Tokyo Year Zero (15 page)

Just like we have come today for Kodaira Yoshio –

Nothing moves on the streets of Shibuya. It is almost noon on the hottest day of the year. Nothing moves outside the house in Hanezawamachi. Ninety-one degrees in the shade now. Room #2 are here as back-up for Room #1. Pairs of men on every corner. Down every alleyway. In every doorway. Inspector Kai is in command. Inspector Kai has his whistle in his hand. Inspector Kai looks at his watch again.
Chiku-taku
. Inspector Kai puts his whistle to his lips –

Through the front door. Up the steps. Into the second floor room where Kodaira Yoshio is sleeping naked beneath a mosquito net, his wife covering her breasts, reaching for their child –

Kodaira Yoshio dragged out from under the net by his feet onto the mats and back down the stairs –

Kodaira pulling on his trousers. Kodaira pulling on his shirt. Kodaira buttoning up his trousers. Buttoning up his shirt as he goes, putting on his army boots –

In the back of the car.
Another middle-aged man
. Kodaira rubs the top of his skull. Kodaira scratches his balls. In the back of the car.
Face gaunt
. Kodaira blinks. Kodaira rubs his eyes. In the back of the car.
Hair thinning
. Kodaira grins. Kodaira laughs. In the back of the car.
Kodaira looks like Kai, Kodaira looks like Kanehara
and he looks like me…

Like me…

There are press all over the road and the steps outside the Atago police station.
Kodaira accepts a cigarette
. The car turns back onto Sakurada-dōri and then right onto Meguro-dori.
Kodaira chats about the weather
. The car turns right again onto Yamate-dōri and then follows the Meguro River along to the Meguro police station –

Kodaira speaks with maturity. He speaks with authority –

This is where Kodaira Yoshio will be interrogated –

Kodaira is grinning now. Kodaira laughing –

This is where Kodaira will confess.

But the Meguro police are angry. The Meguro police have been used for legwork since the two bodies were found in Shiba Park. Now the Meguro police are being kicked out of their own offices. In the dark and out of the loop, the Meguro police sulk and sweat –

Two men from Room #1 take Kodaira up the stairs –

They give him tea. They give him a cigarette –

Then they leave him to drink and to smoke –

They leave him to wait and to think.

Chief Inspector Kanehara, Inspector Kai and the rest of Room #1 take over another office down the corridor, clearing desks and emptying drawers, moving files and stealing pencils –

The Meguro police just watching and cursing, left sulking and sweating, in the dark and out of the loop –

I take an empty chair at the back by the window as Kanehara and Kai outline the strategy for the interview, the questions they will ask and the questions they won’t –

Then Adachi is back, back with a telegram in his hand and a smile on his lips. ‘This just got here from Nikkō. He’s killed before.’

‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember… ?’

Kai is on his feet now. Kai saying, ‘Come on! Let’s go!’

‘Did you find that file, inspector? The Miyazaki file…’

‘Slowly, slowly,’ smiles Kanehara. ‘Step by step.’

*

I follow Adachi, Kanehara and Kai. Down the corridor. Into the interrogation room. No one invites me. No one refuses me. I sit by the door. I say nothing. The room is bright. Bare but for a table and
six chairs. Adachi, Kanehara and Kai sit across the table from Kodaira, the stenographer to one side with a pen and some paper –

Kodaira Yoshio with his hands on the table, smiling –

Inspector Kai asks him, ‘When were you born?’

‘In the thirty-eighth year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji,’ says Kodaira. ‘In the first month, on the twenty-eighth day.’

That is the twenty-eighth of January, 1905 …

Kai asks, ‘And where were you born?’

‘Tochigi Prefecture,’ says Kodaira.

‘Where in Tochigi Prefecture?’

‘Kami Tsuga-gun, Nikkō-chō, Ōaza-Hosō.’

‘Are you the eldest son of your family?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m the sixth son.’

‘Is your father still alive?’

‘No.’

‘How did your father die?’

‘Brain haemorrhage.’

‘And when did he die?’

‘Ten years ago.’

Kai nods. Kai asks, ‘What kind of work did your father do?’

‘Well, he used to have land, a farm and an inn,’ says Kodaira. ‘But he drank heavily, bought women and gambled and lost it all.’

‘So he was a bankrupt?’ asks Kai. ‘Unemployed?’

‘No,’ says Kodaira. ‘He always worked. His last job was working as an oil-feeder at an iron-railings factory…’

Kai asks, ‘What about your eldest brother?’

‘He’s dead too,’ says Kodaira.

‘When did he die?’

‘This year.’

‘And what was his job?’

‘Nothing steady,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘He used to work in the copper-smelting factory in Nikkō. Then he left that and came to Tokyo but I don’t know what he did here. I never saw him in Tokyo.’

Kai asks, ‘So who is the head of your family now?’

‘It’ll be my other elder brother, I suppose,’ shrugs Kodaira. ‘But I never see them. I never really go back there now.’

‘But you still have family in Nikkō-chō ?’

Kodaira nods. Kodaira says, ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s talk a little bit about you,’ says Inspector Kai now.
‘You were born in Nikkō–chō? Is that where you went to school?’

‘I graduated from school in Nikkō,’ says Kodaira. ‘Yes.’

‘And then what did you do?’ asks Kai. ‘After school?’

‘I left home and I moved down here to Tokyo.’

‘And so when was that? How old were you?’

‘I was about fourteen years old, I think.’

‘So that would be when?’ calculates Inspector Kai. ‘About the seventh year of Taishō. Does that sound about right?’

‘It sounds right,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But I can’t remember exactly. I know I was about fourteen though.’

‘And so where did you work?’

‘At a steel works in Ikebukuro,’ he says. ‘The Toyo Metals Corporation. But I didn’t work there for very long…’

‘Why was that?’ asks Kai. ‘Were you fired?’

‘No,’ he laughs. ‘I’d found a better job.’

‘Which was what? Where?’

‘The Kameya Grocery.’

‘The one in Ginza?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a very famous store,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘And so how long did you work there?’

‘Just two years.’

‘Why?’

‘I just got bored of working at the Grocery,’ says Kodaira. ‘The hours were too long, the pay was too poor and the work itself was just fetching and carrying, lifting boxes and so on…’

Kai asks, ‘And so what did you do then?’

‘I went back to Nikkō.’

‘Back home?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so what year is this now?’ calculates Kai again. ‘When you left Tokyo? Three years later? Tenth year of Taishō?’

‘Round about then,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘Yes.’

‘And did you have a job back home?’

‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘I worked for the Furukawa Company.’

‘This is the big copper-smelting works, yes?’

‘Where my brother had worked, yes.’

‘How long did you work there?’

‘I’ve worked there twice now,’ says Kodaira. ‘The first time I
worked there until I enlisted.’

‘When was that?’

‘That was the sixth month of the twelfth year of Taishō.’

‘1923 then,’ says Kai. ‘Before the Great Earthquake.’

‘Yes,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘I had a lucky escape.’

‘Were you in the army or the navy?’

‘I volunteered for the navy,’ he says. ‘And I enlisted in the Marine Corps at Yokosuka.’

‘As what?’

‘First I was trained as an engineer on the
Yakumo
training ship, then I was stationed on the warships
Yamashiro, Kongō
and
Manshu
and I was also on the
I-Gō
submarine.’

‘You were always an engineer?’

‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Later I was an actual fighting marine. I was a member of the Ryojun Defence Force and then with the Rikusen Tai marines stationed in Shandong.’

‘And so you saw combat then?’

‘Of course,’ he laughs.

‘So you must have fought during the Jinan Incident?’

‘Of course,’ he says again. ‘During the Jinan Incident itself I was part of the initial assault on the Northern Railway Depot and then I was part of the defence of the Nissei Bōseki Company…’

‘And so you must have made a number of kills?’

‘Naturally,’ he smiles. ‘In Jinan I bayoneted six Chinese soldiers to death and then there were others…’

‘How long did you serve?’

‘I served my six years and then I was discharged as a petty officer, first class, and I received the White Paulownia medal of the Order of the Rising Sun.’

Inspector Kai says, ‘Congratulations.’

Kodaira bows his head.

Inspector Kai hands Kodaira a cigarette and then we all stand up and leave him to smoke –

In peace…

In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Adachi stares at the wall; Kanehara reads the telegram from Nikkō; Kai smokes –

Then Chief Inspector Adachi turns to me and smiles and asks, ‘You served in China too, didn’t you, inspector?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I was in the army.’

‘And how old are you now?’

‘I’m forty-one years old.’

‘The same age then.’

*

The light is already beginning to fade now. The shadows falling from the wall to the floor. Kodaira has finished his cigarette. Kodaira is looking at his fingernails. I sit back down by the door again. I say nothing again. Adachi, Kanehara and Kai sit back opposite Kodaira –

Inspector Kanehara leans forward in his chair and asks him, ‘So when you were discharged, you went back to Nikkō again?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I went back to work for Furukawa.’

‘And how was civilian life after the navy?’

‘It was good for a time…’

‘And why was that?’

‘I got a wife.’

Kanehara asks, ‘And so this was your first wife?’

‘Yes. My first.’

‘Not your present wife?’

‘No,’ says Kodaira.

‘So how did you meet your first wife?’

‘The manager of the factory introduced her to me,’ he says. ‘She was his sister’s child, his niece.’

‘How old were you both?’

‘She was twenty-one and I was maybe twenty-eight.’

‘And so what happened?’

‘We lived together for about six months,’ he says. ‘But then she went back to her parents.’

‘Why was that?’

‘She went to help them plant rice but she never came back.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because her family wanted me to divorce her.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I’d had an affair with another woman and this woman had become pregnant.’

‘So you must have been happy then to divorce your wife?’

There is something now, something in his eyes…

‘No,’ he says. ‘I was humiliated.’

In his eyes something flashes, in his eyes…

‘And so what did you do?’

Torchlight in the dark…

‘You already know.’

Death…

Inspector Kanehara looks down at the piece of paper on the table before him. Kanehara nods and then says, ‘But please tell us again. In your own words. Tell us what happened…’

‘I went back to their house.’

‘Whose house was this?’

‘Her family’s house.’

‘When was this?’

‘Midnight on the first day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the reign of the Emperor Shōwa…’

July 1, 1932… ‘

And…’

‘I left my own house at nine o’clock in the morning. I went over to the house of my wife’s family. I checked the house out carefully in the daylight and then I waited until nightfall.’

‘And…’

‘I broke into their house at midnight.’

‘And…’

‘I went from room to room.’

‘And…’

‘I hit them as they slept.’

‘With?’

‘An iron bar.’

‘You still remember the iron bar?’ asks Inspector Kanehara. ‘Can you describe this iron bar for me?’

‘Of course, I can remember it,’ says Kodaira. ‘The iron bar was about eighty centimetres long, five centimetres in diameter and it weighed about four kilograms.’

‘How many of her family did you hit?’

‘I think it was either six or seven.’

‘How many did you kill?’

‘Just her father.’

Inspector Kanehara nods. ‘And so you were sentenced to fifteen years by the Tokyo High Court in February 1933…’

‘Fifteen years,’ agrees Kodaira. ‘But later it was reduced.’

‘So how long were you in prison then?’

‘About six and a half years.’

‘In Kosuge? In Tokyo?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you were released under the Imperial Amnesty of 1940?’

‘Yes,’ says Kodaira. ‘By the mercy of the Emperor.’

‘And so what did you do upon your release?’

‘I went to the hot springs in Kusatsu.’

‘How long did you stay there?’

‘About half a year.’

‘Did you work?’

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I was recuperating from prison.’

‘And then you came back to work in Tokyo?’

‘I worked as a boiler-man, yes.’

‘For which companies?’

‘Four or five,’ he says. ‘But I can’t remember the names of them all. This was before I went to Saipan.’

‘How did you get that job?’

‘I was recruited.’

‘Despite your criminal record.’

Kodaira Yoshio shrugs. Kodaira smiles. He says, ‘They never asked me and I never mentioned it.’

‘And so what kind of work did you do in Saipan?’

‘I worked in construction, building a runway.’

‘And how long did you work in Saipan?’

‘I was lucky again,’ he says. ‘I left in the April of 1942.’

‘And so you came back to work in Tokyo again?’

‘I worked for Nihon Steel in Kamata, yes.’

‘And for how long was that?’

‘About half a year.’

‘And then?’

‘I think it was then I worked for Suzuki Seihyo in Ōmori,’ says Kodaira. ‘Maintenance work on the refrigerators.’