procession, the coffin decorated with the images of snakes, the chief mourner in a hat of coarse hemp as the women howl with the yellow wind through the electric wires. The soil blows, the sun pales as I lie among the corpses. Sixty Calmotin, sixty-one. Chinese officers stuff their mouths with melon under the huge Sun in the Blue Sky flag atop the peeling red-lacquered gate. We watch them from behind our sandbags. Their soldiers in their grey uniforms throng the streets, overturning stalls and stealing goods. We watch them from behind our barbed wire. They chew food as they saunter around the city. We watch them in our khaki uniforms. They spit skin and bones into the faces of the local Chinese. We watch them with our machine guns. They love plunder, they love violence. A shot rings out. They knock over altars, they yank open drawers. Another shot. Beggars and coolies run towards the shots. The Chinks are robbing the Japanese. Women with bound feet and children with plaits flee. The Japs are raping the Chinese. Two grey armoured vehicles speed up the street. The Chinks are murdering the Japanese. Nationalist cavalrymen gallop south through the city. The Japs are murdering the Chinese. Bullets fly from the second-floor windows of Western buildings. Artillery sounds. Barefoot Japanese men run down the streets, their shirts unbuttoned. Cannons fire. Prostitutes pour out of the Yung-hsien-li district. Windows shatter. A woman in red satin falls to the ground. My son said he would cut his own throat! Houses are burnt. Mine too! Refugees cower in halls. A true Japanese man! Men lose their wives. Run! Mothers lose their children. Hide! A wire birdcage lies trampled in the street. No! This is how it starts, among the corpses. Seventy Calmotin, seventy-one. The disarmed soldiers in their grey uniforms groan and cry like animals, their hands tied behind their backs in the barbed-wire stockade. Hundreds of them, sat on the ground before the fixed bayonets of just five of our unit as our artillery thunders on until dawn. Then there is only smoke, now only rumours. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Houses looted, schools burnt. The mutilated corpses of three Japanese are unearthed in a field northeast of the railway bridge, six more by the water tank. Their ears have been sliced off, their stomachs stuffed with stones. Eighty Calmotin, eighty-one. Now the airplanes appear, dropping black bombs on Chinese districts and the street fighting ends. The air is thick with flies. For two days we drink sake and wander through the city. The stench of rotten apricots. We count the Chinese corpses but soon give up. Dogs wag their tails among the dead. We take photographs but run out of film. Beggars sleep among the bones. We find Chinese families still hiding in their houses. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. We separate the men from the women. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. The young from the old. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Masaki, Banzai! Daddy,