The Investigation Read Online Free PDF

banned all correspondence not written in Japanese. So, to inspect their Japanese, we wanted someone new to literacy. A novice would read and write
the language the same way as Koreans who aren’t used to Japanese. So he would be able to pinpoint suspicious expressions.’
    ‘So Sugiyama was the perfect man.’
    ‘He’d never even crossed the threshold of an elementary school, but his capabilities of comprehension and learning were amazing. Instead of reading like a normal person, he
instinctively zeroed in on forbidden words and expressions. His eyes caught every expression with an ambiguous meaning.’ Maeda shook his head in awe.
    I knew that censorship was essential. After we bombed Pearl Harbor, the war had intensified and daily life had grown more chaotic. Thugs and subversives, armed with knives and petrol, roamed the
streets. All anti-Japanese Koreans were arrested, but subversive activities continued. The delusion of independence floated hazily over the streets and universities of Tokyo, infecting other
Koreans. Every time a Korean political offender was arrested, all their writings, books and documents, including personal promissory notes, were confiscated to disarm them of vicious ideas. Upon
sentencing, the boxes of confiscated documents and a list of their contents accompanied the prisoners into prison.
    Maeda explained that Sugiyama was given special orders to act as censor for Ward Three; consequently he had to learn to read and write. Sugiyama protested at first; he despised literacy. To him,
writing was merely a tool with which to corrupt the world, applying various -isms to set fire to the hearts of the weak and prey upon them. But in the end he was a soldier; orders weren’t for
him to understand, they were to be followed. He began his education by writing down words he didn’t know on a sheet of paper. The inspection office was a makeshift structure at one end of
Ward Three and was once used as an interrogation and execution room until a large-scale execution area was built, complete with gallows and a place for fusillades. Sugiyama spent all day in that
office, studying diligently like a silkworm gnawing through green mulberry leaves. That office was his solitary battlefield, his enemy the Korean prisoners – Communists hell-bent on
destruction, terrorists eager to assassinate high-ranking officials, anarchists trying to overthrow the government, thieves, robbers and swindlers. Sugiyama pawed through papers, ferreting out
seditious meanings from each phrase and sniffing out forbidden expressions. No suspicious phrase ever got past his prying eyes. He sorted boxes of confiscated material, assigned them unique
numbers, organized them in the storage area and incinerated them. His red pen slashed the page. He paid no heed to the use of a word, the length of a sentence, the strength or weakness of an
expression; if it didn’t fit his strict standards, he marked it with his red stamp:
To Be Incinerated
.
    Sugiyama had come home alive from the war zone. For seven years and three months he’d experienced trench warfare in the rain, gun battles in snow-covered fields, sieges and bayonet fights
in the heavy darkness. But according to Maeda, Sugiyama considered this silent war in his quiet office the most valuable of them all. Books and records marched forward like enemy soldiers, and
within them he found the enemy that gnawed through our healthy empire like a swarm of moths. He would look up when he noticed the setting sun dyeing the small westward window red, only to leap back
into the world of paper and ink. When he raised his eyes again, it would be dawn. Only then would he rest. When day broke he moved the seditious books and letters he had uncovered to the new
incinerator that had been built in the empty lot next to the inspection office. Watching the flames quietly swallow the forbidden documents, Sugiyama would feel relief, as though he were burning a
rebel village or executing a