Tokyo Year Zero

by David Peace

  She clutches her handbag tighter and tighter –

  Questions. Questions. Questions. Questions …

  ‘My husband is a very friendly man,’ says Mrs. Kodaira. ‘My husband is also a very kind man. He will talk to anyone and he will help anyone and, in my opinion, this is actually his worst quality because that is why he’s in trouble today. But my husband is not a violent man. Of course he gets angry if I serve him food he does not like or if there is not enough food for us all. But my husband never drinks alcohol and he is never violent and he never tells lies…’

  ‘I believe you, Mrs. Kodaira,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘And that’s why I believe your husband’s confession to be true…’

  Her shoulders are shaking. Her shoulders trembling –

  No answers. No answers. No answers. No answers …

  In the cells downstairs, her husband is waiting.

  *

  I do not go back to Headquarters with Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai. I take the Yamate Line from Meguro round to Shimbashi. I itch and I scratch now. Gari-gari. I get off the train at Shimbashi. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The New Life Market is still cordoned off. I itch as I stand and I scratch as I stare. Gari-gari. Four military policemen in their white summer fatigues stand guard. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Their blue eyes are blank and their black boots are rooted. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Behind the sentries, inside the market building, I can see the rows of empty stalls. I itch as I turn and I scratch as I leave. Gari-gari. I walk down the back alleys and the shaded lanes, through the shadows and the arches to the old wooden stairs and the door at the top of those stairs –

  I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch and I scratch –

  But the door at the top of the stairs is closed –

  The sign on Senju’s door reads, Gone to War.

  *

  I walk into Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. I walk up the stairs to Police Arcade. I knock on the door to Chief Kita’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I apologize again. I take my seat at the table; Chief Kita at the head; Chief Inspectors Adachi and Kanehara to his right; Inspector Kai on his left; the same people and the same place but a different time and a different conversation today –

  Today the conversation is just about Kodaira –

  Inspector Kanehara, Inspector Kai and half of Room #1 spent yesterday questioning Kodaira while Nishi and I were chasing ghosts out at the International Palace and the rest of my room were walking the streets of Shiba, in the heat and in the dirt –

  Investigation is footwork …

  ‘There are some similarities with other cases,’ says the chief. ‘And so these other cases are going to need to be washed again. Now I know there is a shortage of manpower so, first of all, we are going to need to see how many of these other cases match up with the various places that the suspect Kodaira has lived and worked…’

  ‘And the first case is that of Abe Yoshiko…’

  Shinagawa. Shinagawa. Shinagawa …

  ‘You might remember that the body of a teenage girl was found by a signal operator on the thirteenth of June this year, just over two months ago now, under a burnt-out truck in the scrapyard of the Shibaura Transportation Company at 7 Hamamachi, Shiba Ward, on the ocean side of Shinagawa train station…’

  Adachi has his eyes on me …

  ‘The autopsy revealed that the girl had been raped and then strangled with her own neckerchief on or around the ninth of June. The investigation headquarters was set up at Takanawa police station and was led by former Chief Inspector Mori who, as you all know, is now unfortunately no longer with us…’

  Arrested and imprisoned …

  ‘The body was identified as that of Abe Yoshiko who was fifteen years old and attended Dai-san Kokumin Gakkō in Hirai. However, investigations revealed she was actually in a fūten group with three other girls who were doing business with American soldiers. The autopsy also revealed that her last meal had consisted of macaroni and sausage, suggesting that she was being given food by American soldiers. There was also a persistent rumour that Abe had been sleeping with a uniformed officer from the Mita police station. As you may know, this officer was identified, questioned and then dismissed because of improper conduct…’

  Dismissed and disgraced …

  ‘However, because of the connection with the Shinchū Gun, because of the possible involvement of American soldiers, former Chief Inspector Mori felt unable to pursue the case and so it was recorded as unsolved and the banner rolled back up –

  ‘The investigation officially closed.

  ‘However, on reading through Kodaira’s statements and cross-referencing them with unsolved crimes of a similar nature to the murder of Midorikawa and by further cross-referencing these unsolved crimes with the dates and places Kodaira is known to have lived and worked, Chief Inspector Kanehara now believes the suspect should be questioned about the murder of Abe Yoshiko in June.’

  Inspector Kanehara thanks the chief. Then Kanehara says, ‘Kodaira has already denied any knowledge of the murder of Abe Yoshiko. However, earlier this morning, Kodaira’s wife inadvertently told us that Kodaira had mentioned the groups of young women who hang around the barracks and the laundry where he works. It is my hope that we will be able to find a witness who can place Kodaira in the company of Abe on or around the ninth of June this year and then Kodaira will have little choice but to confess again –

  ‘So our first step will be to trace the other remaining members of Abe’s fūten group. Fortunately, former Chief Inspector Mori interviewed them during the course of the initial investigation and their names and addresses were verified and recorded in the case files. If Abe was familiar with Kodaira then it is also likely one or more of these girls will also have been familiar…’

  ‘And also,’ adds the chief, ‘there is a slight chance that one of these girls might be able to assist in the identification of the second body we found at Shiba…’

  ‘Or even be that body,’ laughs Chief Inspector Adachi –

  His eyes on me, all their eyes on me now …

  I clear my throat. I bow. I say, ‘As you are all aware, as yet we have been unable to identify the body and so I very much appreciate and am very grateful for any assistance…’

  The chief nods. The chief says, ‘You will then personally go to the most likely addresses we have on file for these girls…’

  They are punishing me, but punishing me for what?

  ‘You will personally go to these addresses,’ repeats the chief. ‘It is important that you do not delegate this responsibility –’

  Have there been complaints about me …?

  ‘If any of the girls are found at any of these addresses, then I want you to accompany them to Shibuya police station –’

  Why not Atago? Why not my room?

  ‘There you will hand over any girls you find to Chief Inspector Kanehara. After Chief Inspector Kanehara has questioned these girls about Abe Yoshiko and the suspect Kodaira Yoshio, then you and the other men from Room #2 will be able to interview them about the second body found at Shiba Park –’

  They are punishing me …

  The chief stops talking. The chief looks up. The chief says, ‘We appreciate your hard work in this, detective inspector –’

  But for what?

  The chief now turns to Inspector Kai. The chief says, ‘Inspector Kai and the First Room will take a description of the victim Abe Yoshiko to the suspect Kodaira Yoshio’s family, to his friends, to his neighbours and to his workmates –’

  Questions. Questions. Questions …

  Finally, the chief says, ‘Chief Inspector Adachi and his team will continue to work on the case of the journalist Hayashi –

  Answers. Answers and …

  ‘Dismissed!’

  Warnings!

  *

  I take a different route back to Atago. They are punishing me. The restaurant is a shack slapped together from pieces of corrug
ated metal. They are warning me. They have no white rice, but they have white bread. They are punishing me. They have custard cakes, but they have no white rice. They are warning me. I order a cup of coffee from the woman behind the counter and I squeeze onto an improvised stool. They are punishing me. The young man beside me is still wearing his uniform, his kitbag propped beneath the counter. They are warning me. He has short-cropped hair and smells of DDT. They are punishing me. There are no badges on his uniform and there is no light in his eyes. They are warning me. The woman behind the counter places a doughnut in front of him. ‘You just got back, dear?’

  The young man stares at the doughnut and nods his head.

  ‘Got a wife waiting for you?’ she asks. ‘Your mother?’

  The young man looks up from the plate now and says, ‘They think I died honourably in battle three years ago. They received a citation from the Mayor of Tokyo which said Private Noma would forever be remembered and may his soul rest in peace. They were given a small white casket in which the ashes of my body had been brought back to Japan. They deposited the casket in our local temple. They placed a framed picture of me in my uniform on the family butsudan. They lit incense for me, offered white rice and sake…’

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

  ‘They wouldn’t look at my face. They said Noma is dead…’

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

  ‘They wouldn’t look at my feet…’

  They are punishing us all …

  ‘They said I’m a ghost…’

  Warning us all …

  No one is who they seem.

  *

  I stand over the sink again. Black bile again. I spit again. Brown bile again. I wipe my mouth again. Yellow bile again. I turn on the tap again. Grey bile again. I wash my face again. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey. I do not look into the mirror –

  Cover the mirrors! Cover the mirrors!

  I go upstairs into the borrowed office. Detectives Takeda and Ishida are still out looking for Ishihara Michiko and Ōzeki Hiromi. Detectives Hattori and Shimoda are still out looking for Konuma Yasuyo and Sugai Seiko. Detectives Sanada and Kimura still out looking for Tanabe Shimeko and Honma Fumiko. But Detective Nishi is sat at his borrowed desk in our borrowed office where I left him, where I left him to sit and wait for me. They are keeping me close. Tight. But I am keeping him closer –

  ‘Wake up,’ I say. ‘Time to go…’

  Down the Shibuya backstreets and down the Shibuya alleyways, to knock on the doors of the addresses we have taken from the Abe file, to be given another address and then another because this city is one huge sea of displaced persons, moving from here to there and back again to here, looking for a relative, looking for a home, looking for a job, looking for a meal, a familiar face on an un-bombed street in an un-burnt neighbourhood, selling this and selling that to buy a little of this and a little of that, from room to room, house to house, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, place to place, one minute here and one minute gone, gone and then back again, back and then gone again, tiny, tiny fish in a rough, rough sea –

  It is late in the afternoon before we finally find one of Abe Yoshiko’s friends, one of her fūten group, down another Shibuya backstreet, up another Shibuya alleyway, our shirts stuck to our backs and our trousers stuck to our legs –

  Five in the afternoon and the girl is still asleep, says the landlady. The girl never rises before dusk. But she always pays her rent. Even brings home extra rations. Not that she should be telling two handsome detectives from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. But yes, she is in her room and yes, the landlady agrees to go up and wake her –

  Now the landlady mops her neck with a towel and gets up from her knees to go up the steep wooden stairs, along the narrow wooden corridor to the room of seventeen-year-old Masaoka Hisae –

  Masaoka Hisae who follows her landlady back along the narrow wooden corridor, back down the steep wooden stairs to light a cigarette and tighten the belt of her yukata and narrow her eyes and scowl and then sigh and ask us, ‘What do you want this time?’

  *

  The Shibuya police station is tense. The Shibuya police station is armed to its teeth. Nishi and I should have taken Masaoka to either the Meguro or the Atago police station. But the chief told us to take anybody we find into the Shibuya police station. The Shibuya station is tense. The Shibuya station is armed to its teeth. The Shibuya station raided the headquarters of Kakyō Sōkai, the association of Chinese merchants. The Shibuya station took away Kō Gyoku-Ju, the vice-president of the Kakyō Sōkai. The Shibuya station tense. The Shibuya Station armed to its teeth. The Shibuya station is holding Kō Gyoku-Ju in a cell downstairs. The Shibuya station doesn’t want anyone to know. Shibuya station tense. Shibuya armed to its teeth. But everyone knows what will happen next –

  Because they are coming. They are coming …

  Nishi and I commandeer an upstairs room to use to interview Masaoka Hisae. Then Nishi and I send a message to Chief Inspector Kanehara at Metro Headquarters. Now Nishi and I leave Masaoka in a downstairs cell to wait until Inspector Kanehara arrives from Headquarters. Until it’s time to begin the interview –

  They are coming. They are coming …

  Masaoka in the downstairs cell opposite Kō Gyoku-Ju and his bloodied face and his blackened eyes –

  They are coming.

  *

  The night is coming down now. Chief Inspector Kanehara here now. The sweat running in rivers down Masaoka Hisae’s face and neck. The fan in her hand never stops. The scowl on her face never leaves –

  Never leaves until Kanehara shows her a photograph –

  Masaoka stares at the photograph. Masaoka nods her head and says, ‘Yoshiko and I visited his room in the barracks…’

  ‘He has a room in the barracks, does he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Just a futon and…’

  ‘So you went there for sex?’

  ‘He promised us zanpan,’ she says. ‘Bread and sausages from Shinchū kitchens. Leftovers and scraps…’

  ‘Did you screw him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Did Abe?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘At least not while we were there together. She refused him…’

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘May or June…’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Shinchū Gun barracks down at the old Naval Business and Accounting School in Shinagawa. That was where he worked and that was where he had his room…’

  ‘Did you stay there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Three of us.’

  ‘Who was the third girl?’

  ‘Tominaga…’

  ‘And did she fuck him?’

  ‘Maybe,’ laughs Masaoka. ‘He could fuck all night could that one, said he was making up for all the screws he had lost…’

  ‘But he wasn’t Shinchū Gun, was he?’

  ‘He had bread. He had meat.’

  We have no rice. No food …

  ‘You fuck for bread?’

  We all beg for food …

  ‘He was kind to us.’

  We all beg…

  ‘Kind to you?’

  Beg…

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, after Abe was murdered, you never thought it could have been this man who killed your friend on the ninth of June?’

  ‘No, but now you’ve told me all these things and now you’ve shown me his photograph, maybe…’

  ‘But you didn’t mention him to Chief Inspector Mori at the time of the murder, did you?’

  ‘No one mentioned him to me and I didn’t think he could have been her killer…’

  ‘Did he tell you he’d already been convicted of the murder of his father-in-law?’

  ‘He never said,’ she smiles. ‘Or I would have mentioned it.’

  ‘He’s also confessed to the rape and murder of a girl.’ />
  ‘Well then, maybe he murdered Yoshiko…’

  ‘But he definitely knew Abe Yoshiko?’

  ‘He definitely knew her, yes.’

  ‘He had asked her for sex?’

  ‘He asked her for sex.’

  ‘And she refused?’

  ‘That night, yes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘You have been very helpful, Miss Masaoka.’

  Masaoka Hisae narrows her eyes now and scowls at him and asks, ‘Can I go home then?’

  ‘In a little while,’ I tell her. ‘But I have a few more questions to ask you first…’

  Masaoka Hisae folds her arms back in front of her and says, ‘Go on then, please.’

  ‘I want you to tell me a little bit more about your group.’

  Masaoka Hisae laughs. ‘My group? My fūten group?’

  There are boots on the stairs now, boots coming …

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Their names and their ages…’

  Boots coming down the corridor …

  Now the door flies open without a knock, a uniformed policeman falling into the interview room, panting, ‘All hell’s broken loose, sir! The Formosans, the Chinese and the Koreans have all joined forces and they have attacked the markets at Shimbashi and at ōji and they have stoned the Atago and ōji police stations and they have injured Police Chief Hashioka of the ōji police station…’

  The Chinks are murdering the Japanese …

  ‘There are thousands of them and they have come up from Osaka and Kobe and they have got Chinese sailors from a Chinese battleship anchored in Yokohama and they are armed with machine guns and they are firing at the police and the Japanese…’

  The Chinks are murdering the Japanese …

  ‘Now they are all heading this way, heading here to the Shibuya station to bust out Kō Gyoku-Ju…’

  *

  Kanehara, Nishi and I run downstairs and outside. They are coming. The night is here. They are coming. It is 9 p.m. and the battle lines have been drawn. They are coming. Two hundred policemen standing guard outside the Shibuya police station. They are coming. Inspector Adachi here, a short sword in one hand, a drawn pistol in the other. They are coming. Five trucks full of Formosans approach –

  Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves …