His criminal record was similar to most of the others. I opened the log of confiscated documents. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, Strait is the Gate by André Gide, Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire, poetry by Paul Valéry, Francis Jammes and Rainer Maria Rilke. I haltingly sounded out those familiar names. The names twinkled like stars inside me; my heart hammered furiously. Hiranuma’s box contained fifteen or sixteen worn books, tattered from frequent handling. The book on top was The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. I could feel the blood coursing through my veins. I’d hoped to read Rilke again after the war. Instead of granting my wish, God had given me a different opportunity: I could read Rilke now, but in this prison. Something fluttered down from the pages. I carefully picked up the yellowed piece of paper:
SELF-PORTRAIT
Alone, I round the bend of the mountain to the solitary well by the rice paddy and look quietly down.
In the well the moon is bright and clouds drift and the sky is vast and blue wind blows and it is autumn.
And there is a man.
I leave, disliking him for some unknown reason.
On second thought I pity him.
I return and look down; he is still there.
Again I leave, disliking him.
On second thought I start to miss him.
In the well the moon is bright and clouds drift and the sky is vast and the blue wind blows and it is autumn and there is a man, like a memory.
This poem was perfect, just like a Swiss-made watch, though made not of screws and springs and saw-toothed gears, but of nouns and verbs and adjectives. I’d always been awed by the grandeur of machines, how, when well made, they serve the soul of humanity. Fabric pours out of a roaring textile mill to allow mankind to luxuriate; a compass, a gun, a steam engine, a car and an aeroplane fire up a man’s will, boost his courage, and each transforms life. This intricate apparatus of words filled a part of my soul with satisfaction. Another poem leaped into my mind: Confession. Self-Portrait and Confession. The two smelled the same; they were like twins. They both featured calm self-examination, melancholy and a tiny whiff of hope. They began with despair, but soon transformed into ardent optimism. Though I’d read only these two poems, I felt that I knew the poet. Did Hiranuma write these poems? To find out, I had to meet him.
The door to the interrogation room opened without a sound and Hiranuma entered. His handsome face glowed in the dim interior. His shaved head and neat eyebrows accentuated his round forehead. He had almond-shaped eyes and a delicate but strong nose. A smile hung from his blistered lips. He looked as though he were dreaming. How could someone like this, with such gentle eyes and a peaceful smile, end up in this place? I checked his file to remind myself of his crime: involvement in the Korean independence movement.
Hiranuma spoke first. ‘I see you, too, were dragged here for no reason.’
Was he proclaiming his innocence? He’d said ‘you, too’. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t a judge; I was only a lowly guard. ‘Every prisoner says he’s innocent,’ I told him. ‘Even a cold-blooded murderer. But if you’re in prison it means you committed a crime of some sort. Unless you’re Edmond Dantès.’
His eyes gleamed in recognition. ‘What about Prometheus, chained to a rock in the Caucasus?’
I started. We’d read the same books, knew the same authors and shared the same memories. ‘Prometheus stole fire. No matter what you steal or for whom, theft must be punished.’
‘Is it a crime to be powerless and naive? Like Edmond Dantès, who loved Mercédès but couldn’t stop the conspiracy of Mondego, Danglars and Villefort?’ Hiranuma wasn’t really asking a question. He seemed to want to talk about the fictional characters confined in his head, just as I did.
‘To be innocent and powerless isn’t itself a crime, but it could be the cause of a crime. Because nobody can protect someone who won’t first protect himself,’ I said.
He nodded, acknowledging my oblique argument that Koreans were criminals for being unable to hold onto their own country; that being Korean was a crime in itself.
I took out the two pieces of paper from my shirt pocket and spread them on the desk. Self-Portrait. Confession.
Surprise and fear flashed across his face.
‘Self-Portrait was written on paper torn out of Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge. That book was in your box of confiscated documents. This is something you wrote, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Yes, the Special Higher Police confiscated that book. But I bought it at a used bookshop. How can you be so sure that I wrote that poem?’
‘Language is a person’s signature, like his fingerprints. It contains his birth and growth, memories and past. Self-Portrait and Confession are twins. If you wrote Self-Portrait, it’s obvious that you wrote Confession too.’
‘Prove it!’
‘This person is used to loneliness. He’s taciturn — he reduces his confession to one line and he wordlessly goes back and forth to the well. He hates and pities himself, but misses himself. He accepts the weight of life. The man who uses his entire body to polish the rusted artefact of a fallen dynasty in Confession is despairing but tenacious. That expression, “a relic of which dynasty?”, refers to his identity. As in: he’s Korean.’
Hiranuma looked at me with an odd expression. After a while he raised his shield. ‘I’m just a prisoner. None of that is proof that I wrote those poems.’
I was waiting for this opportunity. ‘There’s decisive evidence that you wrote Confession. Twenty-four years and one month, that’s how old the poet was when he wrote it. Why would he have written a poem called Confession at such a young age? What would he have to confess?’ I wasn’t looking for an answer; I already knew it. According to the sentencing records, Hiranuma had come to Japan in the spring of 1942 to enrol at Rikkyo University. He had turned twenty-four that past December; he must have written that poem a few months before coming to Japan.
I continued: ‘A Korean needs a certificate to come to Japan legally. You could enter illegally by stowing away on a ship, but not if you were officially enrolling in a university. In order to receive that certificate you are required to have a Japanese name. Your Korean name is the artefact of the fallen dynasty. The “disgraced face” reflected on the rusted bronze mirror refers to your name change. That’s what distressed you. That’s what you were confessing to, as you stared at the person you had to discard in order to come here.’
Hiranuma looked tired. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. ‘It’s just a poem I wrote before coming to Japan. Is that a crime? It’s never even been published.’
‘No, that’s not a crime.’
Then why am I here? his eyes asked.
‘This poem is linked to a murder case. I found Confession in the desk drawer of the guard who was killed three days ago. The same poet wrote Self-Portrait. Now, why did that guard copy down your poem? What do these poems have to do with his death? That’s what I want to find out.’