The look of contempt on Takamatsu’s face becomes all the clearer.
But his reaction is not what Takeda had expected. “You don’t understand,” says Takamatsu. “I’m only following orders from upstairs.”
He sits down opposite Takeda and folds his arms over his chest as he does when he’s sitting at his desk.
“Two attempted murders and one murder just for a theory?”
Takamatsu shrugs his shoulders, albeit barely observably. At closer quarters Takeda can see that the man is under pressure. “If you only knew what’s at stake, Takeda.”
“I know what’s at stake.”
The commissioner sighs: “That fucking intuition of yours is making you crazy, Takeda.”
“It’s not intuition. I have facts. If you hadn’t brushed me off so abruptly when I came to you with my theory about the bank raid, things would have been different. Then it was just a hypothesis.”
“No use crying over spilt milk. I actually asked myself the same question when I sent you away. I know how stubborn you can be.” Takeda is surprised that the commissioner seems to be in no hurry. He had expected a formal, impersonal discussion and was planning to interrupt it with a fit of rage at the death of his wife. The conversation hadn’t only started differently, but Takamatsu seemed more interested in being personal than Takeda had expected, in spite of the commissioner’s superior demeanour.
“You tried twice to get rid of me.”
Takamatsu appears irritated. “As I said, orders from upstairs. If it had been up to me I would have had you demoted and sidetracked. But the man handing down the orders is the all-or-nothing type. He doesn’t like uncertainties.”
Takeda tempers his rage. “The man handing down the orders is a relic from the past, commissioner.”
The commissioner laughs in a surge of malicious delight. “Surely you don’t think you can know the man because you managed, God knows how, to get your hands on documents that expose his origins? Think about it, Takeda: he’s in his late sixties. Do you think his life has meant nothing thus far? That he’s learned nothing, never acquired influence, never exploited his origins? He operates in secret, but his power is...” Takamatsu makes an irritated gesture as if trying to convince himself that it isn’t worth explaining everything to Takeda.
“I understand he has his own secret network,” says Takeda. “But does his influence extend to the Prime Minister? To the government? To the Japanese economy? To the emperor?”
Takamatsu stares at Takeda as if he’s convinced that the inspector lost his mind. “You always forget you’re an outsider, Takeda. You don’t have the correct Japanese soul.” He gestures at the students sitting behind him. ‘Is that the Japan our parents fought for? Those useless, spineless cowards? I know your background, Takeda. I know where you come from. You’re ashamed of your father. Mine was a soldier, a camp guard in Fukuoka Camp 1. He was one of the men who guarded the six American survivors of a B-29 bomber that was rammed by war hero Kinzo Kasuya above Fukuoka. My father and two other guards escorted the prisoners to Kyushu University where a vivisection was carried out on them while they were still alive. My father was obeying orders, but he was later condemned to death by the Americans. Do I have to tell you what that made me feel, what that did to his son’s heart? You’ve always thought that you had access to the Japanese soul, Takeda, but you don’t understand our tragedy, our honour, our life.”
“They’re just words, Takamatsu. We spend most of our lives telling ourselves stories, convincing ourselves that the things we do have a meaning, a purpose. But it’s a lie: our lives are a tangle of strange, incomprehensible and contradictory facts. We’re just caricatures of who we think we are. You talk about tragedy and honour. Where’s the honour in murdering an innocent woman?”
Takamatsu remains remarkably relaxed. “You don’t know the meaning of discipline, let alone the idea that a greater goal might justify the means we use to achieve it. You think my career has been a disappointment to me. I’m disappointed alright, but in Japan and the Japanese. That’s why I’m a follower of... our German allies called him an Übermensch. I love the sound of that word, Takeda. The first born of Showa Tenno is a thousand times more worthy to be emperor than...”
Takamatsu holds his breath and peers cautiously at the door as a bunch of noisy baseball fans storm into the diner. The Hiroshima Toyo Carp had played the Yomiuri Shimbun from Tokyo and had achieved the nearly impossible by defeating a far superior team. Red faces, affected behaviour. A naked man dances between the tables wearing nothing but the Toyo Carp club flag. Takeda realises that the management of Denny’s Diner are likely to call in the police if the over-enthusiastic baseball fans – who’ve been partying for hours – continue the high jinks. He glances at Beate Becht out of the corner of his eye and sees that she’s on her feet. That means she has enough material. Takeda turns back to the chief commissioner and asks himself whether his reaction was one of caution or expectation. What’s the man waiting for? Or: why is he keeping me waiting? The two men look each other in the eye. Takeda realises that he knows why Takamatsu is being so openhearted.
He gets to his feet. “The son of Showa Tenno isn’t the future, Takamatsu, he’s the past. A past we have nothing to be proud of.”
The chief commissioner lifts his hand as if to interrupt Takeda. Takeda grabs the table with both hands: “Tell him that in addition to the documents I also have a photo of the young Tomio Shiga in uniform in front of a golden Buddha in the Abukama-do caves. Tell him not to be mistaken: I’m not alone in this. To illustrate my point, let me tell you this: our conversation has been filmed with a handheld camera, date and hour included. What will the honourable members of the Public Security Commission think when they see chief commissioner Takamatsu of the Hiroshima prefecture in an animated conversation with inspector Takeda, hours after issuing a warrant for Takeda’s arrest for the murder of his wife?”
Takamatsu stiffens. He glances to either side, takes in the interior, trying to determine whether Takeda is telling the truth. Takamatsu opens his mouth in anger. But Takeda is already on his way out of the restaurant, apparently unruffled, but with his heart pounding. Two buildings down the street he jumps into a doorway. Less than three minutes later a pair of motorcycles stop in front of Denny’s Diner. The motorcyclists are dressed from top to toe in shiny black leather. Their bullet shaped helmets have reflective visors in which the neon signs in the street flicker like miniature suns.
One of the motorcyclists is exceptionally tall, an angular giant with hands and feet completely out of proportion.
If what Yori told him about Mitsuko’s stories is correct, Takeda figures this has to be the man whose birth certificate is among the documents.
Such a man doesn’t tend to appear much in public.
Takeda realises that Rokurobei is determined to deal with him in person.
93
From Mitsuko’s notes, written in the basement
room beside the metro service tunnel
I am Princess Mitsuko, niece of Showa Tenno, who called himself Emperor Hirohito when he was alive, daughter of Prince Norikazu Tsugonimaya, first born son of Emperor Hirohito and thus his rightful heir as emperor of Japan.
These words, written in captivity and with an uncertain future ahead of me, give account of my title and my ancestry.
On July 18th 1930, the imperial physician observed that the life of newborn Prince Norikazu, sired by a concubine, was insufficiently viable and that he was therefore not fit to be the emperor’s successor. The decision was made to let the firstborn of the arahitogami die. The imperial physician was terrified at the very thought and suggested a daring new treatment based on growth hormones. They started with growth hormones taken from cattle, but when the results turned out to be poor, the court doctors started distilling human growth hormones from the pituitary glands of imprisoned Manchurian guerrilla fighters. The priso
ners were executed and the precious hormone was immediately extracted from the pituitary gland. They were convinced that fresh corpses would produce better quality. The treatment worked: the child grew. It later transpired that the administered doses were too large and the child developed gigantism and a severe form of acromegaly.
When Prince Tsugu, now known as Emperor Akihito, was born to Hirohito’s lawful wife Nagako in December 1933, the emperor decided that Tsugu, and not my father, would be his successor. Prince Norikazu was kept from the public. Until he was ten, he lived in a separate wing of the imperial Edo Castle in Tokyo. Accounting for his personal desires and preferences, he was trained during the Second World War in a number of secret Japanese laboratories where experiments were carried out on prisoners of war. After the Second World War, when his father renounced his divinity and was considered responsible for war crimes, Prince Norikazu withdrew into the hidden regions of our society, assisted by Shinto priests and high ranking officers who were still convinced that Norikazu should have succeeded his father as firstborn son. The imperial family decided to act as if Norikazu no longer existed and tolerated his actions as long as he avoided public exposure. Prince Norikazu grew bitter and withdrew even further from everyday life. He became the leader of a secret society intent on reinstating imperial Japan.
Before I was imprisoned in this basement I had official documents at my disposal revealing my father’s identity. They confirm my present testimony
•his birth certificate, signed by the emperor’s physician
•the military logbook kept by Colonel Tadao Masamada, commander of Unit 731 on Okunoshima Island
I am no longer able to present this evidence because I no longer have the documents in my possession. But as princess of the Japanese imperial family I swear that every word is true.
Let me conclude: with all the strength that remains in me I curse the family of the Showa tenno, to which I myself belong, because it rejected my father.
May all the kin of the Showa Tenno now and in the future live a life of pain and suffering, as I have done.
94
Hiroshima – the Righa Royal Hotel – Takeda and Becht –
morning, March 15th 1995
Inspector Takeda wakes with a start and sees the sleeping face of Beate Becht beside him. She’s breathing with her mouth half open. She has small, sharp teeth. Their ankles touch. Her skin is warm. The dream he just had must have been a result of an anxiety attack brought on by the profound confusion of the previous night. In his slumber, the life he had been living, the person he thought he was, became a backdrop in which he had lost his way. Part of him welcomed the anxiety because it anaesthetised his conscious mind. Takeda had been living at odds with himself. He hoped in vain that liberation would come, transcendence, light. Takeda isn’t a believer. Consciousness is an accident, a fabrication of nature. One day it will be extinguished and everything it once imagined will shatter into fragments bereft of context, content and structure. Nothing will remain. Still half asleep, Takeda felt a coldness tighten around his chest and what seemed like enormous pressure in his brain. Panic grabbed him by the throat. His entire being tried to resist, aspired to be reasonable, but a storm rose up inside him: a longing for death inflamed by fear. As if it were yesterday, the inspector remembered a classmate from the 60s who was so proud because his father had penetrated the belly of an American navy ship with a Kaiten, a manned torpedo, and had thus become a kamikaze. Takeda was sixteen at the time and he had listened to his friend’s stories with a mixture of fascination, fear, disgust and incredulity. His classmate had told him that his father had longed for death because it would bring Japan one step closer to victory. Takeda didn’t understand how anyone could long for death. But that didn’t prevent him from feeling a vague sense of jealousy towards a man he had never known: his friend’s father had already rounded the cape of death with success.
Takeda turns and sees his reflection in the chest of drawers against the wall. His body tenses instinctively. Then he reminds himself that the man in the mirror is not a stranger, but himself with pitch black hair, dyed earlier that night by Beate Becht. When he had knocked three times at her door as agreed and walked into her room, he found her busy, close to a frenzy: “Let me dye your hair. You’ll look like a completely different man. And they won’t expect you to be in the company of a foreigner.” She pointed to the bathroom. “It’s all ready.”
“Did you manage to film everything?”
“No problem. I’m a professional.” She forced a laugh.
“If they check my duty roster they’ll know I contacted you,” said Takeda. “And don’t forget you also gave your name and hotel room number at the hospital when you brought in the Belgian.”
She smiled: “But who’s going to believe that an inspector would sleep over with a witness he was supposed to question? That love at first sight stuff only happens in the movies, Akio.” She hadn’t used his first name before. She noticed the look on his face and added: “Do you have another option? You look exhausted. This hotel room is your best hiding place, for the time being. You can decide what you’re going to do tomorrow. Any better ideas?”
“Where do I sleep?”
“There’s only one bed. But if you want there’s a small sofa...”
“Are the takes clear enough?” asked Takeda abruptly.
Beate Becht grabbed her Handycam dcr-vx1000, according to Sony “the first digital video camera for the consumer market”. She had filmed Takeda’s conversation from under the table. The sound wasn’t perfect, but the pictures were excellent. The date and time indicators were the most important thing. They allowed Takeda to demonstrate to the authorities in Tokyo that Takamatsu had talked with him after the chief commissioner issued a warrant for his arrest on murder charges. Takeda relaxed when he saw the images and followed Beate willingly into the bathroom. An hour later, when they were getting ready to go to bed, Beate Becht heard a strange noise emanating from the same bathroom, something between a sigh and a laugh. “Are you alright?” she shouted. Takeda appeared in the half-open door. “The sight of myself in the mirror was a bit of a shock. I look like an okama with my old face under such pitch black hair, an effeminate old gei.” She asked what the words meant, then laughed and called him a conceited old pansy. He noticed for the first time just how sunken her eyes were. In certain positions it made her boyish face seem gaunt and tired. Her small, compact body lost its boyish grace when she got tired.
They kept their distance in bed, reserved, awkward. Takeda racked his brains for something to say. In the process he fell into a dreamless sleep.
The body beside him sighs, moves.
An arm falls across his chest.
And slowly slips downwards.
95
Hiroshima – doctor Adachi’s apartment near the Peace Tower –
Adachi and Rokurobei – morning, March 15th 1995
Dr Adachi opens his eyes with caution. He has the feeling that his father is close by, the dismal weight of his disapproving gaze burdening him. He looks out of the window. It’s already light. For a moment Adachi feels lost, as if he’s detached from his own body. For a brief second the feared sensation casts its merciless light over his life: that night, before he went to bed, he had knocked back a half bottle of whiskey. Adachi the drunk, Adachi the faggot.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” says someone standing in the doorway. “Metaphors can be so pretty, don’t you think Dr Adachi?”
Adachi turns his head.
The man in the doorway isn’t his father, but for some reason he feels the same fear as he did when he was thirteen and his father was standing by his bed.
The man comes inside, sits down on the bed and does something unexpected. He stretches out his hand and rests it on Adachi’s forehead as a parent might do when a child has a fever.
“How do you feel?”
; “Lost,” says Adachi. The skin on the shovel-like hand is dry and scaly. Psoriasis, the police doctor automatically assumes.
“We’re all lost, Dr Adachi, from the moment we’re born,” says Rokurobei.
96
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