“You can shoot me now.”
“You misjudge,” Lieutenant Nakajima said as his face softened. “I don’t want to hurt you, Inspector.”
Aizawa rubbed his throbbing head. “Is that so?”
“I’m sorry, but I had to incapacitate you in case you were armed. You were knocked out for longer than I intended. It’s almost 0600 hours.” The Lieutenant gave an apologetic bow. “Rest assured, I’m not here to kill you…but to ask for your surrender.”
“I’m to become a prisoner of war?”
Nakajima gave emphatic nods and said, “We’re soldiers on opposite sides of the battlefield. As such, you’re entitled to fair treatment.”
“Shouldn’t a Japanese soldier prefer death before dishonor?”
“Only if he is stained with dishonor. You have fought honorably, Inspector.”
That was news to him. But praise from a murderer sent waves of nausea rippling to the pit of his stomach.
“You served in the Imperial Army, right?” Nakajima asked as he lowered his weapon, but still keeping it at a threatening height.
“Yes, during the Siberian Expedition.”
“Ah, the glorious war against Communism!”
“Not exactly what I would call freezing my ass off and getting shot at by Bolsheviks.”
Nakajima gave a sullen look. “I’m envious, Inspector. My only regret is that I was not able to join my comrades in Manchuria and fight for the Emperor there…like a true soldier.” He gave a deep sigh, full of forlorn and regret. “Regardless, your cause in Ziberia was an honorable one. We could have eliminated the Bolshevik threat if only those weak-kneed politicians hadn’t ordered our forces out. And for such cowardice, the gods punished us.”
Inside Aizawa’s pounding head, the answer came. “With the Great Kanto Earthquake?”
Nakajima nodded. “What else could have caused it? The god Kashima is the only being who can restrain the great catfish, Namazu, upon whose back the Japanese islands rest. If let loose, the ground trembles from his mighty tail.”
“So, Kashima let Namazu go because we pulled out of Siberia?”
“There were other causes too. Our society became corrupt, greedy, and decadent which poisoned the Great Japanese Empire.”
“Things went back to the way they were after the earthquake though.”
“And the gods punished us again! This economic depression is divine punishment for the immorality that infests Japan like lice.”
Aizawa nodded. Gods were a part of everyday life in Japan, but Lieutenant Nakajima seemed the type unable to separate prayer from fairy tales.
“How do you know this, Lieutenant?”
Nakajima beamed. “My sister relays messages from the sun goddess herself.”
“That’s right, the dead one.” Aizawa rubbed his coarse chin and wondered whether the Lieutenant had gone insane before or after he met Masaru Ryusaki. “And what does your sister say?”
Lieutenant Nakajima gave another smile, full of dark secrets. “That Japan must be purged of evil. We have struck the first blow by killing Baron Onishi. But Chitose-oneesan has told me that the gods demand more assassinations until not a villain or traitor remains. Only then will Japan be saved.”
“That could lead to civil war.”
The Lieutenant held his head high. “We follow the paths of the Meiji Emperor and Takamori Zaigo.”
“That was a different era. Back then, there weren’t even telephones or automobiles, let alone airplanes, tanks, and poison gas.”
Lieutenant Nakajima smiled. “A civil war might be what Japan needs right now. The Meiji Restoration modernized the nation. Zaigo’s rebellion gave the Imperial Army its first real test. Bullets and blood are nourishment for our people.”
“You’d really start a war in the home islands when our troops are still fighting in Manchuria?”
“There are more wars to come, Inspector. We cannot face the northern threat of Russia or fight a transpacific war against America while the maggots of corruption and greed wriggle in Tokyo. The government must be cleansed. Preferably with swords and pistols but if not, then with bombs and machine guns.”
“The government controls the Police, the Army, and the Navy,” Aizawa countered.
“We are prepared to fight,” Nakajima said.
“It’ll be a very short war.”
“Will it? I’ve been in contact with artillery officers who will gladly order their batteries to shell the Diet Building. Tank commanders who will storm the Prime Minister’s residence. Pilots who will drop bombs and burn this corrupt city to ashes.”
The Lieutenant’s words resonated deep. Maybe that enormous tornado of fire stretching into the sky wasn’t an image of the past but a vision of the future. Aizawa swallowed hard and tightened his jaw. The past few days had left him with so many uncertainties. Perhaps the Emperor wanted Baron Onishi to become prime minister and ordered him to be assassinated. Maybe His Majesty was only a man but also a god. But there was only one thing he knew for certain; Tokyo was on the verge of becoming a sea of flames for the second time in his life.
“You’d kill your own people?” Aizawa hissed, almost spitting out the words. “And yet you have the audacity to wear the uniform of the Imperial Army?”
Nakajima frowned and gave a wounded expression. “We act to save the Japanese people.”
“Save them from what?” Aizawa demanded.
“From unemployment. From greed. From selling their daughters to fill their rice bowls. Corruption has tainted almost everyone. What man hasn’t fastened the chains of our women by visiting Yoshiwara?”
For a country boy, Hajime Nakajima spoke with surprising lyricism. Aizawa wondered what passage of Ryusaki’s book he’d just quoted. Still, the words conjured up memories of that Tohoku girl, Yuki, enslaved to the brothels.
“You can’t save the people if you kill them,” Aizawa said.
“Better to die with honor than live in shame,” Nakajima said, raising the Nambu again. “But civil war is a last resort. We will use assassination to carry out reform first. Then, Ryusaki-zensei and the Kusanagi Society will build the New Japan founded on purity and patriotism.”
That husk of samurai armor flashed in his mind.
“Ryusaki is still alive?”
Nakajima nodded and said, “My sister told me that the sun goddess spared both of your lives. Don’t you see, Inspector? We are destined to become allies!”
Aizawa cursed himself for not circling the Rolls-Royce around to make sure. He sighed and stopped himself. He’d drive himself mad with regret if he went down that path. Instead, he focused on how to get out of this mess alive. He glanced around the cramped nagaya for some way to escape, but Lieutenant Nakajima blocked the only exit. Rushing him was out of the question. Aizawa’s only chance was to appeal to that code of purity he kept going on about. Self-righteousness was the only weakness he could exploit.
“If Ryusaki is still alive, then what’s to prevent him from killing me after I surrender?”
Nakajima’s expression softened. “I’ve convinced Ryusaki-zensei to accept your surrender with impunity. I give you my word of honor.”
“Your ‘word of honor’ means nothing to me. You murdered Sergeant Murayama and the Onishis. Superintendent Shimura was found slashed to death, which means either Ryusaki and his katana or you and that saber had something to do with it.”
“Superintendent Shimura was…uncooperative. He refused to help us lure you into an ambush,” Nakajima said without emotion. “I had to rely on Reiko Watanabe to do that…albeit with a gun to her head.”
Aizawa gritted his teeth. “What kind of soldier kills an unarmed woman?”
“Watanabe-zan is not dead. She gave me directions to your nagaya just this morning.”
Aizawa fell silent for a moment. Someone as obsessed with purity as Lieutenant Nakajima was didn’t seem like the lying type. A glimmer of hope shined through.
“Let me see her,” Aizawa said.
Na
kajima smiled and gestured with the Nambu to walk outside.
“Certainly. You can drive us there, Inspector.”
Aizawa nodded and began putting his shoes on. He muttered a prayer of thanks to the gods for giving him another reprieve, figuring it would be his last.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Although the Rolls-Royce wheezed and rattled with every passing meter, the vehicle somehow remained serviceable. Gusts of crisp morning air blew through the shattered front window, keeping Aizawa alert behind the steering wheel. Not that he needed it. Lieutenant Nakajima sat in the passenger seat and held the Nambu pistol against his side, jabbing him in the ribs from time to time.
“Keep driving,” Nakajima snapped.
Easier said than done. They were deep into Asakusa now, where the streets narrowed and, even at this early hour, pedestrians sauntered about. Some opened up shops and kiosks, while others in tattered coats and rumpled kimonos looked for a new place to sleep for the day.
“This city,” Nakajima sneered, shaking his head. “When I first arrived here, it felt as if I’d traveled to a foreign country.”
“I’ve never been to the Tohoku region so I can’t compare,” Aizawa said.
“As a boy, I pictured Tokyo with the splendor of old Peking. Imagine my disappointment when I saw that it was just a mass of paper houses clustered around the Imperial Palace and a few concrete buildings.”
Feeling a need to defend his hometown, Aizawa said, “In just a few years this city rebuilt itself after the worst earthquake in history.”
The Lieutenant held up his free hand. “I used to admire Tokyoites for that. But they’ve been poisoned by a corruption and decadence so thick that you can smell it in the air. Now, I pity them. Turn here.”
Aizawa turned a corner and swerved around a cart selling yakitori chicken skewers. A few onlookers stared at the shattered and ragged Rolls-Royce, but only with a tempered curiosity. They were still in Asakusa and the day for oddities was just starting.
“Stop here.”
Aizawa pulled the car over and they hopped out. A khaki cape hid most of Nakajima’s frame, including his Nambu, as they walked down the street in relative obscurity. The passersby glanced over, and while most just yawned, a few gave deep bows to Nakajima.
“Big difference from when I was a soldier,” Aizawa said.
The Lieutenant nodded. “Things have even changed since I was a cadet. Only a few years ago, some restaurants denied us service and merchants overcharged us for everything.” He shook his head. “But since the Manchurian Incident began, the people have recognized the Imperial Army as the defenders of the nation.”
“Until the economy recovers, that is,” Aizawa countered.
The Lieutenant said nothing, but kept herding him past nagaya row houses and storefronts. Two men in long coats and flat caps stood outside of a humble tea house named ‘Dragonfly’. As they neared, Aizawa recognized them as two soshi from the night before. They soon spotted him and gave wolfish grins.
The soshi slid the doors open and guided them inside. The genkan vestibule was full of shoes, geta clogs, and oddly enough, a pair of black riding boots. Aizawa glanced back over at the Lieutenant, still in full uniform. Nakajima’s pistol emerged from underneath his cape and dug deep into his back.
“No time for proper custom, Inspector,” Nakajima ordered, pushing him past the rows of footwear. “Ryusaki-zensei is waiting.”
After the two soshi opened another pair of sliding doors, the Lieutenant shoved him inside. A sickening stench permeated the room, easily recognizable as rotting flesh. He looked around for a corpse but couldn’t find any. Despite a few scrapes and scratches, Masaru Ryusaki sat underneath a wall scroll of Mount Fuji, very much alive. As usual, he gripped that katana, secure in its sheath...for the moment.
Stacked off to the side, like the wreckage from a scrap yard, was the chipped and broken armor from last night. Nakajima and his cohorts offered deep bows. Four other soshi knelt around their sensei and returned the gesture. Ryusaki, however, remained motionless, an invisible fire burning behind his horn-rimmed glasses.
Aizawa looked around the room for the source of the smell and came across a small man, clad in the dark brown uniform of an Army officer. Despite the change of clothes and a shaved mustache, Makoto Kuroki was unmistakable. He bolted upright and snapped a salute at Nakajima, who reciprocated. Well, he did say it was his boyhood dream to join the Imperial Army. Dressing up must have been the next best thing.
Sitting next to him was Reiko Watanabe, or was she Harutora now? It was hard to tell them apart. She wore a black kimono with bobbed hair in a strange hybrid of both identities. Her face was coated with white face paint, but the makeup couldn’t hide the bluish tint of bruised and battered skin that crisscrossed her cheeks. Deep swelling settled around her eyes, so puffy they had almost vanished. The moga caterpillar emerged from her cocoon as a geisha butterfly but got stuck halfway through.
Clutching a small white box, the geisha-moga fixed a hollow gaze on Aizawa, sending an involuntary chill through him. He tried to decipher what was behind that stare, searching for any subtle gesture. But there was nothing. Even a fiery anger would have been better than the blankness that confronted him. He’d seen that numb, vacant expression painted on survivors after the Great Earthquake, on soldiers after a battle, and on prisoners after torture sessions.
“Welcome, Inspector,” Ryusaki hissed, beckoning him closer. A firm hand from the Lieutenant forced Aizawa to kneel down.
“You would do that,” he gestured to Reiko, “to your own lover?”
Ryusaki scoffed. “She’s lucky to still be alive. If this was the Tokugawa Era, I’d have cut out her tongue for treachery and hung her upside down to bleed dry.” A smile creased his long face. “Instead, I ordered Lieutenant Nakajima to rehabilitate her.”
“Is that what you call torture?”
Nakajima knelt beside him. “Don’t the Police use the same method on Reds?”
A valid point. Rather than prosecuting Communists and other thought criminals, it was less expensive to torture and shame them into patriotism. The ones who held out wasted away in Sugamo Prison, the national dungeon of Japan.
“The Lieutenant is a firm believer in rehabilitation. It saved me from foreign devils and he believes it will save you from this corrupt government,” Ryusaki continued.
“I don’t recall Nakajima-san beating your face to a pulp in order to ‘rehabilitate’ you,” Aizawa said.
“Watanabe-zan needed to be punished for her treachery,” Nakajima cut in. “Once she understood how hopeless both of your situations are, she broke like glass.”
“You see, Inspector, the Japanese soul is sensitive to shame,” Ryusaki said. “Reiko realized how shameful her betrayal was and that, not the Lieutenant’s beatings, allowed her to be rehabilitated. That is why Kuroki-san would never confess, no matter how hard you beat him. He had nothing to be ashamed of.”
Aizawa glanced over to Kuroki in his officer’s uniform, looking like a child in his father’s clothes and said, “They finally let you into the Army?”
Kuroki braced his tiny frame. “I am a soldier in the Kusanagi Society.”
“Wearing your brother’s uniform?”
He nodded. “Harutora-san tailored it for me.”
Still holding that mysterious white box, the geisha-moga gave Aizawa another haunting, empty stare. What had been his plan anyway? Somehow escape with her and call for backup? Maybe he just wanted to see her once more, to make sure he hadn’t failed as badly as he’d thought. But instead, shame now covered his body like grime and forced him to look away.
Suicide was the common escape from such unmitigated failure. But just like Reiko Watanabe, he’d long ago figured out there was nothing honorable about dying. All death left behind was a greasy smear and an awful stench.
“Who did you kill in here? The smell is still ripe,” Aizawa said, looking up at Ryusaki’s grinning face.
Ryusaki becko
ned his mistress closer. Shuffling over, she handed over the white box and kept her head low. Opening the lid, Ryusaki pulled out a human head and held it up in sadistic triumph. Its cheeks were rouged and any signs of gore had been washed away, but General Yori Sakamoto was easily recognizable, even without a body.
Aizawa turned to the Lieutenant. “You murdered your commanding officer?”
“I gave General Zakamoto the choice between assassination and seppuku. I’m pleased that he chose an honorable death,” Nakajima said. “Other villains will not be so lucky.”
Not much had changed since the feudal era when samurai presented the severed heads of enemies to their daimyo lords. The soshi grinned and glowed with bloodlust. Aizawa stole a quick glance at Reiko Watanabe’s pulpy face. A lot more would look like her soon.
“Speaking of villains, how do you plan on assassinating Isamu Takano?” Aizawa asked. “He’ll be on his guard now after—”
“After you murdered one of my men yesterday?” Ryusaki said, stuffing the head back inside the box.
Aizawa kept quiet, not wanting to press his luck. Ryusaki gestured to Kuroki, who shuffled over to another large box, tucked away in the corner. He opened it and slid a long tube out, encased in brown paper. After a few seconds of showing it off, Kuroki put it back in with a delicate grace.
“Dynamite?” was all Aizawa could say.
Ryusaki nodded and laughed. “Leftovers from the plans we hatched back in March.”
Aizawa found his voice and said, “And now you’ll use it to blow the Marunouchi Building sky high, killing Isamu Takano in the process?”
The Kusanagi Society gave eager nods.
“I shall lead these brave men,” Nakajima said, gesturing to the soshi around him, “straight into that den of devils and slaughter every villain we see!”
Aizawa sized the Kusanagi Society up. They were even more ragged than he remembered them back in March. But after nearly a year without work and a steady diet of patriotic violence, the resolve in their ashen, unshaven faces had become firmer and boasted an eagerness to kill and die.
Shadows of Tokyo (Reiko Watanabe / Inspector Aizawa Book 1) Page 24