A Suburb of Tokyo, 1945
This fragment of a young Japanese woman's diary, chronicling her incestuous relations with her father over a several-week period during the final months of World War II, was originally found in the rubble of an apartment building. Banned for decades, it was recently rediscovered in Japan's War Museum archives. This is its first English translation.
5 June
I have always been terrified of thunder storms. It may seem strange, or ironic, given the almost daily bombings Tokyo has suffered, that a mere thunderstorm, an act of nature rather than a murderous act of man, would upset me so, but it does. In truth, I thought it was another bombing raid at first last night. But then I saw the crackle of lightning behind the blackout curtains. Besides, by now big raindrops were pelting the windows. It was merely a summer rain storm. Merely, I say.
Gathering my nightgown up around my knees, I crept into the adjacent bedroom where my father slept. As quietly as I could I slid under the covers onto his mat. But either the claps of thunder or my frightened presence had awakened him as well. He put a welcoming arm around my back and settled me in beside him. I rested my head on his left shoulder. Almost immediately I could feel my anxiety dissipate. I felt safe. Or, if the worst must happen, I felt content. Resigned.
As I lay there in the dark I could hear daddy's heart racing. I could hear my own as well. It was a kind of muted music inside our two bodies, competing with the pelting raindrops and the occasional, but now more distant, thunderclaps. I wondered if the fierce storm would scare the bombers away tonight. Would anything ever scare them away? Was there no end to them? I also lay there thinking about daddy and me, and how we had nothing left in the world but each other. My mother had left him for an army officer some time ago, and she'd moved away with him after he got transferred. I hadn't heard from her in months. Was she still alive? Did she lie awake at night and think about me, her only child, as I often thought about her? My own husband, whom I had married at age 19 and barely come to know, had been missing in China for several years now. I kept waiting for confirmation from the government, one way or the other, but month after month none ever came. I assumed the worst, of course. Who, if he were still alive, would not write a letter to his beautiful young wife? And what kind of government did we have, that could not account for their own soldiers? To be honest, in my own heart, it was as if he'd never existed. I barely knew him. We'd only had sex three times before he shipped out.
And so daddy had no wife and I had no husband. And neither of us had intimate friends. Lovers, I mean to say. I had not had sex in over four years and I was sure it was the same for my poor daddy. For at least a year before the divorce, and probably much longer, he and mommy had slept in separate bedrooms. In fact, the room I now slept in, since my return home, had been mom's.
I don't know how exactly it happened—it was certainly unintentional—but with my body snuggled against his and my head still resting on his shoulder, I at one point shifted my position and my knee, my left knee, grazed daddy's penis. It was hard inside his pajamas. An awkward pause followed before he said, softly, I'm sorry.
I didn't know if daddy meant by this he was sorry because the presence of his daughter's warm body had made him hard, or if he was sorry because a part of his body had gotten in the way of a part of mine, as if we'd accidentally bumped together in a crowded market. His back arched, however, when I slipped my hand inside his pajama bottom and took firm hold of him.
Don't! he cried, attempting to pull my hand away.
Why?
Don't! It's wrong to do that!
Why's it wrong?
It's wrong. It's illegal!
I giggled. Illegal? Who's going to know, daddy? We're alone in our own house in the dark. Bombs are falling.
No they're not, he scolded.
He then changed his tack, but with far less outrage, perhaps because I was now stroking him. I'd only experienced a man's bare penis three times in my life, and my husband, however briefly he was that, had not even allowed me to touch his. It's unnatural..., daddy said, sounding like a man who'd grown weary of his own argument.
I sensed his head rolling off to the side, away from me, as his back once again arched. He remained silent, however, as my left hand pumped the seed out of him.
Oh god, he said afterward, what have I done?
I lay there in the dark imagining, envisioning, a tiny little white pool forming on daddy's belly. Some of his semen had gotten on my stroking hand as well. My husband, not wanting to get me pregnant before he left for China, had pulled out of me all three times. He would fuck me briefly, while I lay on my back (we only did it in this one position), then he would pull his hard penis out, glistening with my juices, and stroke it over my abdomen. I would raise my head off the pillow and watch as the thick semen shot from his body onto mine, sometimes reaching as far as my modest breasts. As soon as he was through he would button up his pants and leave the room, in apparent disgust. I, however, liked to lie there in my privacy and marvel at this magical fluid, this seed, that someday might, after the war ended, who could say, produce a child in my belly. My fingers toyed with it. It had a strange clean smell, and a subtle sweetness to the taste. It was human fruit. It was like some exotic green tea, whose fragrance and flavor were subtle to the point of near-nonexistence. I would lie there dreamily licking my fingers until nothing was left but the drying residue of my husband's wasted seed.
I'm going to lick you clean, daddy, OK? I said last night.
