grief, muffling as snow, furry as tarantula legs. Sleep here, and moss covers you too. My legs stiffen and wobble so I sit down, and here comes the foggy moon through a forest skylight. I am cold, and huddle in my blanket, niched in an ancient shipwreck of a cedar. I am not afraid. You have to value yourself to be afraid. Yet for the first time in three days, I want something. I want the forest lord to turn me into a cedar. The very oldest islanders say that if you are in the interior mountains on the night when the forest lord counts his trees, he includes you in the number and turns you into a tree. Animals call, darkness swarms, cold nips my toes. I remember Anju. Despite the cold, I fall asleep. Despite my tiredness, I wake up. A white fox picks its way along a fallen trunk. It stops, turns its head, and recognizes me with more-than-human eyes. Mist hangs in the spaces between my boughs, and birds nest in what was my ear. I want to thank the forest lord, but I have no mouth now. Never mind. Never mind anything, ever again. When I wake, stiff, not a tree but a snot-dribbling boy again, throat tight with a cold, I sob and sob and sob and sob and sob and sob.
Milk and Honey over, my Discman hums to a stop. The kite of sunlight has slid to my junk shelf, where Cockroach watches me, fiddling its feelers. I leap up, grab the bug-killer, but Cockroach does a runner down the gap between the floor and the wall – I zap in about a third of the can. And here I stand, in mammoth-hunter pose, empty of everything. I ran away into the interior to understand why Anju had grown with me, cell by cell, day by day, if she was going to die before her twelfth birthday. I never did discover the answer. I made the descent without mishap the following day – the Orange house was having collective hysterics about me – but, looking back, did I ever really leave the interior? Is what Eiji Miyake means still rooted on Yakushima, magicked into a cedar on a mist-forgotten mountain flank, and my search for my father just a vague . . . passing . . . nothing? Fujifilm says I have to get Shooting Star ready for business. Another day too busy to worry about what it all means. Luckily for me.
7th November
Mild weather, fish-scale clouds. I am in our dorm after our predeparture banquet. I am fat with fish, white rice, dried seaweed, victory chestnuts, canned fruit, and sake, which was presented by the emperor himself. Because the weather was fine today, the Kikusui graduation ceremony was held outside, in the exercise yard. Everyone on the base was in attendance, from Commandant Ujina down to the lowliest kitchen boy. The rising-sun flags on base and on the ships and submarines, were all raised in unison. A brass band performed the kimigayo. We wore uniforms especially tailored for the kaiten division: black, cobalt trimmings, with green chrysanthemums embroidered on the left breast. Vice-admiral Miwa of the 6th Fleet gave us the honour of a personal address. He is a fine orator as well as an unequalled naval tactician, and his words inscribed themselves on our hearts. ‘You are avengers, at last face to face with those who would murder your fathers and violate your mothers. Peace will never be yours if you fail! Death is lighter than a feather, but duty is heavier than a mountain! ‘Kai’ and ‘Ten’ signify ‘Turn’ and ‘Heaven’ – therefore, I exhort you, turn the heavens so light shines anew on the land of the gods!’ One by one, we ascended the podium, and the vice-admiral presented each of us with a hachimaki to tie around our heads like the samurai of old, and a seppuku sword, to remind us that our lives are His Imperial Majesty’s possessions, and to avert the indignity of surrender should disaster prevent us from striking our targets. During the closing kimigayo we bowed before the portrait of the emperor. A priest then led us to a shinto shrine to pray for glory.
Abe, Goto and Kusakabe are writing letters to their families, so I will do the same, and clip off some hair and nails for cremation. I shall write my final orders to you in this letter, but I shall reiterate