Tokyo Year Zero

by David Peace

  Chief Kita listens and then Chief Kita says, ‘But I hear you want to leave Room #2. To transfer…?’

  I have told no one this. But I ask nothing and I say nothing. I bow deeply to the chief. I apologize for asking for a transfer –

  ‘It’s interesting you don’t deny it,’ smiles Chief Kita. ‘And apparently it’s a transfer to Room #6 you want?’

  I ask nothing and I say nothing…

  I bow. I apologize again.

  The chief asks, ‘Why?’

  ‘I have been in Room #2 for almost a year now,’ I tell him. ‘Maybe they need a new leader.’

  ‘But why do you want Room #6?’ the chief asks me again. ‘It’s the gangs and the markets. You’d know nothing…’

  ‘I knew nothing when you put me in Room #2.’

  Chief Kita smiles and asks, ‘And now?’

  ‘One can never know enough…’

  Chief Kita inhales deeply, closes his eyes and then he says, ‘You identify that girl’s body. You find out how she died. If she was murdered, you find out who killed her and why –

  ‘Then you can have your transfer.’

  I bow. I apologize. I repeat –

  ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  *

  Up the stairs again, back to the same hot, dark second-floor room and the last meeting of the first full day of the two investigations –

  ‘Attention!’ shouts the same uniformed sergeant –

  ‘Bow!’ shouts the sergeant –

  ‘At ease!’ he shouts.

  Chief Inspector Adachi and I stay standing at the front of the room, in front of the table on which are lain out the things that have been found today on the slopes of Shiba Park, the many things –

  The wicker basket containing a set of carpenter’s tools, found fifteen metres from the first body; the child’s undershirt and material found near the basket; the soiled women’s underwear; the soldier’s shoulder bag in the bushes on the Northern Path; the long Chinese-style pipe and the empty lunchbox; the Asahi Shimbun from the eleventh of August this year; the old man’s glasses, broken in two; the rusted Western-style razor and the red haramaki with five darned holes found on the Eastern Path, five darned holes for identification –

  ‘It would seem that the material from the haramaki,’ reports Adachi, ‘matches the material found around the neck of the first body. However, we will have to wait until the results of the autopsy tomorrow before we can be certain. Inspector Minami…’

  ‘The military shoulder bag,’ I continue, ‘was found to contain a statement of employment for a Takahashi of Zōshigaya, Toshima Ward. Detectives have already left for the Toshima ward office to follow up on this information…’

  ‘Scientific tests will also be conducted,’ states Adachi, ‘on the various items of clothing found during the search. The underwear may aid in identification.’

  Chief Inspector Adachi and I sit down. Chief Inspector Kanehara stands up now –

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he says, ‘we resume the search.’

  *

  The chief has reserved a room in a recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, near one of the kitchens of the Victors. The chief is treating the whole of the First Investigative Division to a meal. The whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on new tatami mats. There is no menu. No choice. But there is beer and there is food; we are eating leftovers, zanpan, from the Victors’ dustbins, just grateful not to have to eat zōsui again –

  Dogs starved at their masters’ feet, beneath their tables …

  Everyone still talking about this former naval commander who murdered his wife, his eleven-year-old son, his nine-year-old daughter and who then shot himself and the message he left:

  ‘Dispose of our bodies as you would a dog’s…’

  Everyone talking now about the one million unclaimed ashes of the war dead, the four million repatriated soldiers and civilians, many bearing the bones and ashes of their comrades and kin in small white boxes around their necks, the million more yet to come –

  ‘To live lives as broken jewels, not common clay…’

  Everyone talking then about the piss and the shit in the rivers, the cholera and the typhus, the train disasters and the union demonstrations, the strike slogans on the sides of the trains –

  ‘I don’t feel free. I don’t feel I have rights…’

  Talking about the GI who raped and sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl, the two other Victors who kidnapped and raped a girl on her way home from a flower-arranging class, talking about the Japanese man who attacked and beat up two GIs in Kamata –

  ‘There was spirit in the war, stimulation…’

  Everyone talking about the minutes that feel like hours. The hours that feel like days. The days that feel like weeks. The weeks that feel like months. The months that feel like years –

  This year that has felt like a decade –

  ‘For now there is only monotony…’

  Talking about purges. Talking about trials. Talking about all our trials; to work, to eat. Talking about food. Talking about food. Talking about food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food –

  In whispers. In screams. In whispers. In screams –

  If you’ve never been defeated, never lost –

  If you’ve never been beaten before –

  Then you don’t know the pain –

  The pain of surrender –

  Of occupation …

  In whispers, in screams, this is how the Losers talk –

  Their chests constricted and their fists balled –

  Their knees bleeding and backs broken –

  By the fall …

  This is how the Losers talk –

  To whisper, to scream –

  ‘We are the survivors. We are the lucky ones.’

  *

  Back at Atago on the second floor, the second trunk has been opened, the blankets distributed, but this borrowed room is an oven, another furnace, and the stench of sweat and the whine of mosquitoes is unbearable. From across the hallway, from the other room, drift the low voices of the First Team singing their drunken lullabies –

  ‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching…’

  But they are soon asleep in here, in their chairs or under their desks, snoring and farting, all except Detective Fujita –

  The one empty chair. The empty desk …

  I get up from my own chair and tiptoe as quietly as I can over the bodies. I open the door. I go down the corridor. Down the back stairs. Out of the back door –

  She haunts me …

  I start to run, to run through the night, the black and starless night, the hot and humid, damp and dark cloth hanging down –

  Down to Yuki.

  *

  In the half-light of her dim lamps, in the three glass panels of her vanity mirror, she puts her hand to her hair and says, ‘You had just bought a packet of cigarettes at the corner shop when a man ran past shouting, It’s going to rain! It’s going to rain! Old women in their aprons and young children with their toys scurried indoors as a gust of wind blew a reed blind to the ground and newspapers skated like ghosts down the street. Then came the flash of lightning. The clap of thunder. The great drops of rain. But you did not run. You finished your cigarette and you opened your umbrella. And that was when I first saw you, standing beneath your umbrella, when I first called out to you, as I was leaving the hairdresser’s shop, do you remember?’

  I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …

  ‘May I walk with you?’ she’d said. ‘Just over there?’

  Her white neck beneath my dark umbrella, her high chignon just freshly dressed, tied up in long silver threads, I remember –

  Shipped home from China, discharged from hospital …

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘Take the umbrella…’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ she smiled. ‘Just over to there…’

  My um
brella in her right hand, she hitches up the skirt of her kimono with her left and then turns back to ask –

  ‘Does this umbrella become me?’

  In the half-light, I can’t forget…

  I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …

  In the half-light. Thinking about my wife. In the half-light –

  I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …

  Thinking of my children. In the half-light. Her back to me –

  I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …

  In the half-light. Her face to the wall. In the half-light –

  I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry …

  To the paper. In the half-light. To the stains –

  I am sorry. I am sorry …

  In the half-light, the half-things –

  I am sorry…

  Half-lives, all gone.

  3

  August 17, 1946

  Tokyo, 90°, fine

  I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I have not slept again. I have not closed my eyes. My eyes tired and sore. The early morning sun coming through the window now, illuminating the dust and the stains of her room, the sound of the hammering trailing in with the light –

  Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …

  I sit up on the futon. I look at my watch –

  Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. I am late –

  Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

  I get up from the futon. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I put on my shirt and my trousers. Gari-gari. I go over to the genkan. Gari-gari. I lace up my boots. Gari-gari …

  I curse. I curse. I curse …

  I turn to say goodbye –

  But she does not move, her back to the door, her face to the wall, to the paper, the stains –

  I curse myself…

  I close her door and I run down the corridor. Down the stairs and out the building. Out of the shadows, into the light. The light so bright this morning, the shadows so dark, bleaching and staining the city in whites and blacks. The white concrete hulks, the black empty windows. The white sidewalks and roads, the black telegraph poles and trees. The white sheets of metal, the black mountains of rubble. The white leaves, the black weeds. The white eyes and the black skin of the Losers, the white stars and the black uniforms of the Victors –

  Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …

  No colours today. No colours on this moon.

  *

  Detective Fujita is at his borrowed desk in our borrowed room. Fujita does not look up. Ishida is pouring the tea. Fujita is going through his jacket pockets. Nishi and Kimura are repairing their notebooks, rolling up thin pieces of waste paper into tight threads to bind together the coarse rough paper on which they take their notes. Fujita takes an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket. The others waking up, yawning and stretching, coughing and scratching. Fujita has not slept. The windows are open but the room is still hot and stinks of stale breath and sweat. Fujita glances at his watch. They drink their tea and start to grumble. Fujita writes a name on the front of the envelope. They want cigarettes but the next ration is not until Monday and today is Saturday. Fujita puts the envelope back in his inside jacket pocket. They want breakfast but the next meal will be cold zōsui again. Now he looks up. Detective Fujita looks up at me –

  I wait for him to speak but he says nothing. Now I stand up at my desk. I bow to everyone and I say, ‘Good morning, Room #2.’

  They all stand. They bow. They say, ‘Good morning.’

  I tell them, ‘This morning I will accompany Inspector Kai of Room #1 to the Keiō University Hospital for the autopsies. In my absence, Detective Fujita will be in charge of the continuing search of the crime scene. The identification of the second body will not be easy and so the smallest scrap of evidence may prove crucial, so I would ask you all to be as diligent as possible in your search.’

  ‘We will be as diligent as possible,’ they reply.

  I bow to them again. They bow to me –

  Everyone but Detective Fujita.

  *

  Back out into the light, back out to the shadows. Into the white and into the black. Into the dirt and into the dust. The hot walk up to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. The morning meeting –

  I knock on the door to the chief’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I take my seat at the table; Chief Kita at the head; Adachi and Kanehara to his right; Kai and me on the left; the same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations –

  Purges and reforms. Reforms and purges …

  Last year seven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one policemen voluntarily gave up their jobs, three thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine left due to illness or injury, one thousand, six hundred and forty-nine died and two thousand, eight hundred and fifty-six police officers were purged and fired –

  ‘Now they want to issue a further Purge Directive,’ Kanehara is saying. ‘We have few enough men as it is and, if they carry out this purge, there’ll be no one left at all…’

  ‘That’s why they are promising better working conditions,’ says Adachi. ‘To recruit new men…’

  Reforms and purges. Purges and reforms …

  From this coming Monday new regulations are to be put into practice; uniforms are presently working an average of thirteen hours a day over three shifts. The Victors have decreed they will now work an average of eight hours a day over three shifts; on the first shift they will work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., on the second shift from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m., then the third shift on the third day will be a day off –

  ‘But there aren’t the numbers for these shifts,’ says Kanehara. ‘There aren’t the men yet to cover these kinds of hours…’

  ‘And we all know their answer to that,’ says Adachi. ‘Transfer seven hundred of our Metropolitan Police Board officers back onto local patrol duties to cover the shortfall…’

  ‘It’s our own fault,’ says Kanehara. ‘We asked them for better conditions; better hours, better holidays, better benefits, better pensions and better salaries. We asked them so we could recruit better men and keep the good men we had. We asked them and this is their answer, this is what they do…’

  ‘They just keep purging the leadership,’ says Adachi. ‘And transferring the men we have…’

  ‘We ask and we ask,’ says Kanehara. ‘And they promise us this and they promise us that…’

  ‘That’s all they do…’

  The same people, the same place, the same time and the same two conversations every day, meeting after meeting until there is a knock on the door, until there is an interruption –

  ‘Excuse me,’ mumbles the uniform –

  ‘What is it?’ barks Chief Kita –

  ‘Keiō Hospital are ready, sir.’

  *

  There has been another accident on one of the streetcars, a mother and her child killed. The system is suspended and so Inspector Kai and I get off our bus and walk the rest of the way. The route takes us through the old parks and the gardens of Moto-Akasaka –

  The sound of crows, the sound of crows …

  Here too the light is so bright that the green leaves shine white against the black trunks of the trees, though much of this area was untouched by the bombs, just like the Imperial Palace and its grounds, and now these grand houses and former palaces of Moto-Akasaka are homes and offices to the Victors and their families –

  ‘They still hunt round here,’ Kai tells me.

  ‘Hunt?’ I ask. ‘Who still hunts here?’

  ‘The nobility and the Americans.’

  ‘They go hunting together?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Kai. ‘I heard that members of our nobility entertain the American top brass with falcons. Even MacArthur…’

  ‘The Americans don’t trust the nobility with guns, then?’

  ‘They take the Americans cormorant fishing too.’

  ‘I’d like to eat ayu now,’ I tell him. ‘Even ayu caught by Americans
. I can taste it now, washed down with sake.’

  Kai laughs. ‘I’d even eat the cormorant.’

  Two hills to the north of us stand the former War Ministry buildings at Ichigaya, the large three-storey pillbox that was once the headquarters of the Imperial Army but which since May has been the site of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East –

  A different kind of hunt. A different kind of sport.

  *

  The Keiō University Hospital is at Shinanomachi, in the Yotsuya district of Tokyo. The main building is scarred but standing, the approaches and grounds scorched or overgrown. The sick or lost wander in and out, back and forth. There are queues out of the gates. Policemen on the doors. Inside the plaster is peeling from the walls and the linoleum torn from the floorboards. The corridors are crowded with the dying and the dead, the waiting and the grieving –

  I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …

  I step over or around them and try not to breathe in –

  I hate hospitals. I hate hospitals. I hate hospitals …

  The air thick with screams and sobs, death and disease, DDT and disinfectant. The only drugs are aspirin and Mercurochrome, the only bandages grey and bloody. The gurneys lined up against the walls, limbs fallen loose from their sides. Remains of meals and scraps of food standing, stinking in cardboard boxes and battered tins under beds of coarse blankets and soiled sheets –

  But in the half-light I can’t forget…

  I try not to stare, to just walk on –

  I have spent too long here …

  Through the waiting rooms and down the long corridors, past the consulting rooms and the operating theatres, the surgeries and the wards, to the Chief Medical Officer –

  The Chief Medical Officer is either eighty or ninety years old, his face grey and sunken, his eyes black and empty. He is wearing an unpressed morning coat and a pair of striped trousers, both two sizes too big for him, smelling of mothballs –

  ‘You’re late,’ he says.

  Inspector Kai and I bow deeply to him. Inspector Kai and I apologize repeatedly to him –

  The Chief Medical Officer shakes his head and says, ‘I have to make an important report to the Public Health and Welfare Section. I don’t want to be late…’