The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  Dealing away a great general’s life as I drank sake and chewed on yakitori was, to say the least, a new concept for me. I had no idea what to do or say, but I felt obligated to signal to him that the offer, as it were, had been received and would be communicated. “General MacArthur has great emotion when he thinks of what happened in Manila. He deeply loves the city and its people. It was one of the immense tragedies of his life to see so many of them deliberately killed, raped, and shot.”

  “The debt should be repaid.” Kido was finished eating. “I am only telling you that we understand and will support General MacArthur on this matter. The Japanese people will benefit if the General and the emperor work together.”

  The meal was over. As we both rose to leave, Kido raised a hand as if to stop me. He had saved the most important news for last. “The emperor wishes to pay a call on the supreme commander. It is time for them to meet, Captain Jay Marsh, and to begin working directly together.”

  “I will tell MacArthur,” I announced as we bowed to each other.

  “Soon,” said the lord privy seal. “Too many people are trying to drive a wedge between them.”

  “I will tell him that as well,” I said. “And thank you again for all your precious advice.”

  Kido smiled, pretending embarrassment. “It was only my sake talking, Captain! We will work hard for the General. There is no other way. The emperor is committed to this.”

  ——

  An hour later I was back in my hotel room, still unsteady from Lord Kido’s moonshine-strength sake. As I began brushing my teeth I heard the clicking of geta shoes on the stairway outside my room, and then a hesitant scratching on the door. My heart raced with a confused, denying excitement as I quickly rinsed out my mouth, for I knew immediately what was waiting on the other side.

  I walked to the door and opened it. Yoshiko stood expectantly on the landing. She smiled shyly to me and then looked down at the floor, as if not wanting to watch my face while I registered her presence. She was still in her kimono. Her long hair was pulled back and up, on top of her head. In front of her, with both of her hands, she was holding a small white-pine box. She was indeed beautiful, long and smooth, with tight, unblemished skin, pink petals of lips, and a muscular firmness in her hips and legs. Her studied passivity transcended into an inner power that somehow made her even more attractive.

  The box was wrapped with a wide pink ribbon. Finally she bowed, extending the box. Her voice was soft and velvety, carrying the high-pitched, whispery intonations that Japanese women frequently use when speaking to powerful men.

  “I am here to express my deep apology, Captain Jay Marsh! The lord privy seal scolded me greatly for not serving you dessert! He asked that I bring you some sweets.”

  She finished her bow but kept her head slightly downturned, smiling coyly and peeking up at me to see if I understood her full intent. She smelled wonderful. An honest warmth emanated from her eyes. I was lonely and slightly drunk. She was near enough that I would not even have had to extend an arm to touch her, and beautiful enough that every part of me wanted to.

  I stared at her for a long moment, stunned not so much by her presence as by my reaction to it. Why could I not control these feelings? I was overwhelmingly in love with another woman. And yet I was in free fall, losing the innocent purity of that relationship as I stepped aside and welcomed Yoshiko into my room.

  She stepped inside, slipping off her geta and socks just inside the door, and continued to smile sweetly as she passed me. Her left hip and shoulder brushed against me when she walked into the room. I wanted simply to grab her at that moment, but I sensed there was a ritual in this seduction, indeed another script that should be followed. Was this real, or was this not? Or for that matter, what did reality have to do with it? We both knew what was about to happen. And is there any feeling more exhilarating than when two people admit to each other for the first time, however silently, that they will soon be lovers?

  Oh, yes, the war was truly over. Yokohama be damned. Recreation and Amusement had descended upon Captain Jay Marsh, bearing sweets and dressed in a splendid blue kimono.

  The kimono did not last long. She set the gift box on my little desk, then went into the bathroom and carefully took it off, hanging it neatly over the door. She was now wearing a sleeveless, sheathlike cotton shirt that went down to her mid-thighs. Ignoring me for the moment, she knelt at the sunken tub and opened the taps, running mostly hot water. As the tub began to fill, she stood and walked back to me. Her smile was slightly devilish but still coy. She bowed, then dared to stare openly and directly into my eyes.

  “The lord privy seal was very concerned that you learn the custom of a properly scalding bath.”

  For the first time that entire evening, I lost my restraint and started to genuinely laugh. Perhaps it was the sake, but it seemed so utterly Japanese that a bath was proper only if it was scalding, as if every movement and emotion was fully acceptable only if taken to its inner or outer extreme.

  “So a warm bath isn’t proper?”

  “No!” She started laughing too, her eyebrows raising and her hand automatically covering her mouth.

  “How about just a—hot bath?”

  “No,” she laughed. “It is only proper if it’s too hot!”

  As we laughed together, for the first time we both relaxed. She was not a geisha, and I was not a captain. She was not Japanese, and I was not American. A threshold had been crossed. She was a woman, one who had dropped her pretense and decided that she liked me. And I was a man who found her captivating, at least for this moment. She was no longer merely on assignment. And I was no longer simply—what? The recipient of a human gift? A target of Kido’s intelligence apparatus? A betrayer of the woman I had promised to marry?

  Whatever. It was too late. It didn’t matter. The rest of the world was no longer out there. The water was running, steaming up my little room. She was standing only inches away from me in a simple but sensuous cotton shift. It clung to her hard, protruding nipples. It stopped high enough for me to admire her long and sinewy legs. And we were laughing in a way that told each other that there was more to this than simple duty. How much more, who knew? It was going to happen. And if nothing else, it was becoming fun.

  The tub was three-quarters filled. She turned off the taps, kneeling on the tiles that surrounded it, and pointed at the steaming water.

  “So, now you must get into the tub.”

  I was still wearing my khaki trousers and a white T-shirt. I grinned at her, looking dubiously at the tub. “It’s too hot.”

  “It’s never too hot!” She eyed me flirtatiously. “It is very late, Captain Jay Marsh, and it could be that you are unsteady from having so much sake? So maybe I should help you undress.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, grinning wildly at the thought. My self-control was shattered. I knew that if she had touched me at that moment I never would have reached the tub. “Is the bath important?”

  “Yes!” She began laughing again, her hand once more held daintily over her mouth. “You’re a funny man, Captain Jay Marsh.”

  “You should please call me Jay.”

  She seemed almost to blush. She lowered her head for a moment as she knelt on the tiles, accepting my gesture as a deep compliment. And in her eyes I saw that she was starting very much to like me. “Thank you very much. As you wish. It will be my honor to call you Jay.”

  “And I should call you Yoshiko?”

  “Of course.” She experimented with my name, as if it were itself a sweet to be rolled upon her tongue. “Jay. What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘lover of beautiful women.’ ”

  She giggled. I undressed quickly. Surprisingly, she averted her eyes as I walked naked and aroused toward her. She pointed, insisting once again that I climb into the tub. I put a foot into the water and then backed away—it was indeed scalding.

  “Ahhh! It’s too hot!”

  Her eyes still averted, she laughed again, softly ch
iding me. “It’s never too hot!”

  Suddenly she stood and in one smooth motion slid out of her cotton shift, placing it carefully with the kimono on top of the bathroom door. She was hardly two feet away, but still she would not look at me. Standing next to her, I could not keep my eyes off of her slender body with its round, surprisingly full breasts and the small triangle of pubic hair where her thighs joined together.

  She turned and without flinching slid into the steaming tub. She held a bar of soap in one hand. Tilting her head back, she began slowly washing, first her neck and shoulders, then underneath her arms, and finally her breasts, one at a time. Her eyes still averted, she called again to me.

  “So, Jay. You must get into the tub!”

  I moved behind her, starting to kneel, and suddenly she began splashing me with hot water. She laughed as I howled, splashing me again and again until finally I sank into the tub behind her. My hands quickly went around her, sliding along her waist and then up to her breasts. I pulled her to me, kissing her cheek and then her lips. She kissed me back for a very long time.

  Finally she pulled away. She looked into my eyes for a moment and then looked down, as if this were becoming too personal. “You have the softest mouth I have ever kissed,” she said. Her voice was low and relaxed, as if she were taken completely by surprise. And then she firmly removed my arms from her breasts. “But you must get in front of me.”

  “What?”

  “Get in front of me!”

  Adeptly, she moved behind me in the small, deep tub, bending her legs a bit as if putting me on her lap, and began soaping me. We sat like that for fifteen minutes. She slowly washed my hair, and then every part of my body. Then she drained the tub and refilled it, sitting with me as the hot, clean water rinsed us. She said nothing as her long fingers massaged me expertly. The intense heat seemed to penetrate the marrow of my bones, leaving me weak and floating. Her kneading fingers removed the tension from every muscle in my back, neck, arms, and legs. By the time she pulled me from the tub I was wrung out like a dishrag. My mind felt drugged from the heat, floating in some stupefied nirvana.

  I do not know how long we made love. Looking back, all I remember is that it was like slow string music, a Tchaikovsky serenade. She was in full control, touching and kissing and smiling, guiding my hands and body and in the end moaning and croaking with pleasure. She had come to perform a duty, but by the time she again dressed in her kimono and leaned over to gently kiss me good-bye, something in Yoshiko had visibly changed. Anyone might feign their enjoyment, but she could neither hide nor pretend the worried tenderness that had crept into the very set of her lips and eyes.

  “Thank you, Jay. I hope I see you again.”

  I had been dozing. After she kissed me, she pulled a sheet up to my chin and crept soundlessly out of my room. Lying in bed I heard her geta clicking on the staircase as she made her way back to Kido or whomever. And I knew also that something had happened to me.

  Something powerful. And probably something wrong.

  CHAPTER 13

  Well, well, well,” said Colonel Sam Genius as I walked into his cluttered office. “The master spy approaches.”

  “I told you, Colonel, I’m not a spy.”

  “You smile a lot, you live comfortably, and you perform no clearly identifiable functions during daylight hours. That makes you either a spy or a whore.”

  Behind Genius, the two majors who worked with him looked up from their desks for a moment, registering my presence, and after chuckling to each other decided to ignore me. Whatever my own duties might have been, in their minds there were war criminals to catch and prosecute. And they were hard at it.

  I sat easily in the wooden chair just across from his desk. “So, do you know how to save a drowning lawyer, Colonel?”

  “No,” grinned Genius. “How?”

  “You don’t.”

  “A totally transparent attempt to shift the focus, that.” He snorted. “If you’re not a spy, how did you, a mere junior captain, arrange for the emperor to make a pilgrimage to MacArthur?”

  The word had traveled quickly through the General’s staff, and I had become moderately famous. The morning after our dinner, I had told General Court Whitney of Lord Privy Seal Kido’s suggestion that MacArthur and the emperor meet. Within an hour, Whitney indicated that MacArthur was interested, and I placed an “unofficial” call to Kido. By late afternoon, Prime Minister Higashikuni and Shigeru Yoshida, who had just replaced the aged and ailing one-legged Shigemitsu as foreign minister, had presented a formal request to the General himself. And so today, September 27, the emperor would call on the supreme commander at his residence in the American embassy.

  MacArthur was thrilled by this. Throughout East Asian history, the notion of face dictated that the supplicant travel to the throne of the ascendant. And now, due in some small part to my sake-filled diplomacy, the emperor would come to him.

  “I told you, Colonel, I’m just the monkey boy. Or maybe think of me as a two-hundred-pound carrier pigeon.”

  “ ‘Spy’ sounds better,” teased the balding, frazzled-looking Genius. “Anyway, I’ve got something for you.” He dropped a manila folder on my lap. “Look through this, will you? It’s got me so pissed off I don’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

  His two silent assistants raised their heads again, watching me alertly as I opened the folder. Genius spoke solicitously, not attempting to hide his sarcasm. “Let me help you out, monkey boy. While you and the great lord privy seal were downing yakitori and toasting the emperor’s health, your boss was approving a directive that creates a military council to address the issue of war crimes committed in the Philippines. What this means is that he’s carving away General Yamashita’s case from the war crimes trials that we’ll be holding here in Tokyo.”

  “He said he wanted Yamashita tried in the Philippines,” I murmured, leafing through the hundred-page file that Genius had handed me.

  “Yeah, but down there it’s not even going to be a court,” said Genius. “We’re putting together an elaborate international tribunal up here for the war crimes trials. I’m talking historic. It’ll take another six months to arrange all of this. It’ll be headed up by a group of distinguished civilian judges from eleven different nations.” He tapped my shoulder, as if to get my full attention. “ ‘Judges’ is the operative word, Captain. As in, your basic law-school graduates who have had careers and then been selected to impart their wisdom by sitting on a bench and running trials.”

  “I understand the concept,” I answered dryly. “It may surprise you, Colonel, but even in Arkansas there are such people.”

  “Yes,” grinned Genius. “But not in the Philippines! At least not in the case of General Yamashita! MacArthur has created what he calls the Philippines War Crimes Commission. Note the choice of words, now—‘commission,’ as in nonjudicial.”

  “But the word ‘crimes’ somehow reminds me of the law,” I said, stifling my own sarcastic smile. “As in, the violation of a statute? You can’t try somebody for a war crime without a court.” I hesitated. “I mean, I’m not a lawyer but it sounds kind of—illegal?”

  “Well, just wait,” said Genius. “He’s going to put a bunch of army generals in a room and tell them to hang the son of a bitch.”

  “Not that he doesn’t have the evidence to hang him anyway,” I said, thinking of the slaughter I witnessed in the aftermath of Manila.

  “So, if he’s got the necessary evidence, why is he doing this?”

  Genius flipped through the materials he had put on my lap, then pointed at a page that contained MacArthur’s directive creating the Philippines War Crimes Commission. He glanced for a moment at his assistants. “Some lawyer—not one of us, I can assure you—has found a presidential proclamation from 1942. Right here, read it. Actually, let me.” He pulled it out and read it for me. “ ‘Enemy belligerents who during time of war enter the United States, or any territory or possession thereof, and who violate the law o
f war, should be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals.’ ”

  “Yeah, but the war’s over,” I said.

  “You noticed that, did you? Over there sampling Mister Kido’s—delicacies?” Genius grinned meanly, as if seeing a reflection of Yoshiko’s firm body in the guilt on my face. “But here’s what they’re saying. Yamashita, of course, was a ‘belligerent’ who ‘entered’ the Philippines—a possession of the United States—during ‘time of war.’ And since the formal treaty hasn’t been signed yet, technically we’re still at war. So in their clever reading of it, the proclamation still applies.”

  “Oh, yes, Colonel. Very clever. Now you have a small idea why the rest of us hate lawyers.”

  He grunted. “This only begins to be clever. Someday remind me to tell you about the case I studied in law school, where an appellant proved conclusively that a horse was a bird, at least for the purposes of commerce. But it’s clever enough.”

  “Another reason why, Colonel.”

  “OK, OK.” Genius flipped the page. “Look here. MacArthur has appointed himself the sole convening authority of the commission. This means that only he has the power to supervise the makeup of the court, to determine the procedures for presenting and rebutting evidence, and to decide the standards of proof. In other words, he’s rigged the front end completely.”

  He flipped the page again. “He’s also assigned himself the role of sole reviewing authority of its findings. This means that he has the exclusive discretion—read it right there, monkey boy—to ‘approve, mitigate, remit, commute, suspend, reduce, or alter the sentence imposed.’ You get that last part? He can actually alter the sentence if he doesn’t like it! Which means he’s rigged the back end, too. And as its first order of business, Lieutenant General Styer is directed to instruct the commission to proceed with charges against General Yamashita.” Genius caught himself. “Actually, they charged him two days ago.”