“Okay, but hear me out,” Tanaka said. “You know I was a follower of Shūmei Ōkawa for the longest time. But I just don’t think pan-Asianism is a viable concept anymore. I continued to believe after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Now there’s this incident in Beiping. I hate to say it, but my people are using that missing soldier as a pretext for an invasion. I have true sympathy for my Chinese brothers, as I do for my Negro brothers, Izzy. What the Japanese Imperial Army is doing is not right.”

“But Shige, only last month you said that Japan would have to take military control of all of Asia in order to drive the European imperialists out,” Izzy Wong said.

“I know, my brother, I know.” Tanaka was peeling a particularly juicy lychee and juice splashed onto his white shirt, which was already damp with high summer sweat. He dabbed at it with his handkerchief. “I said that because I was so mad at those bloodsuckers who drove us out of our favourite venue, the Repulse Bay Hotel. I’ve got a cousin who’s really into the idea that the Japanese Imperial Army could drive the colonizer out. But I’m not so sure. Something has gone badly awry in the way it’s being done. I just learned about some terrible things about Manchukuo—unspeakable experiments on human beings carried out by the Department of Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification. Don’t make me describe what I read.”

None of us Chinese liked the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, which we understood to be a Chinese province. We didn’t like their renaming it “Manchukuo” either.

“Isn’t it true that sometimes smaller injustices are necessary in order to do away with larger ones?” Tak-Wing said.

A sturdy fishing boat with the traditional eyes painted on its bow docked beside us, gunning its motor loudly as it manoeuvred into place. Men shouted from the dock to the deck. “Kill the engine! Use poles! Throw me the rope!”

“Maybe,” said Tanaka, loudly, so his listeners could hear him above the noise. “I don’t know. Not these kinds of injustices. I wouldn’t, for instance, consider cutting you open without anaesthetic as a small injustice worth inflicting to understand the larger injustice of human pain. To me that is sick.”

“But if they are cutting imperialists open,” said Tak-Wing, “wouldn’t that be some kind of justice for the way the white man has cut China open?”

“Pole broken!” came a shout from deck to dock.

“Cut the motor! Use the rudder!”

All of us on Captain Lee’s boat were distracted by the harbour action. But Tanaka kept talking. “They are not cutting imperialists open. They are cutting innocent Chinese civilians open. If I laid you out on Old Lee’s fish-gutting table to see how loud you scream, would that count as getting back at the British for their subjugation of Hong Kong?”