Minis: the Second Prequel: A Light Shines from Shinjuku

Only one more, after this!

Japan surrendered on August 14th, 1945. The American bombings had decimated close to 90% of Shinjuku Station and its surroundings. Nevertheless, by August 20th — fewer than two weeks after the country suffered two nuclear strikes and only five days after witnessing the capitulation of an emperor they considered a god, truly holy — the people of Shinjuku turned the station’s east exit area into a black market, a yami ichi, that grew and grew and grew.

It boasted a startling array of goods. Displayed on wooden crates were pots, pans, kettles, plates, silverware, cooking oil, tea, rice, leather, electrical goods and geta (wooden clogs), along with vast quantities of military equipment and clothing. Most of the wares for the market, which bore the romantic-sounding name Hikari Wa Shinjuku Yori (The Light Shines forth from Shinjuku), had been stolen from a secret supply of provisions for a ghost army of 4 million men that was to have been mobilized in the event of an American invasion of the mainland.

Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan, by Robert Whiting, 1999.

Of course our former supply sergeant, Eichi, ad his hands all up in those military goods. Not an orange peel went to waste. Eichi was one of the first to cobble together a stall from bits of this and parts of that. He slept behind it. He slept as pirates do: with one eye open.