One Man's Justice

by Akira Yoshimura

  Takuya nodded, thinking that Fujisaki must be unnerved at the idea of harbouring a fugitive.

  ‘Anyway, come inside,’ said Fujisaki, grasping Takuya by the arm.

  ‘No, not yet,’ he replied. ‘Even if you say it’s all right, what’s your family going to say? Your father, in particular, must agree.’

  Fujisaki stood thinking for a moment, then nodded, let go of his friend’s arm, and turned to walk back to his house. Takuya watched him push open the door and disappear inside. Glancing furtively both ways down the dark street, Takuya hid himself in the shadows to one side of the lamp-post. The streets were deserted and dead quiet. The stars in the sky above were pale specks of light.

  Takuya waited, staring at the latticed door. After a while he started to visualise Fujisaki sitting in front of his father, deep in conversation.

  Suddenly the door opened and the two men seemed to step straight out of Takuya’s dream on to the road. Fujisaki came out first, followed by his father, who was slightly balding on top but roughly the same height and physique as his son.

  Takuya took off his army cap and bowed to the older man.

  Fujisaki’s father walked over to the illuminated area under the lamp-post. ‘Come inside,’ he said, grasping Takuya by the arm. He ushered him to the house and gestured for Takuya to step through the latticed door ahead of him. Inside the entrance, they took off their shoes and Takuya followed the other two down the narrow hall to a three-tatami-mat-sized room at the back of the house.

  ‘It’s not very big, but you’re welcome to stay here until you decide on your next move,’ said Fujisaki’s father amicably before disappearing down the hall.

  Takuya set his rucksack in a corner and sat down, after Fujisaki had swung out his bad leg to lower himself to the tatami floor. Takuya leant over and reached for his bag, from which he pulled out his sack of rice.

  ‘I want you to take this,’ he said, offering it to Fujisaki.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ said his friend, fixing his eyes on the sack of rice.

  ‘Take it, please. You can’t put me up otherwise,’ said Takuya.

  Fujisaki nodded, got to his feet in the same awkward fashion, then carried the bag of rice out of the room and down the hall.

  As Takuya pulled the cords tight on his rucksack he thought that he had done the right thing in taking the rice back from Nemoto. Without the rice he could never have brought himself to ask Fujisaki for shelter. Who knows, he thought, maybe the fact that he had his own supply of food had made the difference.

  For the first time in days, he felt almost relaxed. He had given Fujisaki the equivalent of almost twenty-five days of government rice rations, which could always be blended with millet and other less nourishing grains.

  The next morning Fujisaki asked Takuya to come through to the living-room and meet the rest of the family. He was married, and by the look of his wife – a frail-looking, pale young woman twenty-one or twenty-two years of age – she was not far away from giving birth. Fujisaki’s mother was as friendly and welcoming as she had been when Takuya visited them as a student. She was now a little thinner, and the wrinkles on her face revealed how much she had aged over the past five or six years. Her questions about Takuya’s hometown and her description of the night air raids on Kobe lacked none of the lively spirit Takuya remembered her for. As he answered her questions, it occurred to him that perhaps she had not been told the full story about his situation.

  For breakfast they each had a bowl half full of rice gruel flavoured with a couple of thin slices of radish. Takuya joined the others round the table, the silence broken only by the occasional clicking of chopsticks. As he ate, Takuya looked across to Fujisaki and his young wife. There was certainly nothing out of the ordinary for a man of twenty-five, one year Takuya’s junior, to be married and about to become a father, and as a couple they certainly gave the impression of being contented with their lot. Nevertheless, Takuya couldn’t help being surprised that this delicate young woman, surviving on rations barely sufficient to keep herself going, was expecting a child. How much nourishment would rice gruel and radish provide for the baby? he thought. The fact that she was about to have a baby was testimony not only to her toughness but also to the strength of the family for not seeing this as anything out of the ordinary.

  Takuya whiled away the hours in his room from morning till night from that day on. He borrowed a razor from Fujisaki and shaved each morning, washing himself in the cold tap water. The area behind the house was part of the workshop grounds, and he could hear the noise of the machines from his room. Power cuts were an everyday occurrence, and if he stood up, from the little window he could see the workers taking a rest, seated on wooden boxes.

  Takuya felt quite uncomfortable at mealtimes. The usual fare was a combination of barley noodles, gruel and steamed bread flavoured with the odd piece of sweet potato, but occasionally they each had a whole sweet potato to themselves. Unlike at other times, the atmosphere round the dining-room table was decidedly gloomy, with no one saying a word. Though he had handed over his bag of rice, each time he sat down for a meal Takuya felt guilty that he was depriving them of part of their rations.

  There’s no way I’ll be able to stay here long, he thought. In a fortnight Fujisaki’s family will end up thinking the same way as Nemoto’s. If it was just a matter of time, he mused, he must do everything in his power at least to delay the inevitable.

  He took the demobilised soldier’s certificate out of his inside pocket, recalling that Shirasaka had said that if he presented this to the local authorities he’d be able to get his share of rations. The false name he had written on it meant that it doubled as the papers he needed as a fugitive, and by using it to claim rations he could lessen the debt he owed the Fujisaki family.

  Handing over the rice and giving them his ration allowance should at least help convince them of his goodwill on the food front, but spending every day in the little room at the back of the house doing nothing was undoubtedly a cause of annoyance to them. He was desperate to find a way to earn an income. But the country was overflowing with demobilised servicemen and residents returned from Japan’s former empire, and with virtually all of the country’s industrial and commercial sector destroyed there were very few potential employers. However much he might pound the pavements, there was little chance of finding work. Getting a job in Fujisaki’s workshop would obviously be the best option by far.

  That evening, Takuya asked Fujisaki if he could look at their university yearbook. Flipping through the pages, he found the name of a student from Okinawa, one year his senior, and began copying that man’s name, Higa Seiichi, and Fujisaki’s address, onto the demobilised soldier’s card. When he had finished he called Fujisaki into his room and handed him the card, saying, ‘If you show this to the people at the ward office they’ll issue you a ration book. It’s a false name, but you can claim the rations and use them for your family.’

  Fujisaki looked down at the card and nodded.

  ‘Then there’s the matter of a job,’ said Takuya. He explained to his friend that, if at all possible, he wanted to avoid being a freeloader, and so until he decided his next move, he wondered if there might be a job for him at Fujisaki’s workshop.

  Fujisaki seemed taken aback at the question, as his first reaction was to tilt his head to one side and knit his brow. But after a few moments he said, ‘That isn’t something I can decide by myself, but I’ll speak to my father and see what he says.’ With that he awkwardly got to his feet and left the room.

  By now Takuya had come to realise that Fujisaki was a very different man from when he had been a student. At university he had been lively and extroverted, offsetting the fact that he had one bad leg. He’d been a broad-minded young man, not too carried away by issues, and not at all afraid to laugh out loud on occasion. There was little sign of those traits in Fujisaki any more. Working in the family business had obviously brought about some change in him, but his reaction to Taku
ya’s request suggested that his heart wasn’t in it and that he was just going through the motions. Even more worrisome was his increasingly brusque manner toward Takuya.

  There was the sound of slippered footsteps in the hall, and the door to Takuya’s room slid open.

  ‘I’ve talked with my father, and he says orders are so low that we already have too many staff in the workshop. The only thing we might have for you to do would be making deliveries,’ Fujisaki said, standing in the doorway.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Takuya, ‘as long as I’ve got something to do.’ He was a little uneasy, because it would of course take him out into the streets, but he could no longer bear the thought of doing nothing.

  ‘I really feel bad letting you do that sort of work,’ replied Fujisaki, with an embarrassed frown.

  The next morning Takuya left the house with his demobilised soldier’s card in his hand. Following Fujisaki’s directions through the ruins, he soon came to the building being used as temporary municipal offices.

  There was a hint of doubt in his mind as to whether the paper Shirasaka had given him would be safe to use, but the stamp of the Hakata office of the Western Region demobilisation office looked real, and the middle-aged man at the desk did not hesitate as he filled in the name ‘Higa Seiichi’ on the ration book.

  Relieved at having passed the first hurdle, Takuya whispered his adopted name to himself. It sounded fine, almost suited him, he thought. From now on he would lead his life as Higa Seiichi. The name Kiyohara Takuya was a relic of his previous life and must play no part in his future.

  When he got back to the house he handed the new ration book to Fujisaki, who was busy doing the company accounts in the living-room.

  ‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ Takuya said. ‘Since I’ll be walking around the streets making deliveries, I want to change the way I look. I’m a bit short-sighted, so I think perhaps I should start wearing glasses. Do you know of anywhere around here I can find them?’ he asked.

  Fujisaki tilted his head to one side for a few moments, looking thoughtful. ‘The glasses I wore when I was in junior high school should still be in the drawer. In those days I didn’t wear strong lenses, so they might actually be about right for you. I’ll have a look,’ he said, getting to his feet. He went up the narrow staircase across the hall.

  When he handed the glasses to Takuya, he said, ‘Well, they were there all right, but one sidepiece is missing.’ They were basic black-rimmed glasses, just the sort junior high school children would wear. The left sidepiece was missing and the lenses were covered in a thin layer of whitish-grey dust.

  Takuya blew on the glasses and wiped them with the cloth he had tucked into his belt. They were a bit strong, he thought, but probably wouldn’t put any strain on his eyes. He attached some dark string to the left lens and hooked that over his ear. Everything looked slightly blurred, almost as though he were looking at the outside world through a film of water.

  Fujisaki led Takuya out of the back door to the factory area. In the corrugated-iron workshop a middle-aged man was pushing a foot pedal on the cutting-press, each movement of the machine producing a complete cardboard box ready to be folded into shape. A few metres away a man was brushing the company name in black ink through a thin metal stencil on to the cardboard, and beside him two women were working deftly to fold the boxes into shape and stack them to one side.

  Takuya followed Fujisaki into the workshop, casually greeting each of the workers as they looked up from their tasks. Fujisaki introduced him to the man working the press as being from Okinawa, adding that he would be handling deliveries from now on. The cart he would be using was standing to one side. It had obviously seen better days, the wheels leaning inward and rust creeping along the handle frame, but it looked as though it could carry a decent load.

  The next morning Takuya piled the cart high with boxes and pulled it out through the back gate. After passing several rows of houses which had survived the bombing, he walked down a road through the ruins, the sea now visible on his right, with a number of what looked like freighters anchored just offshore. The low range of hills straight ahead of him was covered in a thick blanket of green.

  The cart creaked as it moved forwards. Takuya slowly wound his way downhill, straining against the handle with every step to keep it from getting away from him. The effort required him to stop more and more often. Sweat poured down his brow and clouded the lenses of his glasses.

  At last he reached his destination, an improvised warehouse owned by a box wholesaler, hastily constructed down on the reclaimed land along the wharves. A surly-looking old man sitting in a shack marked ‘Reception’ took the delivery documents without saying a word. Then he got to his feet and waved his approval for the cart to be taken into the warehouse. After a quick check to see if the load matched the documents, the old man grunted that Takuya should unload his cargo and take it to the back of the big shed, where boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes were stacked neatly in rows.

  After getting the man to stamp ‘Received’ on the job sheet, Takuya picked up the handle of his cart and started to retrace his steps to Fujisaki’s factory. People had already begun building shelters here and there among the charred ruins. Men and women walked along the road, others rode past him on bicycles. Determined to avoid the gaze of passers-by, Takuya fixed his eyes on the ground ahead of him whenever someone approached.

  No one around him could be trusted any more, he thought. Since the surrender, the newspapers had been full of articles espousing the tenets of democracy, renouncing in no uncertain terms anything to do with the politics or military of wartime Japan. The Imperial Army came in for the strongest criticism. Without fail, the thrust of the commentary was that Japanese militarists had started the war and that the Allied powers had had no choice but to respond in kind. Those charged with war crimes were cited as symbolising the outrages committed by the defunct Imperial Army, and without exception those writing the articles supported the measures being taken to rid the earth of such reprehensible criminals. On the radio, too, there were broadcasts exposing atrocities committed by the Imperial Army and denouncing those charged with war crimes. Ordinary Japanese citizens were nothing less than victims of the war, with the blame laid fairly and squarely on the military.

  It seemed that, in keeping with such media coverage, the people in the streets would be falling into line with the intended message. Among the comments of prominent leaders of public opinion there had even been drastic statements to the effect that imposing the ultimate penalty upon war criminals was a requisite for establishing democracy in Japan.

  Assuming this represented the new rationale for society, every passer-by was potentially as much an enemy for Takuya as the occupation authorities or the police. Any one of them who found out that he was charged with war crimes would be likely to go straight to the authorities. SCAP must know that he was on the run, so pictures of him would be on the walls of police stations all over the country. Each moment he spent in the public eye was fraught with danger. The only solace, he thought, was that confusion still reigned in Japan’s cities. But that too might be false, for while the increase in crime involving vagrants and prostitutes must be keeping the police occupied, instructions from SCAP would surely give efforts to find and arrest war crimes suspects priority.

  When he reached the factory Takuya sat down wearily on a straw mat inside the workshop door. He was exhausted from his labours, and the mental strain of cringing each time a passer-by cast more than a glance in his direction had taken its toll. Still, he was pleased that the day’s work had at least slightly lessened the weight of his debt to the Fujisakis.

  Looking through that day’s newspaper, he saw that eleven Allied nations, headed by the United States, had charged twenty-eight military and political leaders, including former prime minister Tojo Hideki, as Class A war criminals. The acts in question were said to have been committed between 1928 and 1945, and fell into three major categories: conspiracy to co
mmit aggression, aggression, and conventional war crimes, these last being further broken down into fifty-five separate counts. The article went on to state that the International Military Tribunal would first be considering charges against the Class A war criminals, and that the arrest and trial of the Class B and C suspects would soon follow. It closed with the comment that ‘War criminals are the enemies of mankind, utterly repulsive beasts of violence.’

  As he read the list of the twenty-eight men charged as Class A, he imagined that they would all end their days on the gallows. If this article was a reflection of current public opinion, the average Japanese citizen would agree with the Allied position, and therefore would no doubt call for the execution of all those implicated in such crimes. Who knows? he thought, maybe even Fujisaki and his family saw him as a ‘beast of violence’ for his part in killing the American airmen. He felt uneasy at the thought that he might not be safe where he was after all.

  Power cuts were still happening every day, and production in the workshop languished far short of that required to generate any sort of profit. In one sense, the lack of electricity was a blessing in disguise, as without sufficient paper the workshop could not run to full capacity anyway. Takuya’s delivery duties were limited to once every three days, and he spent the rest of his time picking up cardboard offcuts and bundling them for fuel, or sweeping the workshop and the open space behind the house.

  Fujisaki’s mother’s attitude toward Takuya had changed discernibly. She often muttered, ‘Getting rations is all very well, but stretching what we get to feed us all isn’t so easy.’ The amount and quality of the rations were now even worse than during the war. The designated staple, rice, was more often than not substituted with corn flour, potatoes or wheat bran, and the vegetable allocation was down to one giant radish per week, to be thinly sliced and divided up among several households. She often went out to the countryside with her son, hoping to barter a few articles of clothing for anything to help supplement the food rations.