Tokyo Year Zero

There are uniformed police officers on duty at Shimbashi Railway Station, checking packages and bundles for contraband —

Knapsacks and pockets for black-market cigarettes —

Detective Fujita and I take out our police notebooks and identify ourselves at the gate —

The station and the platform are almost deserted, the Yamate Line train almost empty —

The sun is climbing, the temperature rising. I wipe my neck and I wipe my face—

I itch —

I itch as I stare out of the windows; the elevated tracks of the Yamate Line now the highest points left in most of Tokyo, a sea of rubble in all directions except to the east —

The docks and the other, real sea.