Taki probably wanted to go back to Tokyo anyway, and eventually left the deep snow of Yamagata for the capital on a train stuffed with people seeking to buy goods on the black market. Being the person she was, she was probably carrying sweet potatoes and rice with her.
Tokyo had been completely razed to the ground. It was even worse than she had seen in March the year before. The northwestern suburb where Taki had lived had also been burned out in a huge air raid on 25th May.
When I hear ‘northwestern suburb of Tokyo’ I automatically think of the Tamagawa area, but back then the suburbs were much closer to what is now central Tokyo. The red-roofed house had been on one of the railways leading westwards from Shinjuku. It wasn’t that far from Shinjuku and even now is counted as one of the
