David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

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…’

‘We are really very sorry,’ I tell him again. ‘But there was an accident on one of the streetcars…’

‘More work,’ he groans –

‘They’re dead,’ I say –

‘Who are dead?’

‘The mother and her child,’ I tell him. ‘The mother and her child who fell from the running board of the streetcar…’

He hands us two files from the pile on his desk. He says, ‘You know the way.’

Each with our file, reading as we walk down another long corridor towards the elevator. There are the mothers sat here. Five of the mothers here, looking for their missing daughters –

Five mothers whose descriptions of their missing daughters most closely resemble the two bodies found in Shiba Park. Five mothers praying they do not find them here …

‘What do they want now?’ spits Kai. ‘We told them to wait until tomorrow. They shouldn’t be here…’