By C. L. Werner

Wargod of Japan
Part: Act 1 - Act 2 (coming soon) - Act 3 (coming soon)

Act 1

Hideki Nomura was home. How bitter that word was to him now. He’d dreamed of it for so long, for so many years. Visions of his family, of his sister’s smiling face, of his mother’s cooking, his father’s wise, sagely advice. That last kiss from Naoko had kept him alive through four years fighting his way through the stinking, steaming hell of Burma and French Indo-China, had kept him going even when devotion to his homeland and faith in the emperor had threatened to falter. He’d endured so much, given so much, done so much. Now he was home and he could only wish he was back there, back in the jungle. Everything he had done, it was not enough. He had failed his nation in its time of need.

The soldier could hear steps echoing through the deserted museum, walking in his direction. Hideki turned away from the ancient painting of samurai warriors he had been staring at, moving into the next cavernous exhibit room. The museum was almost always empty, one of the few places he could go to and be alone with his thoughts. After years living, sleeping and fighting beside his squad, Hideki found a strange comfort in being alone. In Burma, he’d never backed down from anything, not British soldiers or Ghurka commandos. Now that he was home, something as ordinary as a soft footfall was enough to make him turn tail and retreat. But, then, his days of fighting were over. The Americans had seen to that.

He found no peace in the next room, for the footsteps continued. Hideki sighed in annoyance, proceeding into the next exhibit hall. Why couldn’t whoever that was just find something to look at and leave him in peace? Yet the footsteps persisted, chasing Hideki through the vast, echoing chambers. The soldier knew now that whoever it was, they were looking for him. The realization only made him redouble his efforts to avoid them. There was no one he wanted to talk to. He just wanted to be alone.

Turning a corner, Hideki crushed his body behind a display of ancient armor, sinking into the narrow space between the lacquered mail and the stone wall. He was pleased when he heard the footsteps pause at the threshold of the room, then continue on in the other direction. The soldier slowly extracted himself from his hiding place. Whoever it was, they might be back, but for the moment, at least, he was alone. Hideki turned his eyes toward the exhibits in the room, trying to find something to capture his attention, something to keep other thoughts from his mind.

The exhibits in this room were different, though it took Hideki a moment to understand exactly what that difference was. He was no student, no scholar. He was the son of a laborer, who had been the son of a laborer. Strong backs ran in his family, not book smarts. Still, he could see that the armor and weapons were different. They were not Japanese at all, but Chinese and Mongolian. Examining some of the plates set before the exhibits, Hideki learned that they were relics from the failed invasion of Japan by the Mongol horde in 1281. It had been a glorious moment in Japan’s history, when the gods themselves had intervened to save the island nation from invasion, bringing down a monstrous storm to drive the Mongol armada away.

Now Japan was facing invasion once more. The radio and papers did not report it, of course, according to them the mighty Imperial Army was poised to strike the decisive blow and bring about victory. But the frequency of American planes dropping bombs across the length and breadth of the land told Hideki otherwise. As he had failed Japan, so too was the Imperial Navy. If the Americans had control of the skies, then it would not bee much longer before they had control of the sea as well. And once they did, it would only be a matter of time before the shores of Japan became a battlefield.

Hideki suddenly snapped from his troubled ruminations, focusing his gaze on an object that seemed somehow incongruous with the other artifacts in the exhibit. He walked across the room to get a closer look at it. The object towered over him, staring back at him with sightless eyes of stone. Hideki somehow felt uneasy meeting that gaze, yet at the same time unable to look away.

It was a statue, a massive statue perhaps eight feet tall and constructed of some pitted, black volcanic stone the likes of which Hideki had never seen before. The carving was grotesque, a great horned demon of some kind, some ghastly oni from legend. Its hands were massive paws, each stubby digit ending in a curved claw. Sword-like fangs dripped from its wide, gash-like mouth. Horns curled away from its head, like the points of spears. A long, clubbed tail curled about the statue’s short, massive legs. There was an almost tangible aura of malevolence about the thing, almost as though it were more than mere stone and fantasy.

The plaque set before the thing identified it as ‘Kyrith’, a household god peculiar to the Tangu Clan which once ruled parts of Hizen in western Japan. The history went on that the Tangu Clan were wiped out in the Mongolian invasion after betraying the other Japanese defenders. Kyrith, the plaque went on, had been some malefic god of war that the Tangu Clan had worshipped for centuries. The Tangu had perfected the art of war to such a degree that they were unstoppable upon the field of battle. But their skills had not come without a price, and the Tangu had become bloodthirsty, finding no solace in peace but living only for battle until they came to be regarded as little more than murderous, wild beasts by the other great houses of Hizen.

It was commonly known that the great invasion fleet had been driven back by the prayers of a Buddhist monk, Il Yun, who had caused the gods to send a mighty storm to smash the war fleet of Kublai Khan. Now Hideki found the legend of the kamikaze, the divine wind, repeated. There had been another monk praying for deliverance in Hizen, following the example of Il Yun. The Tangu had tried to silence the holy man’s prayers. They wanted the Mongol fleet to land, for in the 300,000 strong army of Mongols and their Sung and Koryo conscripts the Tangu saw an unending supply of foes, saw the promise of a war that would rage until the heavens cracked and the seas boiled. The legend was strangely reticent as to how the Tangu had tried to do this, or how they had been stopped. It only said that in the aftermath of their treachery, samurai from many of the great houses banded together in hunting down and wiping out the Tangu line. The statue of Kyrith had once stood within the household shrine of the Tangu and was recovered in an excavation of that site in 1924.

The history concluded strangely, with what seemed to Hideki almost a prayer:

As Hideki read the words, he felt a strange sense of peace fill him, the first he had felt since returning home. He was moved to tears by the quiet, somber poetry. He reached forward to touch the quiet letters on the plaque. It was only then that he remembered the empty sleeve hanging at his side. The sense of peace drained away and the restrained fury and rage inside him rose to the fore. Hideki growled in anguish, smashing the fist of his left hand, his only hand, against the unyielding forehead of the statue. He felt the fragile bones in his fist crack beneath the blow, could see his torn knuckles seeping crimson across the leering, gargoyle face.

A sharp cry caused Hideki to turn around. The footsteps had caught up to him. Naoko came running to his side, her face ridden with concern. She tried to take Hideki’s battered hand, to wrap a hasty bandage about his bleeding knuckles. At first, Hideki allowed her to do so, then her face looked into his once more. Hideki felt himself die inside. When he’d left, when he’d gone to serve his emperor and his nation, those eyes had been filled with love. Now they were filled with something that stung his very soul. Now they were filled with pity. Pity for the mangled cripple, pity for the battered shell of a man who had returned in shame and dishonor to his home.

Hideki pulled away from Naoko, cradling his injured hand to his breast. As he did so, the motion caused something long and sharp and metal to fall to the floor, ringing from the stone. Automatically Naoko bowed down to recover it, then she saw what her hands reached toward and she recoiled from it as though it were a serpent.

‘No,’ was all she could say. The tears streaming from her eyes hurt Hideki almost as much as the pity he had seen there before. But only almost.

‘You can’t, you won’t,’ Naoko gasped, a pleading quality in her voice. Hideki laughed, a sound as hollow and cheerless as an open grave.

‘I can’t,’ he replied, lifting his broken hand. ‘Not now. Perhaps not even before. I’ve carried it with me for three weeks now and haven’t found the courage.’ Hideki choked back the despair that strangled him, trying to will his voice to remain his own. ‘If I’d had that kind of courage, I would never have come back here. I would have died out there, out where my death would have served some purpose, would have done some good.’

‘You are an honourable man,’ Naoko told him. ‘You fought for our emporer and our home, fought until you could fight no more. Where is your dishnour?’

Hideki didn’t meet her gaze, instead kneeling to the floor. With his single hand, he awkwardly recovered the long, slender knife and stuffed it back inside his clothes. ‘My dishonour is in every breath I take. It is in the accusing, angry faces of my dead comrades, of those who gave their lives to fight our enemies.’ Hideki stepped slowly past Naoko, keeping his eyes from her weeping face. ‘Find yourself a whole man, Naoko, a man worthy of your love. A man who does not need your pity.’

She did not follow him from the museum, remaining in the exhibit hall, crying quietly in the musty darkness. Naoko had always been bright and intelligent, she understood when the power of words were at an end. She understood that she could not dispel the demon of despair that had settled upon the bitter wreckage of the man she loved.

Only once did Hideki turn back, intending to fix his gaze upon Naoko, to burn her memory into his mind. Instead, he found his gaze locking upon the hideous visage of the Tangu statue, on the blood slowly dripping from its reptilian visage into its fanged and gaping mouth. Horror suddenly gripped him, horror such as he had never known even upon the infernal jungle battlefields of Burma. It was a cold, nebulous feeling, a cold prick upon the back of his skull, a chill whisper crawling across his soul. As he turned and fled, Hideki wondered if he would have had the courage to face such horror, even when he had been whole.

The museum and Naoko were far behind him before he stopped running. Hideki leaned against the wall of a noodle shop, panting as he tried to suck breath back into his lungs. What had caused such terror he wondered? How could anything cause such terror in a man who was ready to die? He felt the knife in his pocket. The cold steel seemed to beckon him, to beckon him with all the warmth and cheer of an old friend. It would end all his misery and torment, it would restore his honour. If he only had the courage. But he would need to make his choice quickly. Honour would not wait forever.

Hideki looked skyward as the air raid sirens began to sound. He almost chuckled to himself. There was little for the Americans to bomb here that was of any great importance.

There were people in the street now, shielding their eyes against the sun and pointing excitedly at the plane gliding across the azure sky. A single bomber, probably lost from its squadron or else damaged by what few anti-aircraft batteries and fighter planes the Japanese could still muster. Hideki breathed a sigh of relief. There was little damage a lone bomber could do to a city the size of Hiroshima.

1953

Hideki Nomura shuffled along through the teeming streets of Tokyo, his heavy coat tightly closed against the elements, his collar raised to obscure as much of his face as it could. The burns never really healed, never would really heal, just as the poison running through his body would never leave him. Even his bones would be blighted by its taint. It had taken the doctors eight years to accept the fact that there was nothing they could do for him, eight years for them to at last acknowledge that Hideki was a dying man and that science could do nothing to forestall that death. When they had at last accepted that fact, Hideki had been released from the clinic, to find whatever pleasure and joy he could in what little time was left to him.

Radiation. Invisible death. An intangible killer that had left a legacy behind it even more terrifying than the awesome destructive power of the Atomic bomb itself. Science was scrambling to understand it, to make sense of this malevolent force that had been thrust into the world. Governments struggled to control this force, understanding for the first time, perhaps, the absolute destruction another war would bring. And the people, the people laughed nervously and tried to ignore, tried to forget the awful specter which now hovered above their heads.

Hideki was a walking reminder of that terror. Technically, his poisoned body had survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but in reality, he was little more than a ghost, a wraith prowling the streets of Tokyo, shunned by those who feared to consider what he was, who cringed in horror lest somehow the poison inside him should contaminate them as well. But it mattered little to Hideki, he was already dead inside. Everything he had ever cared about, everyone he had ever loved, had been lost in the radioactive doom that had obliterated Hiroshima. Now, slowly but surely, the poison running through his flesh was causing his body to catch up with his soul.

The crippled Japanese stopped outside a dingy-looking bar, bright neon letters glowing in the light drizzle that slowly drifted down upon Tokyo. The letters were English, proclaiming the bar to be one frequented by the American soldiers who yet occupied Japan, overseeing its reconstruction and supervising its fledgling government. For a moment, Hideki considered turning away, finding another place in which to quench his thirst, someplace without foreign words burning in its windows. Then a dim flicker, the faintest ember of emotion began to glow inside him. He was Japanese and the bar was on Japanese soil. He had more right to be here than any invading gaijin.

The atmosphere within the bar was a grey murk of cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes. Not the sharp scent of saki, but the pungent reek of imported beer. Hideki crinkled his nose at the foreign smell, then walked slowly toward the leather-lined counter. He deliberately made certain not to glance at the green uniformed men who sat at the tiny tables or stood around the bulk of a velvet-topped billiard table. Trying not to notice the whispers was more difficult, but Hideki tried anyway.

‘Saki,’ he said as he seated himself on one of the brass-legged stools. The barkeep, a fat-faced Japanese with a craven, cowardly cheer about him grinned a bit more widely and shook his head.

‘I think maybe you are in the wrong place,’ the bartender said.

‘Saki,’ Hideki repeated, hearing the sound of chairs being pushed across the wooden floor as green uniformed men rose from their tables.

‘Look, I serve Americans here,’ the bartender explained. ‘They look at this place as a home away from home. They don’t like to share it with civilians.’

‘Saki,’ Hideki said again, his voice the same weary monotone. The bartender shrugged his shoulders and turned to retrieve a clay bottle from the shelves behind him. Hideki focused on the man’s labors, ignoring the two soldiers who now stood to either side of him, examining him with a stern, scrutinizing gaze.

‘I give up, Miller,’ one of the soldiers said at last. ‘I can’t decide if it’s a Jap or a piece of bacon that gussied itself up and went for a walk!’ The rude joke brought a chuckle from the other soldier. Hideki didn’t turn, keeping his eyes on the bartender’s back.

‘At least he has the sense to come out at night,’ the second GI said. ‘Wouldn’t want to be scaring little children, after all!’ The cruel joke brought another round of laughter from both men. The smile faltered on the bartender’s face as he set the bottle of saki down. Hideki nodded gratefully and reached for the tiny clay bottle.

‘It’s a Jap alright.’ A third voice joined the cruel mockery of the other soldiers, deeper and older than those of the others, more slurred and twisted by alcohol. Hideki could hear the uneven pattern of the soldier’s steps as his boots slapped against the floor and he made his way toward the counter. He could smell the stagnant beer-ridden breath of the soldier wash across his face as the GI leaned towards him.

‘Some Nip caverat,’ the drunken soldier spat. ‘Just like those bastards on Saipan and Iwo! Crawling under the ground like stinkin’ maggots til the sun sets and they can sink ten inches of steel in yer best friend’s guts!’ The soldier reached forward, slapping Hideki’s arm and causing him to spill saki across his clothes. ‘Bastards’d make you go in ta get them too! Make ya crawl down inta the dirt ta get them! But we fixed ‘em! We fixed ‘em! Didn’t play their game, didn’t go down inta their rat nests!’ The soldier grabbed Hideki’s shoulder, spinning him around. Hideki could see that his antagonist was a big man, broad-shouldered and tall. His face was harsh and weathered, his eyes old and dead, the eyes of a man who has been in the company of death too long to know anything else. The old veteran seemed to see the same sickly light in Hideki’s face, but there could never be any kinship between two such men as they. ‘We’d pour gasoline down in there, set it ta burnin’ with a grenade! Use flamethrowers on ‘em as they came scramblin’ out!’

‘Sarge, I think that’s enough,’ came the voice of the GI called Miller, concern in his words. But his sergeant was far beyond the reach of quiet appeals.

‘Tell me, caverat, where’d you get burned? Okinawa? Pelu? Maybe you were one of the scum stickin’ bayonets in my pals on Coregidor? Where’d we get you, you stinkin’ craven rat?’

Then the sergeant’s words were silenced. Hideki had endured much pain, much loss and much tragedy, but for some reason, he could not endure the scorn of this foreign soldier in a dingy little bar in a squalid corner of Tokyo. The quiet, unquestioning acceptance that had so long deadened his soul cracked and shattered and surging into its place was a red firestorm of rage. With one smooth motion, Hideki broke the clay saki bottle against the brass leg of his stool and ground the jagged remnant into his antagonist’s face.

The American soldiers watched in shocked horror as the scarred Japanese attacked their sergeant, as bright crimson jetted from a severed artery in the man’s neck. Then they were on him, fists smashing into his withered body, pounding him to the floor. Hideki’s burned cheek slapped into the pooling blood from his victim as strong hands closed about his wrists and held him. He could hear voices screaming alternately for an ambulance and for the MPs. He could hear the last death rattle wheezing its way from the dying man’s torn throat.

Black horror filled Hideki. It was not horror at what he had done, for he could find not the slightest trace of remorse for the brutal murder. It was not horror for what would happen to himself, a Japanese man who had butchered a sergeant of the American army which yet governed his country in all but name. It was not even horror at the shame of such a savage and unthinking act. No, it was a horror born somewhere beyond Hideki’s mind and soul.

Even as he watched the blood gurgling from his victim’s mangled face, Hideki’s eyes did not see it. Instead, unaccountably, he saw again the leering, grinning demon’s face of Kyrith, that strange idol of the vanquished Tangu clan. He saw again the tiny trickle of blood dripping into the stone mouth. Somehow, Hideki seemed to feel that there had indeed been a spirit, a force within that idol. A force that had waited, inhumanly silent, inhumanly patient. Waited who could say how many centuries for the moment it would be set free once more.

As Hideki felt the sergeant’s blood pooling about his cheek, he could not shake the impression that what that force had been waiting for had finally come to pass. It was this thought, and no other, which filled him with dread and horror.