The Investigation (12 page)

The Korean prisoners were clustered together at the sunny spot below the wall, when they heard a thin, smooth, wind-like whistling. Sugiyama slid the club out of his belt and
looked for the source. It was Prisoner 645, standing at the foot of the bare hill. Sugiyama’s steps instinctively quickened into a run.

‘645! What are you doing here, all alone?’ Sugiyama’s voice, out of breath, was on edge. He aimed his club at the young man’s neck, ready to break his shoulder.

645 stopped whistling. ‘Is it a crime to whistle?’ he asked gravely, his voice sinking like sediment.

This young man was everything Sugiyama derided: a recalcitrant Korean political prisoner who violated the Maintenance of Public Order Act, and an intellectual on top of that. With the tip of his
blood-crusted club, Sugiyama pushed the young man’s chin up. ‘Listen carefully. This is Fukuoka Prison and I’m Sugiyama Dozan. You’re behind bars. You can’t whistle.
And you certainly can’t write.’

‘So what can I do?’

‘It would be easier to ask what you can’t do.’

‘Then what can’t I do?’

‘You can’t do whatever it is you’re trying to do right now!’ Sugiyama’s teeth were set on edge. A flock of black crows flew up noisily into the ashy sky.

‘One’s heart can’t be incarcerated or taken away.’ 645’s voice rustled like a leaf in the wind, lustreless, tired and trembling.

Sugiyama despised the educated. They were arrogant, and clueless. With their puny words they sucked off someone else’s sweat and tears, mumbling nonsensical poems and reciting
unintelligible phrases. ‘No lies and exaggerations and sweet talk allowed here. This is Fukuoka Prison, and I’m watching your every move.’ Sugiyama swung, and his club landed
heavily on 645’s shoulder; the young man fell to the ground, his shoulder dislocated.

He looked up at Sugiyama, his face contorted in pain. Sugiyama was struck by the look in the prisoner’s eyes – they were filled with pity, not resentment.

Back in his office, Sugiyama flipped through the log of confiscated items. 645. Hiranuma Tochu. The log showed that he had an unpublished poetry collection,
The Sky, the Wind, the Stars and
Poetry
, thirty additional poems and a total of twenty-eight books. Sugiyama headed to the library. Boxes were lined up on the shelves. Sugiyama opened Hiranuma’s box. He saw faded titles
on dirty, well-worn covers; books by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, André Gide, Francis Jammes, Rainer Maria Rilke and some Korean writers. He spotted a bundle of paper shoved into one corner.

The Sky, the Wind, the Stars and Poetry
.

Cautiously, as if he were searching an enemy camp, Sugiyama turned the first page. And with stern eyes he glared at the neat strokes:

These average, nondescript sentences pummelled Sugiyama’s temples. How could ten lines make him breathless and dazed? He didn’t realize that reading a single poem was equivalent to
getting to know the world inhabited by the writer, expanding his senses beyond the usual five. He stuffed the manuscript back in the box. He wanted to flee – from this man, his writings, this
poem. Sugiyama was firm in his belief that writing was a contaminant; it ruined people, concealed weak spirits and unmoored pity, ridiculous optimism and foolish dreams. Writers led an idle life in
the name of romance, dazzled by clever lines, infected by anarchism. Poets believed they could change people and the world. Sugiyama straightened his guard cap. He would banish this absurd poem
that flickered its evil tongue. He banged the square, long-handled stamp onto the manuscript:

His hand, holding the pen, trembled. His office felt unusually cold. He put his pen down; the young man’s pale face loomed in his memory. Sugiyama hesitated for a moment. There was no need
for this to be incinerated right away. He should first interrogate and punish the prisoner who wrote this seditious poem.

War dragged on. Prisoner 645 was curled up on the floor of his cell. Last summer his life had ended in a single instant, and nightmares had slammed him against the cold floor.
He was no longer a university student, a young man agonizing about the times; he wasn’t spending every waking moment reading or taking long walks. Now he was ‘an element of the Korean
Independence Movement’ implicated in the ‘Kyoto Korean Student Nationalist Group Incident’.

On the morning of 14 July 1943 a handful of burly men rushed into Takeda Boarding House. They were Special Higher Police detectives from Shimogamo Police Station in Kyoto. They grabbed
Hiranuma’s arms as he was about to step out of the house. The detectives threw him into a holding cell at the station, but did nothing more for two days, as though they enjoyed watching
someone go mad behind bars. On the third day Hiranuma was called into the narrow box of an interrogation room. Across from him sat Detective Koroki, who opened the thick file on the desk containing
a police surveillance log detailing Hiranuma’s every movement during the preceding year: how many people drank how many bottles of what kind of liquor in which bar on which day, what they
discussed and what time he returned home and switched off the lights.

According to Koroki, Hiranuma’s cousin, Song Mong-gyu, had been arrested with other conspirators four days earlier. Song was the alleged leader of a seditious organization, and Korean
students who didn’t even know each other were linked through him. Song had made the police blacklist for his past enrolment in a Chinese officer school. The exact account of the incident,
accomplices, the charge and prison term were arranged in a perfect script. The incident, later known as the Kyoto Korean Student Nationalist Group Incident, occurred when Song and Hiranuma
allegedly gathered Korean students in Kyoto and plotted to fight for Korean independence and support Korean culture. The Special Higher Police detectives simply took issue with anything to do with
Korea, and Hiranuma happened to be Korean. Koroki tossed a bundle of papers on the desk. Hiranuma recognized the scent wafting from his manuscript of poems – that of a warm
tatami
room, accidentally spilled ink, dreams that vanished into the ether – and looked down at the bundle before him.

The Sky, the Wind, the Stars and Poetry.

Scenes from his former life flashed past his eyes: the blue sky outside the windows of a lecture hall, the wind brushing tree branches on a hill, the stars filling the night sky, and the poetry
he read, copied down and created.

‘Nice lifestyle you’ve got there,’ Koroki spat out. ‘Patriotic young men are dying on battlefields while you scribble poems like a little girl. Translate these into
Japanese! Your poems will prove your ideology. The original manuscript will be destroyed.’ He smiled, his face crinkling like Mephistopheles.

Hiranuma gazed at the dry pen, black ink and his mother tongue. The poor-quality government-issue paper was waiting for something to be written on it. But writing his poems in Japanese was to
trample on his own soul. At the same time, he was starving to write something, anything. Like a famished young man grabbing a spoon, he snatched the pen and dipped it in ink:

After they were translated, Hiranuma’s poems were burned. He was sent to a solitary cell in the prosecutor’s office. On 22 February 1944 the prosecutor indicted him and his cousin as
leaders of the incident. The trial began on 31 March, with Judge Ishii Heiyo of the Second Criminal Investigation Department at the Kyoto Regional Court presiding. Judge Ishii found the prisoners
guilty of violating Clause V of the Maintenance of Public Order Act, which stated: ‘Individuals who organize an association with the purpose of changing the forms of state, support such an
association, or consult, instigate or propagandize to implement such a purpose, or act in order to carry out said purpose, will be subject to a sentence of no less than one year, but no greater
than ten years.’ Hiranuma received a sentence of two years. His release date was 30 November 1945, taking into account the 261 days he spent in detention prior to his conviction. He was no
longer free, but he hadn’t ever known how it felt to be free; no Korean was free. Hiranuma stepped into Fukuoka Prison, counting the remaining days of his sentence.

Sugiyama opened the door to the interrogation room. He approached Prisoner 645 stiffly, wanting to appear rock-solid, and sat down across from him. 645’s lips were dry
and cracked, as though they’d been salted. His thin, wrinkled red prisoner uniform, its collar threadbare, looked like a piece of dirty, cast-away cloth.

‘645! You brought this in with you.’ Sugiyama tossed a leather-bound book onto the desk. Its title,
The Complete New Testament and Psalms
, was embossed in gold on the black
leather cover.

With trembling hands, Prisoner 645 grabbed the book and inhaled its scent of leather.

Sugiyama snapped, ‘This was allowed in only because it’s in Japanese!’

645 flipped through the book like a starving child. The thin pages of the Bible fluttered. He found the page he was looking for and read feverishly:

He was a different person when he lifted his head; he was no longer haggard or nervous. His gaze was peaceful. Who had consoled him? What had brought him peace?

Sugiyama took his hand off the club by his waist. ‘Unbelievably foolish. Believing in God in times like these . . .’

‘It’s better than not believing in anything.’

Sugiyama shook his head. In his mind, God was merely an excuse. The powerful killed and launched wars in His name and the weak closed their eyes to injustice, telling themselves it was
God’s way. ‘I would think it’s better to believe in yourself before God.’

‘I believe in God in order to believe in myself.’

‘So you’re not seditious. You’re just stupid.’

‘If believing in God is stupid, then you are, too. You believe in God, just like me.’

Sugiyama was suddenly afraid that he might tumble into the darkness of 645’s eyes. ‘I’ve never believed in God. Not for one second!’ He slammed his club onto the table,
shattering the dry air.

645 flinched, but forged on. ‘You hate God as much as I love Him. Or maybe you actually hate Him more than that. We each love or hate God in our own ways. If He didn’t exist there
would be no reason for you to hate Him.’

Sugiyama didn’t want to get tangled in showy sophistry. ‘Maybe that’s true. God may exist. But not here. Because this is Fukuoka Prison. If God existed here, then He’s
not loving. He’s cold and cruel. Because He let you live. Here, staying alive is a curse.’

‘No matter where you are, no matter which side you’re on, being alive is a blessing.’

Sugiyama gave him a sharp look. ‘Don’t yammer about death to me. Even I don’t know about death, and I spent my life with an arm around it.’

‘I’m not talking about death, I’m talking about life.’

Sugiyama’s eyes burned red. The young man’s calm stare and the guard’s heated gaze met in the air, tussling silently. ‘I read a poem of yours. Since you said the poem was
the road to understanding your truth, I figured the quickest route would be to read it. But you lied. There was nothing to be found in your poem. It was the weak, emotional drivel of an immature
girl.’

The young man’s brow furrowed.

Sugiyama felt triumphant, believing that he’d hurt Prisoner 645’s pride. But the lump of emotion he’d sensed when he read ‘Prologue’ remained steadfast. Feigning
calm, he said, ‘I did think of one thing when I read your poem.’

Prisoner 645 looked up at him.

Sugiyama hesitated a moment. ‘You don’t need to believe in something like God.’