One Man's Justice (20 page)

The blossom came and went on the cherry trees. Takuya recalled the belt of cherry trees in full bloom around the headquarters building. Shirasaka had undoubtedly finished winding up the affairs of Western Regional Command and returned to his hometown. Takuya had been on the run for twelve months now, although it felt much longer.

The two men who wanted him to steal matches did not approach him again. The trees and bushes on both sides of the road were flush with the green of spring, and the air around the road through the hills was alive with birdsong.

Prices ran wild on the black market. The same large bottle of sake that had cost thirteen yen in February was now, two months later, selling for one hundred and nine yen. In the same time, a monthly newspaper subscription went from eight yen to twelve yen fifty sen, and a postcard costing fifteen sen had shot up to fifty sen.

By this stage, it was a struggle to keep up the production of matchboxes with the gradually increasing output of the match factories. Materials were scarce, wood more and more difficult to come by. Often only half the amount of timber ordered was available.

Terasawa made the rounds of the timber dealers, but soon concluded that the supply situation would get worse before it got better, and struck upon the idea of producing his own wooden sheeting. He instructed his workers to erect a makeshift work area beside the warehouse and bought a second-hand sawing-machine. No one knew how he
managed to get it but, before long, loads of rough-sawn pine started to come in by rail.

Near the end of the rainy season, production started on the timber sheeting. The saws whirred and rumbled and pine boards were stacked up one after another, wet and pressed thin to make the material, which would then be dried out in the sun. Soon this new source of materials increased production in the workshop dramatically.

Not a day went by when the trials of Class A war criminals didn't dominate the newspapers. There were also excerpts from Tojo Hideki's response to the prosecutor's questions about the execution of some of Major Doolittle's airmen who had taken part in the first air raid on Tokyo in 1942. Tojo maintained that this raid had been a clear violation of international law because its specific objective had been to slaughter defenceless civilians, including women and children. For this reason, he stated, he had not hesitated to grant his chief of staff, former Field Marshal Sugimoto, permission to execute the captured crewmen. At the same time he insisted that full responsibility for this action lay with himself and no one else. Tojo went on to say that executions of POWs by subordinates on the instructions of their commanding officers had been accepted practice in the Imperial Army, and that holding these men to
account was unjust. However, the reality of the situation was that many officers and lower-ranking soldiers had already been hanged. Tojo's testimony would undoubtedly have no bearing whatsoever on the fate of someone, such as Takuya himself, who had beheaded an American POW.

The articles about the war crimes trials left Takuya depressed, but those about food were equally disheartening. By now food shortages far exceeded what could be safely endured; supplies of rations were an average of twenty days late across the country, and nothing had reached Hokkaido for three months. The economist's prediction of ten million people dying was obviously no exaggeration, and dramatic increases in deaths from starvation were reported in big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, with truckloads of bodies collected every day.

There were no stories of people starving to death in Himeji, but increasing numbers of women and children were going out to the rural areas to barter for food. They took articles of clothing and the like to farming-villages and exchanged them for pitiful amounts of produce.

Amid all this hardship and privation, Terasawa's timber sheet operation led to some unforeseen good fortune for Takuya and the other workers. The scraps and sawdust produced in the process of making the wooden sheets were highly sought-after by salt manufacturers, to use as fuel when boiling sea water to distill salt. After dark, in exchange for the timber scraps, they would secretly deliver bags of salt, a controlled item, to the workshop. Merchants would in turn come offering foodstuffs in exchange for salt, and occasionally farmers living nearby brought in vegetables or
beans to barter. Small though the quantities were, Terasawa would then pass on to his workers some of the food or salt he had acquired.

There were times, as Takuya worked away hauling matchboxes, when he thought that maybe he could live the rest of his life like this, without anyone ever discovering his true identity. During the eight months he had pushed the handcart between Terasawa's workshop and the match factory in Shirahama, never venturing beyond that five-kilometre stretch of road, the only people who had ever called out to him had been black-market dealers, and he had never once felt in danger.

As summer came, the sun's rays became more intense. Day by day Takuya plodded along the road in front of the handcart, breathing heavily as beads of sweat formed on his brow and trickled down his neck. On rainy days he covered his cargo with a canvas tarpaulin, put on a raincoat and trudged off toward Shirahama. By now the precise location of every pothole and exposed stone in the road was so clear in his mind that he unconsciously avoided the obstacles on his way to and from the match factory.

One drizzly, hot day, just after Takuya had finished making his delivery of boxes, the young worker in charge of the stores led Takuya to a desk at the back of the warehouse. Something about the man's expression was out of the ordinary. When they reached the desk the man went out through a side door, returning a moment later with the factory manager and Kimijima, the former naval petty officer in charge of materials procurement.

When he saw the looks on their faces, Takuya felt
himself flinch. The normally affable factory manager wore a particularly stern expression, his eyes betraying pent-up anger. A feeling of foreboding came over Takuya. His first thought was that somehow the men in the match factory had discovered his real identity, and now the manager was going to question him about his past. The blackness of his hairline stood out in stark relief against his deeply furrowed brow.

The manager sat down and began to explain the situation. On Sunday, two days earlier, Takuya had made a delivery of matchboxes to the factory, and on Monday, when stock was taken, it was discovered that ten packs, each holding ten boxes, were missing. He said that the old caretaker had opened the warehouse door to let Takuya in to unload his boxes on Sunday, but other than that no one had access to the storage area, which naturally made Takuya the prime suspect.

Relieved to know that his identity was not at issue, Takuya protested vehemently against the unfairness of the manager's allegations. Obviously, it was because he was just another shabbily dressed labourer that he was the object of this ridiculous accusation.

The manager ignored Takuya's protestations of innocence, repeating that if he owned up to the crime nothing would be done. The young clerk glared at Takuya as if he were a criminal.

Continuing to shake his head in denial, Takuya had a sinking feeling that this would end up in the hands of the police. If he were to be questioned as a suspected thief, there would be an investigation into whether he had any prior
convictions, and the police would no doubt go through their wanted posters as part of that process. The next step would inevitably be identification and arrest. To have the police involved was obviously the last thing he wanted, but Takuya couldn't bear the thought of being suspected of stealing from anyone.

The factory manager was unshaken in his insistence that Takuya must have done it. Takuya shook his head vigorously in denial.

An uncomfortable silence followed, then the factory manager glared at Takuya and walked out of the warehouse.

Takuya too went outside. He didn't want to leave knowing that they still thought that he was the culprit. Thinking of the look in the eyes of the manager and the clerk made him so humiliated and incensed that he trembled with emotion.

‘Don't worry about it,' said Kimijima from behind.

Takuya turned to face him. He felt a sudden desire to tell this man everything about his past. Of all people, Kimijima would surely understand his situation; he would know that he wasn't the sort of man who would commit such a stupid crime.

‘I may be pushing a handcart these days, but …' was as far as Takuya went before clamming up.

‘I know what you're saying. I know you're no labourer. You've got a family and a proper job back in Okinawa. Not that those things count for much these days. At least pulling a cart is a job, and brings in money to buy food,' said Kimijima, trying his best to be comforting.

If only he could open up to Kimijima and at least have this man understand both his innocence and the desperate nature of his situation, thought Takuya.

He took a couple of steps toward Kimijima and tried to bring himself to say something to him, but his lips wouldn't move. Kimijima certainly wasn't the sort to blab to the police, but he might tell people close to him, who might in turn tell others, and before long the police would be bound to pick up on the story.

Deep down he still wanted to confide in Kimijima, but he was relieved that he had held his tongue, at least on this occasion. Looking to Kimijima for support made him feel pathetic.

‘Suspecting you this way without a shred of evidence … it's just ridiculous,' said Kimijima with a trace of anger in his voice.

Takuya stopped in front of the office and bowed his head to Kimijima, then wrapped the hand towel round his face and put on his mountaineering hat.

He stepped behind the handle of the cart and started to push it out of the yard. Before he had gone half a dozen steps he felt tears rolling down his cheeks. He asked himself why he was crying. He hadn't done anything to justify being suspected of this theft and had done his best to deny it, so there was nothing for him to regret. What was he so sad about? Was it the fact that he was someone who had graduated from university and gone on to reach the rank of lieutenant in the Imperial Army, only to become a suspected criminal, a labourer with a hand towel wrapped around his face, pushing a cart?

Recently he had realised that since coming to Himeji he had gradually changed into someone quite different from his previous self. One day, as he was hauling his cart along the road, he had noticed a woman, probably out shopping, walking a few paces in front of him. She was carrying a makeshift bag, made from what had once been the Japanese national flag. It appeared that she was using it to carry potatoes, but when Takuya saw this, rather than feeling anger, he had just looked away. Maybe he was starting to change with the times, too, like the young woman walking hand in hand with the US serviceman. Smoking American military-issue cigarettes no longer felt the least bit strange. All that remained was the fear of being caught by the American military. Maybe the tears were a sign of how delicate his nerves had become after all this time on the run.

When he got back to the workshop he said nothing to Terasawa about the accusations. He had explained about the two black-market dealers approaching him on the road and trying to get him to steal from the match factory, so if he told Terasawa about the stolen matches there was a chance his boss would think that he had given in to temptation and actually committed the crime. Furthermore, the lack of evidence meant it was highly unlikely that the match-factory manager would ever mention the incident to Terasawa.

The next day, Takuya hauled a load of boxes to the match factory as usual. Requesting a change to another task would only increase the match-factory manager's suspicions of him, and if he told Terasawa about what had happened,
in order to be relieved of his delivery duties, the odds were good that his boss would take steps to protest Takuya's innocence. Terasawa's connections with the police being what they were, it was possible that he might even ask them to lend a hand in clearing Takuya's name.

Definitely, the right way to proceed was to continue doing deliveries, he told himself. To guard against further accusations, every time he arrived at the match factory he now stopped in front of the office and waited until one of the workers came out to escort him. When he went into the warehouse to unload his boxes, he always asked the stores clerk to accompany him, and if for one reason or another the clerk had to go back inside Takuya waited outside, leaning on the empty handcart, until the man came back and verified that everything was in order. Nonplussed by this approach, the clerk was sometimes sarcastically servile, but Takuya kept his replies short and impassive and remained unperturbed. Sometimes he bumped into the factory manager, and when their eyes met the manager just kept walking, a decidedly uncomfortable look on his face.

The power cuts were as frequent as ever, so to maintain production levels they started operating the machines before dawn. Takuya got up earlier, too, to lend a hand carrying the pressed timber sheets and the striking-paper. This summer there were many more fireflies than the previous year, and little specks of light flickered everywhere around the workshop.

The heat abated and the first signs of autumn appeared.

One day in mid-September, coming back from his deliveries and wanting to take a short rest, Takuya pulled his
empty cart up the embankment between the road and the river. The breeze felt refreshing against his skin, which was moist with sweat from his toil, and a panoramic view of the countryside opened up in front of him.

As he sat down against the cart and wiped his face and neck with his hand towel, he spotted something blue down in the expanse of reeds between the river and the embankment. It looked like a pair of trousers. Straining to see through the rustling reeds, he made out a pair of feet protruding from the trouser legs. Maybe a young couple was there, trying to enjoy themselves away from prying eyes. As the reeds swayed and hummed in the next strong gust of wind Takuya got a clearer view of the blue cloth of the trousers, then he caught sight of the man's shirt and the back of his head. He was obviously alone.

Takuya lit a cigarette. The reeds bent over again with the next gust of wind and the man lying in the reeds was exposed to view once more.

Each time the wind blew strongly enough to move the reeds, Takuya found his eyes drawn to the man. The sweat on his face was almost dry by now. In the distance he could see a train slowly pulling out of the station just this side of Himeji castle. There was no one to be seen anywhere near him. The only person visible was some distance away along the embankment, a woman dressed in a dark work kimono, bent over picking wild vegetables.

Maybe this man had been doing the same and was taking a rest before starting again. Takuya remembered how he used to pick bamboo shoots and parsley in the woods and fields around his village, and thought that if there
were something edible down among those reeds, perhaps he should go and pick some for himself.

Hat in hand, Takuya got to his feet and walked down the embankment and on to a little path through the sea of reeds. They were so high that each time the wind blew, the fluffy tops brushed against his face.

Before he had taken many steps along the winding path a faint sickly-sweet smell brought him instinctively to a halt. The black, swollen feet of a dead body were poking out of the blue trousers. From a distance it might have seemed as though the man was taking an afternoon nap, but the terrible smell of decaying flesh wafting in Takuya's direction was unmistakable.

Waving his hand in front of his nose at the stench, Takuya watched as the wind flailed the reeds against the man's body. The man lay face down, his shirt pushed up to reveal the reddish-black skin on his back.