Tokyo Year Zero

The shortest route to Shimbashi from Sakuradamon is through the Hibiya Park, through this park that is now no park —

Black winter trees in the white summer heat…

‘Even if we are routed in battle,’ Nishi is saying. ‘The mountains and the rivers remain. The people remain…’

Plinths without statues, posts with no gates…

‘The hero Kusunoki pledged to live and die seven times in order to save Japan,’ he states. ‘We can do no less…’

No foliage. No bushes. No grass now…

‘We must fight on,’ he urges. ‘Even if we have to chew the grass, eat the earth and live in the fields.’

Just stark black winter trees…

‘With our broken swords and our exhausted arrows,’ I say. ‘Our hearts burned by fire, eaten by tears.’

In the white summer heat…

Nishi smiling. ‘Exactly.’

The white heat…

Nishi in one ear and now the harsh noise of martial music from a sound-truck in the other as we leave the park that is no park, down streets that are no streets, past buildings that are no buildings —

‘Oh, so bravely, off to Victory / In so far as we have vowed and left our land behind…’

Buildings of which nothing remains but their front walls; now only sky where their windows and ceilings should be —

‘Who can die without first having shown his true mettle / Each time I hear the bugles of our advancing army…’

The dates on which these buildings ceased to be buildings witnessed in the height of the weeds that sprout here and there among the black mountains of shattered brick —

‘I close my eyes and see wave upon wave of flags cheering us into battle…’

The shattered brick, the lone chimneys and the metal safes that crashed down through the floors as these buildings went up in flames, night after night—

‘The earth and its flora burn in flames / As we endlessly part the plains…’

Night after night, from the eleventh month of last year, siren after siren, bomb after bomb —

‘Helmets emblazoned with the Rising Sun / And, stroking the mane of our horses…’

Bomb after bomb, fire after fire, building after building, neighbourhood after neighbourhood, until there are no buildings, there are no neighbourhoods and there is no city, no Tokyo —

‘Who knows what tomorrow will bring — life?’

Only the survivors now —

‘Or death in battle?’

Hiding under the rubble, living among the ruins, three or four families to a shack of rusted iron and salvaged wood, or in the railroad or the subway stations —

The lucky ones…

‘We must fight on,’ repeats Detective Nishi. ‘For if we do not fight on, the Emperor himself will be executed and the women of Japan will be subjected to methodical rape so that the next Japanese will not be Japanese…’

I curse him…

Beneath telegraph poles that stand as grave markers, down these streets that are no streets, we walk as Nishi rants on —

‘In the mountains of Nagano, we shall make our final stand; on Maizuruyama, on Minakamiyama, on Zozan!’

There are people on these streets that are no streets now, people that are no people; exhausted ghosts in early-morning queues, bitter-enders waiting for lunches outside hodgepodge dining halls in old movie theatres, their posters replaced by slogans —

‘We Are All Soldiers on the Home Front…’

The sound-truck has gone and with it that song we have heard every day for the last seven years, ‘Roei no Uta’ —

Just the noise of Nishi’s voice now—

‘Every man under sixty-five, every woman under forty-five will take up a bamboo spear and march off…

‘To defend our beloved Japan…’

I stop in the middle of this street that is no street and I grab Nishi by the collar of his civil defence uniform and I push him up against a scorched wall, a scorched wall on which is written —

‘Let Us All Help One Another with Smiling Faces…’

‘Go back to headquarters, Detective,’ I tell him —

He blinks, open-mouthed, and now he nods —

I pull him back from the black wall —

‘I want to make sure one of us, at least, is able to hear this imperial broadcast,’ I tell him.

‘You can then report what was said, if Fujita and I are unable to hear it…’

I let go of his collar —

Nishi nods again.

‘Dismissed,’ I shout now, and Nishi stands to attention, salutes and then he bows —

And he leaves.

‘Thank you very much,’ laughs Detective Fujita.

‘Nishi is very young,’ I tell him.

‘Young and very keen…’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But I don’t think he’d be too keen on our old friend Matsuda Giichi…’

‘Very true,’ laughs Fujita again as we walk on, on down these streets that are no streets, past buildings that are no buildings —

In this city that is no city.