Tokyo Year Zero

by David Peace

  That got him sent to prison –

  That broke his mother’s heart, the neighbours tell us now. For his mother was kind and honest, a loving and long-suffering woman –

  ‘But she lived her life in tears,’ they tell us. ‘In tears…’

  *

  These mountains and valleys, these forests and fields, all look the same to me. Up the side of one small mountain and down the other side, a short tunnel here, a longer tunnel there, then up and down another slope and along another narrow road until the truck stops outside another small farm set back from the road by another small ditch at the foot of another small mountain. Now, again, Tachibana climbs out of the back of the truck and goes inside the house while Ishida, the driver and I sit and sweat inside the truck until Tachibana returns with another old farmer and introduces us to Mr. Samura –

  ‘The man who found the body,’ he says. ‘Ishikawa’s body.’

  Then the driver starts the ancient truck again and slowly, very slowly we climb up the narrow road that leads up the small mountain slope behind the farm until Mr. Samura nods and grunts and Tachibana calls out to the driver who pulls up on the mountainside –

  ‘This is where he found her,’ says Tachibana. ‘This place.’

  Ōaza Mizuki-chi, Manako-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …

  Everyone climbs out the truck. Everyone wipes their faces, wipes their necks and looks back down the mountain at the patchworks of fields and ditches, of farms and houses, and then everyone turns back round to stare up into another wood on another slope of another mountain, up into more shadows and more trees –

  More black trunks, their branches and their leaves …

  Samura points into the woods, ‘It’s that way…’

  He walks behind me. He walks behind me …

  Now Tachibana and I follow the old farmer as he clambers up off the narrow road and into the woods, pointing this way and that as he goes, mumbling things we can’t catch as the trees and their trunks stand closer and thicker together, Ishida following behind –

  He walks behind me, through the trees …

  Samura comes to a stop up ahead and looks round for us, shouting, ‘This is the place. This is the place. This is the place…’

  The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry again …

  ‘Last September,’ he says. ‘I was looking for leaves…’

  Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …

  ‘Leaves to dry out and to mix with tobacco…’

  Their branches and their leaves …

  ‘I trod right on her bones,’ he says –

  Her white, naked body …

  ‘I’d smelt her too,’ he says. ‘As I was gathering up my leaves. But I’d thought it was an animal, same as when I first trod upon her bones, then I slipped, I fell and I saw it wasn’t no animal bones…’

  ‘I look like bones … I look like bones…’

  ‘I knew they were human bones…’

  I turn round and around, among these trees and these branches, and I ask Samura, ‘Are you sure this is the exact place?’

  Samura nods. ‘Can’t you feel her still …?’

  Round and around, among these black trees and their trunks, asking Tachibana, ‘Was this place ever examined as a crime scene?’

  Tachibana lowers his eyes. Tachibana bows his head –

  ‘Shit,’ I curse, again and again, as I turn round and around, the black trunks and their branches turning round and around –

  The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry …

  As I drop to my knees to begin to search –

  Digging and digging and digging…

  To search, again.

  *

  ‘Over here,’ shouts Ishida. ‘I’ve found something here. Look…’

  Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …

  Police Chief Tachibana and I clamber over fallen tree trunks and duck under broken branches to get to where Detective Ishida is on his knees, bent over the decaying log of another fallen tree –

  Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …

  ‘Look at all these,’ he says, standing and holding up bones, white and obviously human bones wrapped in rotting cloth –

  Namu-amida-butsu …

  ‘This must have been where he hid her body,’ says Ishida, kneeling back down to peer under the log. ‘The bones the old man found last year had probably been pulled out of here by animals…’

  I look back through the trunks and the branches, back over towards the road where the old farmer Samura has gone to wait and smoke with the driver. I turn back to Chief Tachibana and I ask him, ‘Which of Ishikawa Yori’s bones have you got listed in the file?’

  Tachibana opens the Ishikawa Yori file. He flicks through the papers until he reaches the autopsy report. Now he begins to list aloud the bones they found here last year as Ishida and I lift up the decaying log, lift it up to stare down into the damp black soil at more cold white bones, cold white bones that were lost and now found –

  Ishida and I on our knees, with our hands, to dig –

  To dig and to clean. To clean and collect –

  Her bones once lost and now found …

  To put them in my army knapsack –

  In my bag and upon my back …

  ‘We’ll take these back with us to Tokyo,’ I tell Tachibana. ‘Where I’ll give them to Dr. Nakadate at the Keiō University Hospital. But please, still try to track down the other bones that were found here and listed as belonging to Ishikawa Yori…’

  ‘They’ll be in Utsunomiya,’ says Tachibana –

  ‘Maybe,’ I tell him. ‘But it’s been almost a year since they were found and, because she was listed as ikidaore, Utsunomiya will probably have returned her remains to her family for cremation…’

  Tachibana bows very low. ‘I am truly very, very sorry…’

  ‘Don’t be,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve done what we can for her.’

  *

  The truck goes back down the mountain and drops Old Man Samura back outside his farm. Then the truck labours up the side of another small mountain and down the other side, through one tunnel and through another, and then up another slope until it stops again outside the detached house of the mother of the Widow Okayama, the black dog still asleep in the shade of the wall, still tethered to its pole –

  Not a stray, its house not lost, its master still here …

  Police Chief Tachibana looks at the dog again but today he does not laugh. He excuses himself and goes into the house ahead of us again as the driver takes off his cap and lights another cigarette –

  ‘Not short of tobacco round here these days,’ says Ishida –

  But the old driver doesn’t speak. The driver just smokes.

  Tachibana returns with the mother of the Widow Okayama who bows once more and welcomes us again and invites us into her home as Tachibana tells us that the old woman’s granddaughter, the daughter of the Widow Okayama, is waiting for us inside –

  Okayama Kazuko bows as we enter the house –

  In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore …

  Kazuko invites us to sit around the unlit hearth and offers us cold tea and apologizes that they have no snacks and we all thank her for her hospitality as we take our seats and we drink our drinks and we cannot help but stare at her face and her eyes –

  Her worried face and her red, red eyes …

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she says. ‘My grandmother, my mother and I, we had no idea about the kind of man Mr. Kodaira really was…’

  She is not a country person. She was born in the city –

  She heard the bombs. She saw the fires –

  She hands a box to Ishida and says, ‘These are all the things that Mr. Kodaira brought. These are all the things he gave me…’

  There are tears in her eyes –

  Tears down her cheeks –

  ‘I had no idea…’

  Ishida opens the box. Ishida takes out a large arabesqu
e-patterned furoshiki cloth, a bentō box, another wristwatch and an elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch –

  Nakamura Mitsuko …

  I stand up. I reach across. I snatch the brooch from Ishida –

  ‘The other body?’ I am asking Tachibana. ‘The unidentified body you mentioned yesterday? It must be Nakamura Mitsuko –

  ‘How far are we from where it was found …?’

  But before Tachibana can answer me, Ishida has picked up the wristwatch and turned it over in his hand to read the inscription on its back and now he is holding it out towards me –

  Another watch. Another stolen watch …

  I take it from him and I hold it up –

  This watch. This watch …

  Up to the light and I read –

  Tominaga Noriko …

  ‘I had no idea…’

  The watch still turning in my hand. I had no idea. The hearth and the room turning. I had no idea. The house and the gate turning. I had no idea. Turning and turning and turning. I had no idea …

  My hands in the dirt outside their house. Day is night. In the dirt on my hands and on my knees. Night is day. Turning and turning round and around. Black is white. Round and around in the dirt and the sun. White is black. Turning and turning round and around and cursing and cursing. No truth, only lies. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching –

  Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …

  Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon –

  Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …

  The mountains and mountains of lies –

  Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari…

  These lies that make no sense –

  No one who they say they are …

  No sense, no sense at all –

  No one who they seem.

  *

  Detective Ishida has stayed behind with the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama to go through the dates of each of Kodaira’s visits, to list each day that he visited and each item he brought, to write down each of these dates, to catalogue each of these items –

  My hands are still dirty. My knees are still bloody –

  I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I scratch. I itch –

  I am in the truck again, going up another mountain and down its other side, through another tunnel and up another slope, until we stop in front of another farm where Tachibana returns with yet another old man and says, ‘This is the man who found the skeleton.’

  Then this old man leads us on foot up another small mountain and into the cypress woods behind his farm, this small mountain and cypress woods that his family have tended for generation after generation, and where, for generation after generation, his family have come to chop and to cut and to clear away the dead wood and branches so that their cypresses might grow, their cypresses through which Tachibana and I follow him now, between trunk after trunk until the old farmer comes to a stop up ahead and turns back round –

  ‘This is where I found it,’ says the old man. ‘Right here…’

  Ōaza Fukahodo, Kiyosu-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …

  ‘A month ago,’ he says. ‘A perfect skeleton…’

  ‘So there was no clothing here?’ I ask him –

  ‘None that I could see,’ he tells me –

  And again I turn and I turn, round and around again, I turn and I turn, among the trees and the branches, I turn and I turn, round and around, among these trees and their trunks, I turn and I turn –

  The cicadas deafening, the mosquitoes still hungry …

  As I drop to my knees and begin to search –

  Again and again, again and again …

  To search on my hands and –

  Again and again …

  On my knees –

  Again …

  On my hands and my knees, among these trees and these branches, searching for the only daughter of Nakamura Yoshizo –

  ‘But what are you looking for?’ asks Police Chief Tachibana. ‘She was a perfect skeleton. There were no bones missing…’

  Does he stand behind you in the queue for tickets at Shibuya?

  ‘No bones missing,’ I agree. ‘But where were her clothes?’

  Does he befriend you with tales of farmers and cheap rice?

  Her brown monpe trousers and her pale yellow blouse –

  Do you go to Asakusa? Then the train to Kanasaki …?

  Her sandals, her socks and her underwear, all near –

  This is the way, he says. This is the way, he says …

  Here among these trees, among these branches –

  He walks behind you. He walks behind you …

  To the neatly chopped logs piled over there –

  His hair stretched tight against his scalp …

  Through these trees and these branches –

  But it’s not the way. Never the way …

  On my hands and on my knees –

  His skin tight against his skull …

  I’m lifting up log after log –

  He looms and he leers …

  Looking for her clothes –

  Kodaira, Kodaira …

  Under log after log –

  Looms and leers …

  This one last log –

  Here, here …

  Here, buried deep in this pile of neatly chopped logs, one rotting wet pair of brown monpe trousers, one pale yellow blouse much better preserved through last autumn and winter to this spring and this summer, preserved and protected from the seasons and their weather by these neatly chopped logs, piled one on top of another among these well-tended cypress trees, in the midst of this small wood on the side of this small mountain, in this other world, this other country, so very, very far from home, his only daughter here –

  This is where Mitsuko died on the twelfth of July, 1945 …

  I am still on my hands and on my knees among the logs –

  This is where Mitsuko was beaten unconscious …

  On my knees and with my hands, I begin to dig –

  This is where she was stripped and raped …

  To dig and to clean. To clean and to collect –

  This is where she was throttled …

  To collect all the pieces of her clothing –

  This is where she was killed …

  To put the pieces in my knapsack –

  This is where Nakamura Mitsuko died and then was raped again, again and again, raped and then robbed of her money, her wristwatch, her round silver spectacles and her brooch …

  Her elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch …

  To take them back to Tokyo –

  The gift from a father to …

  To take it back –

  His only daughter …

  Back home.

  *

  Detective Ishida climbs into the back of the truck and we all bow and thank the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama for their help and for their hospitality. Now we drive back down the mountain, then up and down another until we come back out into the valley, the Black River to our right again, the Scavenging Line still to our left –

  More lines of people making their way back to the station …

  But today there is no talk of city-folk. No talk of Scavengers –

  Lines and lines of people with their supplies on their backs …

  No talk of potatoes and rice. No talk of fleas and lice –

  The bones of one dead girl and the clothes of another …

  Today there is only silence in the front and back –

  In an old army knapsack upon my knee …

  They are looking out for us again, listening out for the sound of Tachibana’s battered old mountain truck coming to a stop outside their quaint old police station, uniforms running out to bow and salute and to welcome us back, Detective Ishida and I bowing, saluting and thanking them again. Then we follow Chief Tachibana up the clean little steps into his station where the two officers
who are stood behind the front desk bow and salute and welcome us again –

  ‘I have another message for Detective Ishida,’ says one of the men. Ishida steps forward and takes the message –

  Another message. The final message …

  Ishida asking to use their telephone –

  ‘Leave Minami in Tochigi…’

  Police Chief Tachibana leading me away, down the side of the front desk, along the corridor to his office where he talks about train timetables and the journey back to Tokyo and home –

  Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …

  There is another soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into Police Chief Tachibana’s office –

  Detective Ishida; this man I don’t know …

  Tachibana asks, ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is fine now,’ says Detective Ishida. ‘Thank you.’

  *

  The entire police force of Kanuma has accompanied us down to the train station, here to wish us a safe journey and to bid us farewell. Tachibana has even held up the departure of the train for us –

  Now his officers bow and then he bows –

  Tachibana apologizes for the failings of himself and his men. Then he bows again, thanking us for our hard work and our help –

  ‘And we hope to work with you again,’ he says –

  Detective Ishida and I salute Tachibana and bow to him and thank him for all his hard work and for all the hard work of his men, for all his assistance, for all his generosity and for all his hospitality –

  Police Chief Tachibana salutes and bows one last time –

  Then, finally, Ishida and I board the Tōbu train –

  The Kanuma police clearing a path for us –

  The doors close and the whistle blows –

  No seats, so Ishida and I are stood –

  The locomotive jolts as it starts –

  In the small of Ishida’s back …

  Ishida and I stood pressed together again, both of us staring through a window without glass, watching Kanuma disappear –

  In the small of his back, something cold and metallic …