One Man's Justice (27 page)

Everything he saw made him feel uncomfortable, as did the thought that he was now thirty-seven years old, with the prime of his life behind him. Merely looking at the streets and the people in them made him angry.

Just after nine o'clock that night he boarded the express train bound for Uno, from where he would take the ferry across the Inland Sea to Takamatsu in Shikoku, and change again to the train for Uwajima. In his pocket was an envelope holding the money he had been given by the Demobilised Soldiers' Bureau to cover the cost of returning home.

All the seats in the train were clean, and with few people on board he had no problem finding a place to sit. In the row in front of Takuya, a young woman sat slumped against the shoulder of the man sitting next to her, and diagonally across from him on the other side of the carriage a middle-aged man poured himself a glass of sake. Outside, neon lights lit up the streets beside the tracks.

Takuya wiped the lenses of his glasses, clouded by the steamy air inside the carriage. His short-sightedness seemed to have worsened in the last few years.

Leaning against the metal window frame, Takuya closed his eyes. His younger sister had missed her chance to find a husband when she was still in her twenties and had married a widower the previous spring, while his brother had married three years earlier and now had one young child. In her last letter, Takuya's mother had recommended that he get married as soon as he left prison, even going as far as to enclose a young woman's photograph for him to consider, but he had sent it straight back without comment. Marriage held no appeal for him. All he really felt like doing at the moment was lying down and resting on a tatami-matted floor.

From time to time he opened his eyes and gazed drowsily out of the window.

Eventually the first signs of dawn came and the sun started to rise.

Takuya left his seat to wash his face and clean his teeth in the washroom at the end of the carriage. When the train reached Osaka station he stepped down on to the platform and bought a boxed lunch at the nearest kiosk. Trains came
in and departed from the other platforms, with waves of people rushing up and down the stairs.

As the train approached the outer suburbs of Kobe, for a brief moment Fujisaki's face flashed in front of his eyes. The train rumbled on through Akashi and Kakogawa.

Thoughts of Terasawa and his wife came to his mind. Takuya had sent them two or three postcards in his early years in Sugamo and had received letters of reply with gifts of rice crackers, but their correspondence had dried up several years ago.

He turned his head to look out of the window again. Fields had been replaced by rows of houses, and Himeji castle had come into view in the distance. It almost seemed to rotate slowly as the train drew nearer on the last curve of track into the city. Heavy grey snow clouds hung low in the sky.

The idea of returning home was less and less attractive. If he went back to his parents' house, his mother would probably weep at the sight of him and his brother and sister would probably be just as tearful. He would have to go and pay his respects at his father's grave and talk to the relatives and friends who would gather to welcome him back. The prospect of all this was still annoying, something he preferred to put off as long as possible.

The train slowed as it approached the station. Takuya took his bag down from the luggage rack above his head, put on his overcoat and went to the door.

As he stepped down on to the platform he saw that the station had been completely refurbished, with new benches and kiosks on each platform. He walked out on to the street.
The area in front of the station was packed with shops and large buildings. All the roads looked in good condition, and a wide tar-sealed boulevard stretched from the station to the castle's soaring walls. The green of the pine trees surrounding the castle stood out in stark contrast to the gleaming-white plaster walls of the donjons and towers, and the light brown of the stone buttresses provided a distinctive outline against the surrounding scenery.

Gazing at the White Egret Castle as he walked, Takuya headed along the road beside the railway tracks, and crossed over them at the first intersection. Before long he passed the employment agency he had visited years ago. Still on the same spot, it was now a larger, permanent structure, surrounded by rows of houses probably built as part of a municipal housing project. There were new houses and shops on both sides of all the streets he passed, so Terasawa's factory would have been enlarged and the old house knocked down and replaced.

Takuya walked down the tarred road until he got as far as the pachinko parlour, where he stopped. Almost ten years had gone by since he had left Himeji. Terasawa and his wife would be old by now, or they might even have died while Takuya was in prison. Their niece would have been adopted as a daughter, then would have married and taken over the business.

Takuya tried to imagine what meeting Terasawa would be like after all these years. All they would have to talk about would be how things were in the past, and once that was over conversation would quickly dry up. He had sent Terasawa a postcard expressing his gratitude and had
received a reply, so maybe that was where he should leave it. Indeed, if they had adopted Teruko and she had married and started a family, she would probably feel obliged to offer little more than a perfunctory welcome. The prospect of having to make conversation with Teruko's husband hardly inspired enthusiasm.

He took a deep breath before turning round and walking back down the road toward the station. The idea of getting off the train and visiting Terasawa seemed ludicrous now. That part of his life was too long ago, over and done with. As he stood at the railway crossing a Tokyo-bound train gradually accelerated away from the platform and past him to the right. As the last carriage passed, the barrier at the crossing lifted and Takuya walked back across the tracks and down the road to the station.

Inside the station, he went over to a kiosk and bought a box of matches. An ukiyoe-style picture adorned the label on the top of the box. When he turned the box over he found the name of a match factory in Shirahama, Himeji, printed in small characters. The matchsticks had a healthy lustre, and their vermilion heads were all the same shape and size.

He struck one. The match didn't break and the head ignited cleanly at the first attempt. Enticed by the paraffin soaked into the wood, the flame slowly moved along the stick. It was a small, brilliant light.

He blew out the match and tossed it into a trash can, then looked up at the big timetable above the ticket window to find the next train heading west.

AKIRA YOSHIMURA was born in 1927. He is the prize-winning, best-selling author of twenty novels and collections of short stories. His is the president of Japan's writer's union and a member of International PEN. His first novel translated into English was
Shipwrecks
(Canongate 2001), which was runner-up in the prestigious UK award for Japanese writing, the
Sasakawa Foundation Prize
, 2002.

MARK EALEY is a senior lecturer in modern Japanese history and Japanese to English translation. He has also translated
Japan of the East, Japan of the West
by Ambassador Ogura Kazuo and Yoshimura's
Shipwrecks
.

“Meticulously researched …
One Man's Justice
is the journey of a man forced to hide, a man surrounded by people scared, and slowly ashamed of being linked to a war criminal – the transformation of a proud lieutenant of the Imperial Army into a scared human being.”
Associated Press

“… a provocative exploration of the effects of war on the human soul.”
San Jose Mercury News

“A deft, accurate writer, Yoshimura captures a man in limbo with unnerving insight and definition … neither side is spared: the Japanese with their medical experiments on US prisoners, the victorious US and their senselessly violent post-war treatment of the occupied inhabitants.”
Christian Science Monitor

“The themes explored here are disturbing for their complexity and their comment on patriotism and war … [Yoshimura] paints an excellent picture of the ambivalence of the Japanese people in defeat and the devastation of their homeland.”
Booklist

“This is a powerful novel based on facts, a cross between
All Quiet on the Western Front
and
The Fugitive.”
What's on in London

“Yoshimura has extensively researched both the air war and the Tokyo trials, but the heart of the novel describes Takuya's trials on the run in a burned-out, half-starving, demoralized country. The physical and psychological details of that ordeal, presented in a clean, spare style, are telling.”
LA Times

“There's no doubt that Yoshimura is a very considerable talent. One looks forward to seeing more of his scrupulous, intense fiction in English translation.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Yoshimura creates a window into the life of ordinary citizens struggling with destruction, poverty and shame. And as peace settles in, he shows us how even the darkest hatred fades to leave behind ordinary men struggling with their pasts.”
San Diego Union-Tribune