One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura Page B

someone who understood how it must feel to bejoining the military without having had the chance to apply the knowledge he had gained at university. An uncle who could show such understanding, thought Takuya, would surely empathise with his participation in the execution and help him avoid capture.
    After a little less than an hour, the Osaka-bound overnight train pulled into the station, so packed that there were even passengers standing on the couplings between the engine and the front carriage. There was no way Takuya could get on board, and before long the train slowly wrenched itself free from the throng on the platform. Shortly after daybreak another Osaka-bound train arrived, but again every imaginable space was taken. People were even sitting half out of the windows or perched precariously on the steps below the doors. The next two trains, one just before noon and the other in mid-afternoon, were just as crowded, and not until early evening did he manage to force himself into the window of a train from Okayama.
    Stopping at every station, the train made its way down the line. After sunset, only scattered lights from houses and other buildings could be seen from the window. It was after ten o’clock when the train eventually reached Osaka.
    Takuya followed the crowds through the turnstiles and out of the station. His eyes were met by a dark, overcast sky, without a glimmer of light from either the moon or the stars. Several rows of shacks had been thrown up as temporary housing immediately in front of the station, and he could make out the soft glow of an electric light here and there. Beyond that it was pitch dark.
    Takuya knew that his uncle’s house, which he had heardhad miraculously survived the incendiary raids, was about thirty minutes away on foot, but as that would involve negotiating his way in the dark through the burnt-out ruins, he decided to spend the night in the relative safety of the station. He walked back in and found the waiting-area crammed with people. There were men, women and even children sitting and lying everywhere, waiting to board a train the next day or simply homeless and seeking shelter.
    Finding a space beside a pillar in the concourse, he slipped his rucksack off his shoulder and sat down on the concrete floor. He was feverish, and he felt a creeping numbness in his legs. A warm, sickly smell, not unlike that of urine, hung in the air.
    Feeling hungry, Takuya pulled the sweet potato he had bought at Okayama Station out of his bag and took a bite. At first it seemed to have no taste at all, but as he chewed a subtle hint of sweetness reached his tastebuds.
    Suddenly, in the back of his mind, Takuya could hear a voice, a male voice, barely more audible than a whisper, muttering something like ‘Lucia’ or ‘Luciana’. It was the word the red-bearded man had been saying to himself over and over again as he sat slumped in the bamboo grove.
    Takuya’s mind drifted back to that scene at Abura-yama the previous August. He remembered clearly how anxious he had been about whether he would be able to cut through the man’s thick neck. He had concentrated on kendo for martial arts in high school, and had continued training during his days as an officer cadet, but all opportunity for further honing his skills with a sword had ended when he was posted to headquarters in Kyushu. Occasionally he hadattended to his army sword, polishing it and then checking and sharpening the blade, but only to the extent necessary to keep it presentable in a ceremonial sense.
    He remembered how flies had buzzed around the prisoner’s head. There had been a light-brown birthmark on the man’s neck, with a little tuft of soft red hair in the middle of it. Takuya remembered how he had stood there, seeing in his mind’s eye the scene inside the bomber returning to base after a raid. When he pictured the red-haired man moving his head and shoulders to the rhythm of jazz, rage