Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  Nearly doubled over from the pain in her womb, Aki helps her husband and children gather up whatever can be salvaged from the wreckage of their home. There isn’t much time. The fires are closing in. Carrying what they can on their backs, the Kanekos head southeast in the general direction of the family homestead in Hamachō, Nihonbashi, slowly picking their way over and around kilometer after kilometer of smoldering ruins and bodies. Kikutarō leads the way going on dead reckoning alone, because the very streets themselves have been obliterated, buried under structural wreckage and blackened lumps of organic matter only occasionally recognizable as having once been human. As the little family pokes its way across a twisted landscape out of Hieronymus Bosch’s worst nightmare, the superstitious Aki instinctively pulls her kimono tighter to shield her fetus from the horrors she cannot avoid looking at herself.

  Navigating the detritus of the devastated city is as physically exhausting as it is emotionally taxing, and even more so after the children get too tired and have to be piggybacked. Now laden with both kit and kinder, Aki and Kikutarō are fading fast. Breaths come short and painful in the rancid, smoky air. When they reach Asakusa, roughly halfway to their final destination, they stop for a rest. One place is just as rubble-strewn and smoky as the next, so this is as good a spot as any for a rest. Maybe there will even be some water to be found.

  But when they stop to put down their bags, they realize the ground is literally crunchy underfoot with charred human remains. When the first waves of fires swept through here an hour or so ago, there was a panicked rush of people running to jump into the Sumida River to escape the flames. Thousands upon thousands of people all tried to squeeze through the same narrow streets to get to the riverbank, and then were caught when another advancing wall of fire cut off their escape route. They suffocated or burned to death where they stood, sardine-crammed between rows of wooden houses that went up like matchsticks. Now municipal authorities, soldiers and hastily organized volunteer groups of ordinary citizens with the stomach to handle the horror work at huge makeshift cremation pits throughout the area, dousing mountainous heaps of tangled corpses with kerosene and setting them alight while monks from neighborhood temples stand nearby chanting sutras.

  Smoke-choking and shivering with exhaustion and dread, the Kanekos gather every bit of strength they have left and keep moving. A few hours later, their journey through hell ends with a small miracle when they finally reach Nihonbashi late in the afternoon. Somehow, through providence and the vagaries of geology and wind direction, Kikutarō’s old neighborhood has escaped the worst of the seismic shock and fires, and aside from some broken window glass, smoke damage and frazzled nerves, the Hamachō homestead is safe and sound.

  *****

  A few kilometers away in an emergency command post set up in the relatively safe confines of the Imperial Palace grounds, Crown Prince Hirohito is getting his first taste of real-time military leadership under pressure as he supervises the martial law that has been declared for the disaster area[239]. Reports are beginning to come in of panic-causing rumors spread by right-wing Kokuryūkai[240] thugs that Korean residents and socialists are lighting fires and poisoning wells. By morning, over 2,000 Koreans in the city will be lynched, burned or beaten to death by enraged vigilante mobs while soldiers and police stand by watching[241], and police death squads will line up and shoot a number of prominent leftist political activists on the pretext of preserving the peace.[242] Fires will rage throughout the night as the city continues its descent into hell and madness, and when the flames are finally extinguished, 70% of the city’s structures will be piles of burnt rubble and some 110,000 of its citizens will be dead or missing.

  The next morning, when the young Crown Prince steps out of his headquarters with a team of advisers and bodyguards to inspect the smoldering embers and carnage that are all that is left of Tokyo, he knows without being told that this is the worst catastrophe the capital has experienced in all the previous three-hundred-fifty years of its existence. But what he can not possibly know – can not even imagine in his worst nightmares – is that this will this not be the last time he is destined to see his city in ruins.

  *****

  “Things were such a mess, my mother couldn’t even register my birth at the Koichikawa Municipal office for nearly three months,” Naoko tells me. “But then, of course, she had more pressing problems than paperwork to worry about.”

  Thankful for the survival of loved ones while so many other families had suffered through unimaginable grief, the matriarch of the Kaneko homestead had been able to bury her hatchet for her despised daughter-in-law when Kikutarō and his family moved into the Hamachō house. But this would prove to be only a temporary truce, and it was not long before everyone was reminded why Kikutarō and Aki had chosen not to raise their family here in the first place. Grandmother Kaneko had never approved of Aki, an older woman and Russo-Japanese War widow who came into the marriage with a grade school-aged son[243]. By the time of Naoko’s birth, all the old bad blood between Kikutarō’s bride and his mother had resurfaced with a vengeance and the women were at each others’ throats again, making everyone in the house miserable with their incessant bickering. It was soon obvious to all that this domestic arrangement was not going to work out, and the Kanekos – minus Naoko – couldn’t get home to Koishikawa soon enough when reconstruction on their home was finished.

  Naoko’s new home with Aunt Yumi and Grandmother Kaneko was right in the middle of the Nihonbashi karyūkai (“flowery willow world”) demimonde, a Tokyo community not much changed since its golden age was celebrated in Edo era woodblock prints, song and poetry. Part art gallery, part deer park for the romantic escapades of the capital’s elite, the neighborhood was prohibitively expensive, but there was never any concern on Yumi’s part about supporting a household there, and Naoko never knew hunger or physical want of any sort. When Naoko’s adoption papers were signed, the chic and elegant Yumi was an established Nihonbashi star whose photograph was featured in a picture postcard set that was a popular souvenir of Tokyo. One of the most celebrated beauties in the capital, Yumi was also a respected teacher of traditional nagauta singing, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, and Japanese dance. She counted among her entourage of patrons and admirers only the richest and most powerful movers and shakers in Japan’s political and military elites – men who were prepared to pay handsomely to indulge their exquisite tastes.

  By the late 1920s, Yumi had saved enough money from her years in the karyūkai to reinvent herself as a well-heeled restaurateur in the district, running a classy little place on the first floor of the Hamachō homestead. With her fame and reputation secure, she was free to pick and chose her own patrons from among the numerous suitors for her attention, and Yumi never settled for less than Cordon Bleu all the way. Her major sponsor during the early and mid 1930s was Lieutenant General Chojirō Onodera, Paymaster of the Army and protégé of legendary right-wing kingmaker and Kokuryūkai co-founder Mitsuru Tōyama. On his pre-arranged visit days, General Onodera would pull up in front of the restaurant in his big black limo, three-star pennants aflutter on the hood, and post armed guards at the door while he spent a few hours inside. Sometimes, he brought distinguished guests for working lunches, during which matters of service and state were discussed – and just as often angrily shouted – over tea or sake.

  Onodera’s official entertainment expense account was more than adequate to float his Hamachō patronage. Although the general– a typical male chauvinist control freak of his generation – evidently felt that this patronage also gave him the right to claim the legendary Yumi as his own, the object of his attentions never agreed to anything beyond a business arrangement. Considering her age and status, Yumi was under no obligation to submit to that kind of relationship, and moreover, it was insulting for the general to expect one. She was running a business – not living in a gilded cage as someone’s personal property. Of course, she was always sure to express her gratitude for the general’
s magnanimous generosity, but if he wanted to draw any conclusions about their relationship beyond those parameters, he did so at his own risk.

  On Onodera’s off-days, there were always other big shots around the Hamachō restaurant, using the privacy afforded by Yumi’s place to brainstorm and plot in secure secrecy. Many of these bigwigs took a grandfatherly shine to her precocious daughter as well, and by the time Naoko entered elementary school, she had been bounced on the knee of a serving prime minister, another future holder of that office, the founder of the greatest paramilitary criminal organization in history, several future Class A war criminals[244] and more handlebar mustachioed army generals than she could count on two hands.

  24 The Flowery Willow WorldNaoko’s was obviously not a “normal” childhood in any sense of the word, even by Hamachō standards. As a child, she was often subtly aware of housewife gossipers whispering to each other with their hands to their mouths and staring holes in her back when she walked by, but anyone who has ever met Naoko knows that she is not the type to lose much sleep over what other people say about her. She is made of tougher stuff than most Japanese women, and has always found that laughter is the best countermeasure when faced with unpleasantness. Growing up in Nihonbashi, such psychological armor came with the territory.

  “Most of my childhood memories involve laughing,” Naoko says. “I just remember laughing all the time. Everything was a big joke to me. People from the karyūkai are usually like that. Our philosophy is that you’ll make yourself sick if you take things too seriously. Whether something is good or bad, it’ll be gone tomorrow, and then it won’t matter anymore. That kind of thinking is in our blood.”

  During her twelfth summer, Naoko apprenticed at a buyō (Japanese traditional dance) school on the other side of Nihonbashi. She displayed a natural talent in this demanding traditional art. But she was also realistic about her situation, and realized fairly early on in the game that she was not the kind of willowy-limbed, white porcelain doll trophy type – a Yumi type, in other words – that snagged the big time patrons. Naoko, like the other girls, had heard all the stories about what happened to the also-rans who tried to go it on their own, and she was well aware that without a sponsor with the wherewithal to grease the right theatrical palms and buy all the staggeringly expensive costumes required for a shot at a first-class career, a dancer trying to break into the business alone was handed a one-way ticket to the hot springs resort circuit, swatting off combed-over drunks at retirement parties while loan sharks lurked in the wings waiting for her to default on her kimono payments. And woe unto the girl who did that, for the gangsters who flitted through the shadows of the capital’s halls of power – and walked wide-shouldered in the narrow alleys of Nihonbashi – would not think twice about tossing her into the meat grinder of Yoshiwara, never to be seen in one piece again.

  So maybe she was not going to grow up to rival Yumi after all. And she knew that she did not have the stomach to tightrope-walk over a shaky career with debt and damnation waiting for her to stumble. But there was still an alternative honorable future scenario for her if she insisted on pursuing her art – she could become a teacher. The kimonos and accoutrements required for this career would be almost as expensive as those of a headliner, so again money was an obstacle. Perhaps Yumi could help with this.

  Naoko’s approaching Yumi with this idea about six months into her apprenticeship provided the opportunity for a rapprochement between the estranged stepmother and daughter. Yumi finally came around and confessed to the family background charade, and promised financial assistance for Naoko’s future in the karyūkai as a buyō teacher. Residents of the “flowery willow world” did not pay much attention to book learning, as a general rule, not really needing to be any more literate than they had to be to read a menu or write up a receipt for services rendered. Yumi was certainly no exception, but she was savvy enough to know a good investment when she saw one, and wise enough to know that it would behoove her to show a little more consideration for the education of the person who would hopefully be taking care of her in her dotage someday. Now in her early forties, Yumi realized that the chances of finding a husband – at least, that is, one who would be capable of sustaining her in the style to which she had become accustomed – were woefully slim. It was time to pass on her wisdom to Naoko – her future caretaker – starting with a basic course in Nihonbashi survival skills.

  In between her dance studies, Naoko passed her adolescence learning the ropes from Yumi and her grandmother, who introduced the teenager to the karyūkai code of pride, pleasure and freedom. It was a way of life that dictated that you never put the interests of a man over those of your “sisters”, that you stayed free and light so you could move quickly and get what you could while you could, and last but certainly not least, that you looked damned good and had one hell of a good time while you were getting it. As an old hand in this culture, Yumi was supposed to have long since mastered these tenets, but at the age of forty-four and at the height of her powers after three decades of juggling male egos with detached, often disingenuous ease, she met a man who made her forget just about everything she had ever learned.

  One night in late 1935, soon after her rapprochement with Naoko, Yumi was invited to a party at the Nakazu restaurant of her best friend O-Koi, a bright star in the Nihonbashi night sky who enjoyed the stupendously generous patronage of none other than Mitsuru Tōyama himself. Tonight Tōyama was the host, and as usual for one of The Old Man’s parties, the whole place was rented out for the evening. Presiding over the festivities in the place of honor at the head table of the tatami room, Tōyama was a bespectacled octogenarian grandfather with a snowy storybook beard that reached to the middle of his chest. He was dressed in his trademark black formal kimono. Hulking bodyguards sat along the wall behind him within arm’s reach.

  The guest list was the standard mixture of Kokuryūkai oddballs – walking stereotypes out of a Japanese version of Casablanca: shifty-eyed slicksters in shiny double-breasted suits using tortoiseshell cigarette holders; expressionless, Brylcreemed torpedoes who never took off their sunglasses and kept one hand in their coat pockets; ramrod-backed army generals whose mouths moved like hinged nutcracker jaws behind preposterous Kaiser Wilhelm mustaches. Interspersed strategically amongst these honorable guests, a bevy of Nihonbashi professionals in stunning kimonos kept the mood stoked with happy off-color banter, copious male ego-stroking and a never-ending flow of saké.

  Yumi’s partner for the evening was introduced as Shirō Motoki, an IMA graduate and Tōyama protégé obviously in good standing with The Old Man, judging by his place in the seating arrangement. Hearing some details about Motoki’s background explained the relationship: after an interesting ten-year career in China as a mercenary and the bodyguard detachment commander of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin[245], Motoki had come back to Japan and made a fortune off of manufacturing carpentry nails, of all things. Now he was a generous Kokuryūkai benefactor. Yumi thought making nails sounded like a funny way to get rich, and that the samurai-descendant Shirō did not look at all like someone you would expect to be in the hardware business.[246] Rather, with his shaved head, big chin, jutting lower lip and weighty taciturnity, he seemed more like…well, more like the kind of men you always saw in Tōyama-sensei’s inner circle, once you got past the elliptically orbiting buffer layers of thugs and ranters. He was sharp and cocksure, with a dangerous testosterone whiff of the rake about him – exactly the type Yumi had a serious weakness for. She was attracted to him immediately, and the sentiment was evidently mutual. By the end of the evening, the two were head over heels.

  Yumi disappeared for several days after the party. At one point, Grandmother Kaneko and Naoko even contemplated marching down to the corner police box and filling out a missing persons report on her. When she finally came home, floating on air and with nary an explanation for her absence, it was obvious to all that late spring had arrived for Yumi Kaneko.

  *****


  Shirō Motoki was thirty-eight, balding, penniless and burning with an idea for a new type of carpentry nail when he returned to Japan in 1932. He could feel it in his bones – the nail idea was going to make him rich. Being the inventive and energetic go-getter that he was, poverty was no obstacle and he landed on his feet as usual, making rounds to the Tokyo Patent Office within days of his arrival, running around town scrounging up old contacts – above board or not. A lot of very important people in the city owed him favors from his Manchurian days, and Shirō called in every single one of them he could think of to get together some start-up cash. In the meantime, he supported himself with odd jobs, borrowed money, and found a ramshackle old machi kōjo studio[247] where he could set up a small workshop to fine tune his design and manufacture samples.

  The design he was working on was for a cross-sectionally triangular nail that would twist itself into wood as it was hammered. The concept was simple, logical, and – most fortunately for Shirō – original. A quick demonstration with a couple of short pieces of two-by-four was usually all a potential investor needed to be sold on the idea. By 1933, Shirō’s factory was up and running. A year later, every house carpenter in Japan was using the nails, and Shirō was rolling.