by David Peace
the exit
and –
It’s Closing Time
In the twilight of the American Century, the American Season, they drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, traveled out through the slums, past the gas-storage depots, over a branch of the Potomac, into the wilderness of southeast Washington, the gray row houses and the empty lots, the dinosaur bones and the Indian graves, until they spied the elms above the walls, came to the red-brick gate, and said, This is the place.
They turned through the gate, headed up the long asphalt drive, the grounds sprawled out on either side in the haze of a gloom, and parked up outside the main buildings. They got out of the car, walked into the Center building, found the office of the Superintendent, gave their titles and names to the white-coated attendant at reception, stated their business, and made their request. The attendant consulted a card file, then gave them directions and pointed the way.
They walked back out of the Center building, across the asphalt and onto the lawn, the huge expanse of lawn, where men drifted about or sat upon benches, dumbly staring into space, among the tall clumps of boxwood, but where one man sits alone, dwarfed beneath the elms, reclining on a long camp chair, an empty chair to his right, another toppled on his left, this broad-shouldered man with a tangled gray beard and close-shaven head, his face seamed and yellow, cheeks high and hollow, with age and with weather, the ages of the world, the weather of the times, a figure exiled in a landscape the color of lead, the color of smoke, this old, dry man in dressing gown, striped pajamas, beneath his blanket, old army blanket he clutches, holds a teddy bear close, tight to his chest, aware of their advance, he senses their approach, turns his head, looks their way and waits, he waits.
At the declining of the day, in these final, violet hours, she smiled, she says, Police Investigator Sweeney?
Yes, speaking, he says, said again.
She nodded, she says, It is finished, it is done.
END MATTERS
Author’s Note
This novel draws on the lives, memories, and writings of many Japanese and Americans who lived through or participated in the US-led Occupation of Japan, particularly Kafū Nagai, Kōji Uno, and Ken’ichi Yoshida; Paul Blum, Donald Keene, Donald Richie, Edward Seidensticker, and Harry Shupak. However, and for the avoidance of any doubt, this novel is not meant to insinuate that any of these people had any part whatsoever in the death of Sadanori Shimoyama.
Bibliography
Seventy years after the fact, the death of Sadanori Shimoyama on July 5, 1949, remains a mystery, officially unexplained. In Japan, hundreds of books and thousands of articles have attempted to solve the mystery. Novels, manga, documentaries, plays, and a film have also been based on the events of that night. At one time, it would have been no exaggeration to have compared the domestic political and cultural importance of the incident to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, such was the level of public interest, the volume of publications, and proliferation of theories and conspiracies. However, as far as I am aware, the only substantial English-language accounts are to be found in Conspiracy at Matsukawa by Chalmers Johnson and Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan by Mark Schreiber. The case also plays a fictionalized role in Osamu Tezuka’s manga Ayako, which has been translated into English.
The case was widely reported in the English-language press of the day: the Mainichi, Nippon Times, and Pacific Stars and Stripes. These newspapers, along with the Japanese-language Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, and Tokyo Times, have all been invaluable sources of information (and misinformation). The GHQ/SCAP record of the case—including crime scene photographs, hand-drawn maps, internal memorandums, and copies of the notebooks of the Public Safety Division—are available in the GHQ/SCAP Records (RG 331, National Archives and Records Service), Box 292, Shimoyama Case—Crime, July 1949–January 1950, and these files can be accessed digitally at the National Diet Library, Tokyo.
A lot of material pertaining to Japanese war criminals, nationalist groups, and secret societies in postwar Japan has been declassified and can be accessed via the Library tab on the Central Intelligence Agency’s own website. However, the sections for Japan in the weekly intelligence summaries provided by the Office of Reports and Estimates, CIA Far East/Pacific Branch remain redacted for the period around the death of Sadanori Shimoyama. And for only that period.
In the following bibliography, I have omitted texts already listed in Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City.
Ayako by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Mari Morimoto (Vertical 2010, 2013)
Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010)
Blum-san! by Robert S. Greene (Jupitor/RSG, 1998)
Bōsatsu Shimoyama Jiken by Yada Kimio (Kōdansha, 1963) and the film of the same name, directed by Kei Kumai (1981)
Chronicles of My Life by Donald Keene (Columbia, 2008)
Conspiracy at Matsukawa by Chalmers Johnson (University of California Press, 1972)
Genji Days by Edward G. Seidensticker (Kodansha International, 1977)
Himitsu no Fairu: CIA no Tainichi Kōsaku by Haruna Mikio (Kyōdō Tsūshinsha, 2000)
Hōmurareta Natsu: Tsuiseki Shimoyama Jiken by Moronaga Yūji (Asahi Shimbunsha, 2002)
In the Realm of a Dying Emperor by Norma Field (Vintage, 1993)
Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan by Takemae Eiji, translated and adapted from the Japanese by Robert Rickerts and Sebastian Swann (Continuum, 2002)
Japan Is a Circle by Kenichi Yoshida (Paul Norbury, 1975)
Japan Journals 1947–2004 by Donald Richie, ed. Leza Lowitz (Stone Bridge Press, 2005)
Jungle and Other Tales: True Stories of Historic Counterintelligence Operations by Duval A. Edwards (Wheatmark, 2008)
Keiji Ichidai: Hiratsuka Hachibei Kikigaki by Sasaki Yoshinobu (Nisshin Hōdō, 1975)
Kuroi Shio by Yasushi Inoue (Bungeishunjū Shinsha, 1950)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Penguin, 2008)
MacArthur no Nihon by Shūkan Shinchō Henshūbu (Shinchōsha, 1970)
MacArthur no 2000-nichi by Sodei Rinjirō (Chūō Kōronsha, 1974)
Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II by James C. McNaughton (Department of the Army, 2007)
Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal by Theodore Cohen, ed. Herbert Passim (The Free Press, 1987)
Saishō Onzōshi Hinkyūsu by Yoshida Kenichi (Bungeishunjū Shinsha, 1954)
Sakuragichō Nikki: Kokutetsu o Meguru Senryō Hiwa by Yamakawa Sanpei (Surugadai Shobō, 1952)
Senryō-ka Nippon by Handō Kazutoshi, Takeuchi Shūji, Hosaka Masayasu, and Matsumoto Ken’ichi (Chikuma Bunko, 2012)
Senryō Sengoshi by Takemae Eiji (Iwanami Shoten, 1992)
Shima Hideo no Sekai Ryokō 1936–1937 by Shima Takashi and Takahashi Dankichi (Gijutsu Hyōronsha, 2009)
Shimoyama Jiken by Mori Tatsuya (Shinchōsha, 2004)
Shimoyama Jiken: Saigo no Shōgen by Shibata Tetsutaka (Shōdensha, 2005)
Shimoyama Jiken Zengo by Suzuki Ichizō (Aki Shobō, 1981)
“Shimoyama Sōsai Bōsatsuron” in Nihon no Kuroi Kiri by Matsumoto Seichō (Bungeishunjū Shinsha, 1960)
Shimoyama Sōsai no Tsuioku (Shimoyama Sadanori Shi Kinen Jigyōkai, 1951)
Shinpan: Shimoyama Jiken Zenkenkyū by Satō Hajime (Impact Shuppankai, 2009)
Shiryō; Shimoyama Jiken, ed. Shimoyama Jiken Kenkyūkai (Misuzu Shobō, 1969)
Showa: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki, translated by Zack Davisson, four volumes (Drawn and Quarterly, 2013–15)
Tales of the Spring Rain by Ueda Akinari, translated by Barry Jackman (University of Tokyo Press, 1975)
The American Occupation of Japan by Michael Schaller (Oxford University Press, 1985)
The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65, ed. Ri
chard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley (Frank Cass, 2000)
The Human Face of Industrial Conflict in Post-War Japan, ed. Hirosuke Kawanishi (Kegan Paul International, 1999)
The Yoshida Memoirs by Shigeru Yoshida, translated by Kenichi Yoshida (The Riverside Press, 1962)
This Country, Japan by Edward Seidensticker (Kodansha International, 1984)
This Outcast Generation and Luminous Moss by Taijun Takeda, translated by Yusaburo Shibuya and Sanford Goldstein (Charles E. Tuttle, 1967)
Tokyo Central: A Memoir by Edward Seidensticker (University of Washington Press, 2002)
Wana by Natsubori Masamoto (Kōbunsha, 1960)
Yanaka, Hana to Bochi by E. G. Seidensticker (Misuzu Shobō, 2008)
Yonimo Fushigina Monogatari by Uno Kōji (Kadokawa Shoten, 1955)
Yumeoibitoyo: Saitō Shigeo Shuzai Nōto by Saitō Shigeo (Tsukiji Shokan, 1989)
Acknowledgments
The majority of the Japanese texts listed in the bibliography would have been beyond my ability to read in Japanese. I am therefore extremely grateful to Shunichiro Nagashima and especially to Junzo Sawa for the hundreds of pages of translations they provided me with, including from the Japanese press. They also discussed the case at length with me. However, this novel does not reflect their thoughts on the case, nor can it repay the debt I owe to them both, but thank you. Akiko Miyake also provided a lot of further information and translations, particularly in relation to Tokyo in the years 1964 and 1988. Akiko and Stephen Barber and I spent many hours walking the various sites in the novel, discussing the case, and the times, and the lives of expatriates and writers in Japan. I am very grateful to both Akiko and Stephen; thank you.
The sheer volume of material written about the case was, in part, responsible for the ten-year delay in completing the manuscript. I am very grateful for the patience and support of my publishers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Spain, in particular. The joyless task of excusing and apologizing for the delay in delivery fell to my agent Hamish Macaskill of the English Agency Japan. I am very grateful to him for all his work on my behalf, and especially for his enthusiasm and belief in this book over such an extended period. Thank you, too, to Rob Kraitt at Casarotto Ramsay for his work. I would also like to thank the following people for their help during the writing of this book: Ian Bahrami, Matteo Battarra, Andrew Benbow, Phillip Breen, Martin Colthorpe, Ian Cusack, Walter Donohue, Paul French, Mike Handford, Christopher Harding, Noriko Hasegawa, Ben Hervey, Atsushi Hori, David Karashima, Chris Lloyd, Justin McCurry, David Mitchell, Naoko Murozono, Kyoko Nakajima, Kazuo Okanoya, Richard Lloyd Parry, Roger Pulvers, Ann Scanlon, Mark Schreiber, Katy Shaw, Motoyuki Shibata, Peter Thompson, Paul Tickell, Rachel Toogood, David Turner, and Cathi Unsworth.
For their comments and suggestions on the various drafts of the novel, I am very grateful to Angus Cargill and Sonny Mehta, and to Hamish Macaskill, Akiko Miyake, and Jon Riley for theirs, too.
Finally, I would never have had the confidence to begin, continue, and then finish the Tokyo Trilogy without the belief, counsel, and enthusiasm of William Miller –
Thank you, dear William, love, love.
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