David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

The brand new Emperor of Tokyo …

Matsuda smiles when he sees Fujita and me –

The only man smiling in Tokyo …

‘I thought you lot had all run off to the mountains,’ he laughs. ‘The last stand of the Japanese race and all that…’

‘What’s in the crates?’ I ask him –

‘Ever the detective, aren’t you?’ says Matsuda. ‘But you two might want to start thinking of changing your line of work…’

‘What’s in the crates?’ I ask again –

‘Army helmets,’ he says –

‘Not thinking of joining the war effort, are you?’

‘Little late for that,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I did my bit on the continent — not that anyone ever thanked me for my trouble. But, past is past; now I’m going to help this country get back on its feet…’

‘Very patriotic of you,’ I say. ‘But we’ve not lost yet.’

Matsuda looks at his watch, his new foreign watch, and nods. ‘Not yet, you’re quite right, detective. But have you seen all those columns of smoke rising from all those government buildings…?’

Both Detective Fujita and I shake our heads –

‘Well, that means they’re burning all their documents and their records. That’s the smoke of surrender…

‘The smoke of defeat.’

Two more army trucks pull up. Horns sound. Matsuda says, ‘Now I am very sorry to be rude but, as you gentlemen can see, today is a very busy day. So was there anything you specifically wanted? Like a new job? A new name? A new life? A new past…?’

‘Just cigarettes,’ Fujita and I say simultaneously.

‘Go see Senju,’ says Matsuda Giichi.

Both Fujita and I thank him –

‘Senju’s round the back.’

Fujita and I bow to him –

And curse him .

Detective Fujita and I walk round the back of Matsuda’s temporary office to his makeshift warehouse and his lieutenant –

Senju Akira stripped to his waist, a sheathed short sword in his right hand, as he supervises the unloading of another truck –

Its boxes of Imperial Chrysanthemum cigarettes –

I ask, ‘Where did you get hold of all these?’

‘Never ask a policeman,’ laughs Senju. ‘Look, those in the know, know, and those who don’t, don’t…’

‘So what’s with your boss and all those helmets?’ I ask him.

‘What goes around, comes around,’ smiles Senju again. ‘We sold the army saucepans to make helmets, now they’re selling us helmets to make saucepans…’

‘Well then, you can sell us on some of those Chrysanthemum cigarettes,’ says Fujita.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve actually got hard cash,’ says Senju.

Detective Fujita and I both shake our heads again –

‘Fucking cops,’ sighs Senju Akira as he hands us each five packs of Imperial cigarettes. ‘Worse than thieves…’

We thank him and then we bow to him –

And we curse him and curse him …

We share a match in the shade –

In the shade that is no shade …

We smoke and walk on –

There are uniformed police officers on duty at Shimbashi railway station, checking packages and bundles for contraband –

Knapsacks and pockets for black-market cigarettes –

Detective Fujita and I take out our keisatsu techō , our police notebooks, to identify ourselves at the gate –

The station and the platform are almost deserted, the Yamate Line train almost empty –

The sun is climbing, the temperature rising. I wipe my neck and I wipe my face –

I itch –

I itch as I stare out of the windows; the elevated tracks of the Yamate Line now the highest points left in most of Tokyo, a sea of rubble in all directions except to the east –

The docks and the other, real sea.

The uniforms behind the desk at Shinagawa police station are expecting us, two waiting to lead us down to the docks –

One called Uchida, the other Murota –

To the scene of the crime …

‘They think it might be a woman called Miyazaki Mitsuko,’ they tell us as we walk, panting and sweating like dogs in the sun. ‘This Miyazaki girl was originally from Nagasaki and had been brought up to Tokyo just to work in the Naval Clothing Department and so she was living in the workers’ dormitory…’

The sun beating down on our hats …

‘Back in May, she was given leave to go back home to visit her family in Nagasaki. However, she never arrived there and she never returned to work or the dormitory…’

The neighbourhood stinks …

‘Most of the workers have actually moved out of the dormitory now as the factory of the Naval Clothing Department is no longer in operation. However, there have been a number of thefts from the buildings and so the caretaker and his assistant were searching and then securing premises…’

It stinks of oil and shit …

‘They went down into one of the air-raid shelters, one that has not been used in a while, and that was when they…’

It stinks of retreat …

‘Found the naked body of a woman…’

Surrender …

This neighbourhood of factories and their dormitories, factories geared to the war effort, dormitories occupied by volunteer workers; the factories bombed and the dormitories evacuated, any buildings still standing now stained black and stripped empty –

This is the scene of the crime …

The Women’s Dormitory Building of the Dai-Ichi Naval Clothing Department still standing, next to a factory where only the broken columns and the gateposts remain –

No equipment and no parts –

The workers have fled –

This is the scene …

Two men sit motionless before the abandoned dormitory, sheltering from the sun in the shadow of a cabin-cum-office –

‘I really can’t understand it,’ the older man is saying. ‘I really can’t understand it. I really can’t understand it at all…’

The older man is the caretaker of the dormitory. The other, younger man is the boiler-man. It was the boiler-man who found the body and it is the boiler-man who now points at the two corrugated metal doors to an air-raid shelter and says, ‘She’s down there…

‘In a cupboard at the back of the shelter…’

The sun beating down on our hats …

I pull back the two corrugated tin doors and then immediately I step back again. The smell of human waste is overwhelming –

Human piss. Human shit. Human piss. Human shit …

Three steps down, the floor of the shelter is water –

Not rain or sea water, the shelter has flooded with sewage from broken pipes; a black sunken pool of piss and shit –

‘We could do with Nishi now,’ says Fujita.

I turn back to the caretaker in his shade –

‘When did this happen?’ I ask him –

‘In the May air raids,’ he says.

‘How did you find the body, then?’ I ask the boiler-man –

‘With this,’ he replies, and holds up an electric torch. ‘Pass it over here,’ I tell the boiler-man –

The boiler-man gets to his feet, mumbling about batteries, and brings the torch over to Fujita and me –

I snatch it from him.

I take out my handkerchief. I put it over my nose and my mouth. I peer back down the steps –

I switch on the torch –

I shine the light across the black pool of sewage water, the water about a metre deep, furniture sticking up here and there out of the pool. Against the furthest wall a wardrobe door hangs open –

She is down here. She is down here. Down here …

I switch off the torch. I turn back from the hole. I take off my boots. I take off my socks. I start to unbutton my shirt –

‘You’re never going in there, are you?’ asks the caretaker.