David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

Kai asks, ‘So who is the head of your family now?’

‘It’ll be my other elder brother, I suppose,’ shrugs Kodaira. ‘But I never see them. I never really go back there now.’

‘But you still have family in Nikkō-chō?’

Kodaira nods. Kodaira says, ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s talk a little bit about you,’ says Inspector Kai now. ‘You were born in Nikkō—chō? Is that where you went to school?’

‘I graduated from school in Nikkō,’ says Kodaira. ‘Yes.’

‘And then what did you do?’ asks Kai. ‘After school?’

‘I left home and I moved down here to Tokyo.’

‘And so when was that? How old were you?’

‘I was about fourteen years old, I think.’

‘So that would be when?’ calculates Inspector Kai. ‘About the seventh year of Taishō. Does that sound about right?’

‘It sounds right,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But I can’t remember exactly. I know I was about fourteen though.’

‘And so where did you work?’

‘At a steel works in Ikebukuro,’ he says. ‘The Toyo Metals Corporation. But I didn’t work there for very long…’

‘Why was that?’ asks Kai. ‘Were you fired?’

‘No,’ he laughs. ‘I’d found a better job.’

‘Which was what? Where?’

‘The Kameya Grocery.’

‘The one in Ginza?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a very famous store,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘And so how long did you work there?’

‘Just two years.’

‘Why?’

‘I just got bored of working at the Grocery,’ says Kodaira. ‘The hours were too long, the pay was too poor and the work itself was just fetching and carrying, lifting boxes and so on…’

Kai asks, ‘And so what did you do then?’

‘I went back to Nikkō.’

‘Back home?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so what year is this now?’ calculates Kai again. ‘When you left Tokyo? Three years later? Tenth year of Taishō?’

‘Round about then,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘Yes.’

‘And did you have a job back home?’

‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘I worked for the Furukawa Company.’

‘This is the big copper-smelting works, yes?’

‘Where my brother had worked, yes.’

‘How long did you work there?’

‘I’ve worked there twice now,’ says Kodaira. ‘The first time I worked there until I enlisted.’

‘When was that?’

‘That was the sixth month of the twelfth year of Taishō.’

‘1923 then,’ says Kai. ‘Before the Great Earthquake.’

‘Yes,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘I had a lucky escape.’

‘Were you in the army or the navy?’

‘I volunteered for the navy,’ he says. ‘And I enlisted in the Marine Corps at Yokosuka.’

‘As what?’

‘First I was trained as an engineer on the Yakumo training ship, then I was stationed on the warships Yamashiro, Kongō and Manshu and I was also on the I-Gō submarine.’

‘You were always an engineer?’

‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Later I was an actual fighting marine. I was a member of the Ryojun Defence Force and then with the Rikusen Tai marines stationed in Shandong.’

‘And so you saw combat then?’

‘Of course,’ he laughs.

‘So you must have fought during the Jinan Incident?’

‘Of course,’ he says again. ‘During the Jinan Incident itself I was part of the initial assault on the Northern Railway Depot and then I was part of the defence of the Nissei Bōseki Company…’

‘And so you must have made a number of kills?’

‘Naturally,’ he smiles. ‘In Jinan I bayoneted six Chinese soldiers to death and then there were others…’

‘How long did you serve?’

‘I served my six years and then I was discharged as a petty officer, first class, and I received the White Paulownia medal of the Order of the Rising Sun.’

Inspector Kai says, ‘Congratulations.’

Kodaira bows his head.

Inspector Kai hands Kodaira a cigarette and then we all stand up and leave him to smoke –

In peace…

In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Adachi stares at the wall; Kanehara reads the telegram from Nikkō; Kai smokes –

Then Chief Inspector Adachi turns to me and smiles and asks, ‘You served in China too, didn’t you, inspector?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I was in the army.’

‘And how old are you now?’

‘I’m forty-one years old.’

‘The same age then.’

*

The light is already beginning to fade now. The shadows falling from the wall to the floor. Kodaira has finished his cigarette. Kodaira is looking at his fingernails. I sit back down by the door again. I say nothing again. Adachi, Kanehara and Kai sit back opposite Kodaira –

Inspector Kanehara leans forward in his chair and asks him, ‘So when you were discharged, you went back to Nikkō again?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I went back to work for Furukawa.’

‘And how was civilian life after the navy?’

‘It was good for a time…’

‘And why was that?’

‘I got a wife.’

Kanehara asks, ‘And so this was your first wife?’

‘Yes. My first.’

‘Not your present wife?’

‘No,’ says Kodaira.

‘So how did you meet your first wife?’

‘The manager of the factory introduced her to me,’ he says. ‘She was his sister’s child, his niece.’

‘How old were you both?’

‘She was twenty-one and I was maybe twenty-eight.’

‘And so what happened?’

‘We lived together for about six months,’ he says. ‘But then she went back to her parents.’

‘Why was that?’

‘She went to help them plant rice but she never came back.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because her family wanted me to divorce her.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I’d had an affair with another woman and this woman had become pregnant.’

‘So you must have been happy then to divorce your wife?’

There is something now, something in his eyes…

‘No,’ he says. ‘I was humiliated.’

In his eyes something flashes, in his eyes…

‘And so what did you do?’

Torchlight in the dark…

‘You already know.’

Death…

Inspector Kanehara looks down at the piece of paper on the table before him. Kanehara nods and then says, ‘But please tell us again. In your own words. Tell us what happened…’

‘I went back to their house.’

‘Whose house was this?’

‘Her family’s house.’

‘When was this?’

‘Midnight on the first day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the reign of the Emperor Shōwa…’

July 1, 1932… ‘

And…’

‘I left my own house at nine o’clock in the morning. I went over to the house of my wife’s family. I checked the house out carefully in the daylight and then I waited until nightfall.’

‘And…’

‘I broke into their house at midnight.’

‘And…’

‘I went from room to room.’

‘And…’

‘I hit them as they slept.’

‘With?’

‘An iron bar.’

‘You still remember the iron bar?’ asks Inspector Kanehara. ‘Can you describe this iron bar for me?’

‘Of course, I can remember it,’ says Kodaira. ‘The iron bar was about eighty centimetres long, five centimetres in diameter and it weighed about four kilograms.’

‘How many of her family did you hit?’

‘I think it was either six or seven.’

‘How many did you kill?’

‘Just her father.’

Inspector Kanehara nods. ‘And so you were sentenced to fifteen years by the Tokyo High Court in February 1933…’

‘Fifteen years,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But later it was reduced.’