Rules of the Hunt (18 page)
The condemned men's last meal was rice, chopped pickles, miso soup, and
broiled fish.
They drank
sake
.
They spent their last day writing letters and praying.
Half an hour before the official time of execution, the condemned men
were brought to the death house.
Each
man was handcuffed to two guards.
In the center of the execution chamber was a platform reached by thirteen
steps.
Four ropes made from one-inch
manila
hemp hung from the gallows above.
The hangman's knot had been greased with
wax.
Before each prisoner ascended the
steps, his handcuffs were removed and his arms pinioned to his sides with
two-inch-wide body straps.
The final climb was slow.
At the
top, on the platform, the ankles of each prisoner were secured with a one-inch
strap.
The noose was then placed around
the neck with the knot directly behind the left ear.
The traps were sprung, the sharp crack echoing throughout the death house
and across the prison yard.
The executions took place in two groups.
General Shin Namaka was in the second group.
He entered the death house at 12:19
A.M.
.
At 12:38, he was pronounced officially dead
by the senior medical officer.
Each corpse was transported to Yokohama Municipal Crematorium, placed in
an iron firebox, and incinerated.
Afterward,
the ashes were scattered to the winds.
The dream faded.
In its place
was
emptiness and despair and then
a grim determination to survive and never to forget, whatever the cost.
Kei Namaka, tall, well-built, muscular from his daily workouts at the
dojo
, and looking a decade younger than
his age, uttered a terrible, anguished cry.
He fell to his knees, his eyes wet with tears, and sobbed.
He had had the dream countless times over the years.
The
been Sugamo Prison.
The whole
development, which included a hotel, aquarium, offices, and a large shopping
center, was no longer called Sugamo.
After an open competition, the name
Just a simple inscription on a boulder placed in a small outdoor sitting
area at the foot of the
executed.
*
*
*
*
*
When Kei and Fumio Namaka had first started their entrepreneurial
activities, administration was comparatively simple.
Fumio would scout for a victim and then Kei, bigger, stronger, faster,
and decidedly dumber — though far from stupid — would dot
he
actual deed.
It was a simple system and
administratively undemanding.
No
paperwork was required.
Counting the
proceeds of armed robbery and related activities could scarcely be called
financial planning, and personnel management was nothing more than the two
brothers agreeing between themselves.
That was no problem.
The two were
devoted to each other and painfully aware that they had not one else to turn
to.
Further, their roles were clearly
defined by age and natural attributes.
Kei was the official leader, man of action, and decision-maker.
Fumio was the loyal second in command, the thinker,
and, quickly and discreetly and in absolute privacy, and in such a manner that
Kei was not really aware of the process, told Kei what decisions to make.
The Namaka brothers were a pair of ragged, street-smart hoods in the late
1940s.
As he grew older, Fumio found
that more and more he recalled those early postwar days.
They were the benchmark of the scale of their achievement.
So much from so little; so
much from virtually nothing.
They
were driven by desperation, for the immediate postwar period was indeed a
desperate time.
Their initial capital, Fumio Namaka remembered vividly, had come from a
major in the Imperial Army.
It had been
late January, 1949, a month after the executions.
The little family was shunned by many who
were fearful of the imagined wrath of the occupation forces.
Mother was seriously ill.
The brothers were near-starving and
desperate.
They were living in a bomb
site, really little more than a hole in the ground with a roof made of
flattened U.S. Army ration cans.
Priorities were elemental.
Whereas
before and during the war, people had been occupied with such issues as
strategy, patriotism, social standing, and career prospects, by 1949 the issue
was survival.
You did whatever you had to to make it through the day.
You dressed in rags and castoffs, you slept
in ruins or worse, and you ate anything you could.
Pride was irrelevant.
Social status was a joke.
Moral standards and ethics were an
abstraction.
You did what was necessary and you lived.
You stood on principle and you died.
You killed if you had to.
After a
while you got used to it and you killed because lethal force worked.
It got results.
It was effective.
There was a thriving trade in Japanese Imperial Army militaria.
Two hundred thousand occupation troops wanted
war souvenirs and several million Imperial Army veterans wanted to eat.
The action came together in street markets
around
The major was of the samurai class and had been a member of the Imperial
General Staff after distinguished service — initially in Manchuria and
subsequently in the invasion of
The latter exercise had cost him his left arm
above the elbow after a British .303 bullet had shattered the bone into
multiple fractures, but it had added to his chestful of medals and gained him
promotion to the staff, where he was highly regarded.
More medals soon followed.
Promotion was a certainty, until
surrender.
Selling his medals one by one had kept the major alive.
Now, on that freezing cold day in January
1949, his medals were gone and he was down to his last item of value, the long
sword, or
katana
,
that
had been in his family since the eighteenth century.
It was a blade signed by Tamaki
Kiyomaro.
It was bought for a fraction
of its true worth by one of MacArthur's bodyguards.
Inwardly, the major died a little as he sold it, but there was no
choice.
He and his family had to
eat.
Everything else of value had been
sold.
His wife had earned some food and
a little military scrip from sleeping with members of the occupation forces,
but her looks had gone and there was too much competition.
They were starving.
There was no other choice.
He had to sell the last item of value they
owned.
The purchaser of the major's
katana
was not short of compassion and, by the standards of the time, paid generously
for the blade.
The exchange and the
amount paid caught the attention of Fumio Namaka.
Undersized and limping, he tended to be
either ignored or dismissed as insignificant, and, as such, he was an ideal
scout.
The brothers had been searching for a worthy target for several
days.
The soldier's generosity toward
the destitute major clinched their choice of victim.
He had paid not in restricted military scrip,
which could only be used in designated locations, but in U.S.
dollars
, greenbacks — in 1949 the
hardest, strongest, most desirable currency in the world.
Kei Namaka, skinny but tall for his age, and still, despite the hunger,
reasonably fit and strong, followed the major home through the back streets and
when he stopped to relieve himself in a deserted section, hit him with a rock.
The major fell to the ground as Fumio limped up.
The two brothers looked at each other, and
then Fumio cut the unconscious man's throat with some broken glass.
They had agreed in advance that there would
be no witnesses.
They had owned a knife
but had to sell it to buy food.
The broken
glass did the job adequately but was slow.
It was also messy.
The brothers
did not mind.
They now had more money
than they had ever seen before in their lives.
Suddenly, the Namaka brothers did not just have enough money to buy food;
they had capital.
It was not much, but
it was a beginning.
They were no longer
looking at bare survival.
They could
plan.
And Fumio, crippled and physically
less gifted than his brother, was a natural planner.
He was gifted with a strategic sense, a
decided cunning, and a talent for manipulating his fellows.
In short, he had brains.
When they returned to their shelter with a little boiled rice and some
sake
to celebrate, they found that their
mother was dead.
*
*
*
*
*
Over the decades they had evolved into the Namaka Corporation, a vast
corporate network of interlocking companies whose interests had spanned the
length and breadth of
most of the developed world, and much of the third world.
The core operational group of the Namaka Corporation was not the
Torishimariyakukai
— Board of Directors — which was really about public image and strategic
alliances and was kept well away from detail.
The real planning and decisions were made by the more conveniently named
General Affairs Department, or Somu Bu.
The Somu Bu had served the Namaka brothers well.
Nearly three decades after its creation, it
now consisted of Kei and Fumio and six handpicked, seasoned
buchos
— department heads — of
unquestioned loyalty.
In the typical corporate world, a
bucho
would not have vice-presidential status, but in the case of the Namaka
Corporation there were obvious security implications, which dictated a tighter
vertical structure.
*
*
*
*
*
The guarded, soundproofed, and electronically swept meeting room of the
Somu Bu of the Namaka Corporation was decidedly luxurious.
Eight overstuffed handmade tan leather executive armchairs were placed
around a boardroom table made from a single piece of handworked wood.
Each chair was embossed with the Namaka crest
in gold.
The chairs at either end of the
table were even larger and more luxurious, with deeper padding and higher
headrests.
The walls were covered in
silk.
Some of Kei Namaka's vast
collection of antique Japanese swords and Western weapons from the same periods
were in illuminated glass cases on the walls.
Underfoot, the carpet was thick and soft.
The six
buchos
rose to their
feet and bowed deeply as the Namaka brothers entered.
Bows in
the informal, the formal, and the slow, deep,
right-down-to-the-waist kind known as
saikeirei
,
used for the Emperor and the less democratic
yakuza
bosses.
The bows delivered to the Namaka brothers were of the
saikeirei
class.
ranking, and the brothers were not known for their democratic approach to
discipline.
Kei entered the room first through the special padded double doors which
led directly to the luxurious office the brothers shared.
Fumio followed, at a respectful distance, limping and supported by a
stick.
He had not aged as well as his
brother.
His hair had gone completely
silver and he looked as if he could easily have been in his mid-sixties.
But his age gave him a dignity and gravitas
that was not unhelpful.
Kei sat down first, and Fumio followed some seconds later.
All the
buchos
now too their seats.
Kei called the meeting to order formally and
then looked at Fumio.
The younger brother
ran it, but always gave the appearance of deferring to the chairman.
This was the first formal meeting since the
murder of the
kuromaku
.
Kei had been attending secret talks in