Just as she came to the foot of the mountain, a human caught sight of her: “Hey, a wolf’s making off with a child!” He took out his gun to shoot her, but she lacked the strength to run and breathed her last trying
to protect Kiku with her own body.

  The man was surprised to find not a single bite mark on the girl’s body, now quite cold. He buried her small body then and there, leaving the old she-wolf exposed to the elements at her graveside, from where, even reduced to bones, she kept watch over Kiku.

  THE RED DRAGONFLY AND THE COCKROACH

  The 15th of August 1945

  ON A SMALL ISOLATED ISLAND, far to the south, an aeroplane lay on the white beach that sparkled in the summer sun.

  I say “lay” because it really did look like some kind of creature sprawled out on the sand. Indeed, it gave an extremely lazy impression of gazing at the sea lost in thought, and it was hard to imagine it cutting a dashing figure up in the sky.

  The plane had a two-blade propeller that was too large for its small fuselage, a clumsy-looking engine, double-tier wings, and on its side was the bold image of the Rising Sun flag.

  A closer look revealed that one of its protruding legs had snapped, and one of the tail fins was torn off. Four days before, the plane had flown shakily over this island, circling forlornly like a bird looking for a branch on which to perch so that it could rest its wings, before finally summoning up the courage to land on the beach.

  A normal plane would probably have sunk into the sand, burst into flames and ended up a complete wreck. As it happened, though, this was one of the basic training planes known as a “Red Dragonfly” that most people regarded with a mixture of affection and disdain. More toy-like than a regular plane, it had careened over the sand before coming to a stop with only minimal damage.

  A young pilot, little more than a child himself, alighted from the cockpit. He was just eighteen years old, a fresh graduate of the Japanese Navy’s preparatory pilot-training course and still inexpert at the controls. And even if his plane was an ageing Red Dragonfly, it was what Japan was using at the time for its kamikaze attacks.

  At the start of the war, Japan had had the world-class Zero fighter plane and many well-trained veteran pilots who shot down many American and British planes, but from 1943 the tables turned and Japan no longer had the upper hand. It was during the Leyte operation in 1944 that pilots were first ordered to crash their planes into enemy ships to sink them in what became known as kamikaze attacks. And since there was no time to manufacture new planes, it wasn’t long before they started using the Red Dragonflies.

  These were effectively relics of the previous century. Not only were they slow, with the added weight of heavy bombs they even had trouble taking off. However, the Americans were initially unaware of this, and to begin with they apparently mistook the Red Dragonflies for a new weapon.

  When their fighter planes like the Grumman, P-51 or Corsair, which were capable of outperforming the Zero, caught sight of a Red Dragonfly sputtering along and went in for the attack, before they knew it they had left it far behind. They were travelling so much faster that it was difficult to take aim at them, and they were convinced that Japan had managed to make a plane that could stop in mid-air.

  Incidentally, there’s an anecdote about an American pilot, about to engage in battle with an even more antiquated plane than the Red Dragonfly, gesturing urgently to indicate its landing gear was still down. He apparently considered it unfair to fight a plane that had forgotten to retract its landing gear, but actually it was fixed and had no means of retracting it.

  To get back to the story, the young pilot had twice before boarded a kamikaze plane, received his orders to attack and gone in search of an enemy ship. Both times he’d received notification of an enemy task force at sea to the south and had gone on sortie, but not only was his Red Dragonfly slow, it was also short-range and he’d been unable to locate the enemy.

  The first time he’d gone out, his commanding officer had stood before the fledgling pilots and instructed them, “You are going to die protecting our country, which lovingly raised all of you, and your mothers and sweethearts. You are not the only ones to die, so go out in the knowledge that others will be following you, and annihilate the enemy devils!”

  The youth couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for the idea of dying for his country, but if it was for his mother then he would gladly do so. Every morning without fail, come snow or blazing heat, his mother had laid out her vegetable wares on top of a small box on the streets where they lived in northern Japan. Goodness only knew when she managed to sleep, for she also busied herself with odd jobs at a sake brewery, the fruit harvest and night work. His father had died young, and all they had was a piece of land the size of a postage stamp, so she had had to work hard to send him to school. Her strong arms were tanned almost black, but she was gentle and loving to him.

  “For Mama!” he thought, gunning the engine, and as he heard the forlorn put-put of the propeller, barely a roar, he felt no fear at his impending death, but rather smiled. He had always depended on his mother. He had opted to go on the training course of his own free will, but he had always been sure of the unconditional presence of his strong, gentle mother somehow watching over him from a distance. Now, though, it was he who could protect her.

  She would no doubt be overcome with grief when her only child was killed in action, but he thought only of his joy at being at last able to fulfil his filial duty, repaying her kindness by protecting her. This too was merely youthful conceit, although he didn’t realize it at the time.

  Even in the cockpit of the Red Dragonfly as it rose into the air, the youth thought only of his mother. She could take pride in him dying an honourable death as a kamikaze pilot, and with his soldier’s pension she would never have to sell vegetables again. Gazing at the photograph of him, brave and smiling, surely she could live content.

  He recalled the unseasoned logs smoking in the sunken hearth in the middle of their living room, and the strawthatched roof which sucked up the smoke; and how, when it was about to rain or snow, the smoke would linger and bring tears to their eyes; and, when they made the blaze fiercer because of the cold, how he’d burnt his legs badly enough to leave scars. The youth let his thoughts wander in the past, and he could clearly hear her voice against the sound of the engine, and smell her warm scent.

  The group of three Red Dragonflies flew in formation, their engines running smoothly with a light put-put sound. It hardly seemed credible that once they caught sight of the enemy they would go into a dive, and the youth would also become a component of the bomb. The sea was calm, and the shadows from the planes were clearly reflected on the surface, although of course there wasn’t anything so peaceful as fishing boats anywhere in sight.

  Eventually the pilot of the lead plane, accustomed to navigating over the sea, turned its nose back towards the mainland, and the youth followed. If they had carried on any farther without finding any enemy to attack, they would have crashed into the sea and the mission would have been in vain. And the Red Dragonflies were a precious military capability that couldn’t be allowed to go to waste.

  Arriving back at the base he had never expected to see again, the youth felt as though the past two-hour flight had been a dream. Now when he thought of his resolve to protect his mother he felt a little ashamed, but when he realized that he would have died had they found the enemy, he was gripped by such fear that his knees felt wobbly and his teeth chattered.

  Upon hearing their report their commanding officer, as if he knew what the youth was thinking, instructed them irritably, “Recently, you lot seem to be lacking in spirit when out searching for the enemy. Any attack delayed by even a day just gives the enemy more time to prepare for the invasion. Martyring yourself for a good cause is the greatest opportunity for honour, never forget that.”

  The youth didn’t think he was particularly cowardly, or prone to attacks of nerves, but it was true that he’d been the one flying the plane. It was a strange way to put it, but he had the feeling he’d been rather lax: instead of searching for enemy ships, he’d been lost in thoughts of his mother, the mountains of home, the river’s winding course. Reflecting deeply on this as he
returned to his quarters, he overheard two labourers about the same age as him who were working on the base.

  “The kamikaze pilots have it good, they can eat and drink their fill and spend the whole day playing around.”

  “We’ll die just the same, but squashed like bugs during the invasion.”

  It was true that the kamikaze pilots received special treatment on the base; the food was good, and they had a fair amount of freedom. Rather than feeling angry, the youth was ashamed that he had returned alive today. He told himself that he had to die, not to protect his country or his mother, but because it wasn’t right for him to be eating eggs and tomato and sweet bean porridge every day when there was such a shortage of food.

  The time for the second mission came round, and this time the commanding officer kept it short, telling them merely, “I am praying for your success. The Japanese people, indeed Japanese history, are watching your ambitious undertaking,” as he waved them off.

  Once again the three Red Dragonflies headed south to the tune of the put-put of the propellers under the languorous summer sun. This time the youth was wondering whether or not he would feel pain when he crashed into the enemy ship. It probably would hurt, but, then again, he might lose consciousness before the impact.

  He’d heard from his seniors that the barrage of anti-aircraft fire was like the spray rebounding from a heavy shower, and even a Zero would have its wings torn off if hit by bullets from an anti-aircraft machine-gun. How much more so, then, for this little Red Dragonfly? If he was hit, would he feel a shock, or would the plane disintegrate leaving him hanging alone in mid-air?

  Everyone has to die, and mine will be an honourable death in action for the sake of my country and my mother. I will become one of the devils that helped to annihilate the despicable enemy in defence of the nation, and that will together form the cornerstone of the East through the glory of our unfailing devotion to the Empire.