Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Umino Kaizo

1

Ikami Youkichi liked baths.

Particularly, the tranquil atmosphere of the midday bath—not too crowded with patrons—was the most suitable place for someone like him, a man without purpose, to carry along the body's lingering lethargy after awakening from an indulgent slumber.

Moreover, during these recent days when winter's lingering chill still seeped into naked skin, even as he lay listlessly in the crystalline bathwater—bathing his entire body in shameful amounts of dazzling sunlight streaming from the high ceiling—that peculiar state between exhaustion and wanton euphoria became for him a pleasure no money could purchase.

Youkichi’s regular bathhouse properly bore the trade name Mukaiyu.
However, due to having recently installed an electric bath—which was all the rage at the time—it had come to be commonly referred to as "the electric bath."

While comments such as "The electric bath really warms you up" made it immensely popular among novelty-seekers, conversely—as evidenced by those who found its tingling shocks unpleasant enough to detour to other bathhouses despite the inconvenience—it ultimately became the talk of the town, being very much a matter of personal preference.

As for Youkichi, he was by no means fond of that electric bath.
However, owing to his inherent indolence, he saw no particular reason to make an issue of it, reasoning there was no need to avoid the nearby establishment just to seek out a distant one.

However, there had been a time when he entered together with his friend Shigeo—an electrician by trade—and, struck by a sudden unease, had posed a question.

“What do you think—could someone actually die in this electric bath while they’re soaking?”

Then Shigeo—perhaps preoccupied with other thoughts—responded with a startled demeanor, yet answered as follows.

“Well, it’s generally safe… but if by some chance the electricity gets stronger, your heart could give out.”
“You see, among people, there are those who are sensitive to electricity and those who are less sensitive.”
“Even the same person will have days when they’re more sensitive and days when they’re less sensitive, depending on their physical condition.”
“Anyway, when you’re too tired, excited, or have been drinking and your heart’s weakened, you should avoid things like the electric bath.”
“Well, normally such things are rare—no, you could say they absolutely don’t happen.”
“There’s no way they’d permit something dangerous enough to potentially kill people. You can rest assured.”
——

Therefore, today as well, he had come to this electric bath as he did every day—or rather, today he had come of his own accord.
This was because—whether due to fatigue from aimless wandering around Ginza until late the previous night combined with having greedily overslept beyond intention—his awakening that morning felt strangely murky, so he had hastily grabbed a towel and soap before rushing in.

Because the morning had grown distinctly warm, steam wasn’t shrouding the bathroom as it usually did.

Yuzou—the bathhouse attendant called Yotchan—gave a brief greeting while scrubbing someone’s back.
Youkichi silently placed his soap and bath ticket atop the bucket before circling around to the side of the tub.
There were four patrons in total—only one student-looking youth sat immersed in the tub while the others scrubbed vigorously with soap at the washing stations.
The elderly man receiving Yuzou’s ministrations narrowed his eyes in apparent comfort, letting his shoulders rise and fall passively under the attendant’s motions.
A thoroughly leisurely midday bath atmosphere permeated the space.

Youkichi, not yet fully immersed in that leisurely mood, casually dipped his hand towel into the bathwater.
Then came a prickling sensation—unnervingly intense—followed by a heavy thud of impact reaching his carotid artery.
Though vaguely aware of the irregular thudding in his chest, driven by the morning chill spreading across his skin, he plunged his body into the water with a splash.
The temperature of the bathwater was excessively hot.
Submerged up to his chin in the bathwater, his lower teeth chattering violently, yet he remained motionless out of fear, enduring it for a few moments.
And then, abruptly—

“Hot!” shouted the student-like man as he suddenly leapt out.
Instantly, violent waves erupted in the bath, scalding water lashing against Youkichi’s back without restraint.
Shuddering convulsively, he jerked upright and clutched the edge of the tub—the moment he tried to climb out—

"Agh!"

With that cry, his body toppled back into the bathwater.
A sensation as though thousands of needles had been driven into his entire body—it felt exactly like a gaping hole had opened near his stomach, with something plunging straight into his heart.
His fingertips burned with pain as if seized by a monstrous fish's jaws.

"H-help! Save me!"
"The electricity—the electricity!"
"It's electrocution!"

When Youkichi—resisting the surging water with a splash as he stood rigid like a vermilion-lacquered Nio guardian deity—shrieked at the top of his lungs, the bath patrons finally rose en masse and spun around.
Yuzou stood transfixed like a scarecrow, still clutching the scrubbing brush.
Two craftsman-like companions rushed toward the bath’s edge in immediate response, faster than thought itself.

“Hey! Brother! Lend a hand—lend a hand!”
“Got it! Coming!”

“Got it! Coming!”

Seeing them about to recklessly leap into the bathing tub at any moment, the student-like man shouted to stop them.

“It’s dangerous! Wait! Wait! It’s an electric shock! If you jump in now, you guys’ll get zapped too!”

“Oh, that’s right!”
“Danger, danger!”
“But we can’t just let him die like this!”
“Hey, Attendant! We’ve got to do something—”

“Cut the main power.”
“Hey, Attendant! Cut the current now!”

Urged by the student-like man, Yuzou finally pushed open the sliding door leading to the boiler room and disappeared into the depths in a flustered hurry.

The thudding sound of footsteps running across the wooden floorboards.
The clatter of buckets rolling—it seemed the women’s bath patrons had sensed something wrong and were thrown into disarray.
Moments later, the deathly pale wife—her kimono hem askew—leapt down from the counter and shrieked at the boiler room doorway where Yuzou had dashed inside.

“This is terrible! You there! It’s terrible!”

Next, in a deep male voice:

“I’ve cut the power!”

Then, Yuzou returned to the washing area once more.

“There, I’ve cut the power.”

“It’s safe now.”
“Then hurry—”

As the student-like man impatiently urged, the timid old man hesitated, shrinking back.

"Hey! Hurry up already! I told you it's safe now!"
“There!”

When one of the craftsmen, as if unable to bear watching any longer, suddenly steeled himself and plunged both hands into the bath, Mukaiyu’s owner, the shoe attendant boy, and Otsuru—the changing room attendant—came rushing in with a clamor.

“Yuzou, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

Because the owner had no idea what had caused this calamity, he tried to berate Yuzou with uncontrollable anger.

“No two ways about it—a customer’s sunk into this here bath from an electric shock. If we don’t get ’im out quick, he’ll die!” shouted one of the craftsman-like men.

“What? An electric shock? This is bad! Yuzou, get in there!”

The owner reacted with exaggerated shock, jerking his chin to command Yuzou. But when they looked at Yuzou, though utterly flustered, something seemed to weigh on him—he made no move to summon the courage to leap into the bath, clinging instead to the edge as he glanced left and right, shook his shoulders, and remained at an impasse.

“Ugh, you coward!”

Snapping dismissively in a sullen tone, the student-like man plunged in without waiting for others.
Next came the two craftsman-like men, their soap-smeared bodies leaping as they stepped violently into the water with a splash.
They moved as if performing some inevitable labor—each probing through the water with their feet, their breathing strangely agitated.
The three naked men thrashed wildly like travelers sinking into a bog—at moments resembling a red oni rampaging, at others a sea monster writhing in grotesque contortions—yet this phantasmagoric spectacle had to remain but a fleeting impression.

Suddenly,

“Ah! Here he is!”

One of the craftsman-like men threw up both hands with a whoosh and let out a frantic shout.
At the same moment, a shriek rang out from beyond the round hole for the cold-water pipe—it was the bathhouse owner’s wife, who had earlier fled in panic toward the boiler room.
She had pressed one eye to the peephole when one of the craftsmen abruptly shouted right before her, startling her.
The moment she jerked back and turned to flee, she collided with a naked female guest whose hair was tied in a bob.

"You mustn't look."
"Don't look!"
"Please hurry back."

Without regard for propriety, the wife restrained the female guest with one arm and pushed her back. The guest appeared to be holding something black and bulky in her hand, but under such circumstances, this hardly warranted the wife's attention. Just as the female guest tried wordlessly to return to the women’s bath she had come from, the wife cut her off—

“Was there any trouble in the women’s bath?”

she asked.
The female guest kept her hand on the sliding door and glanced back slightly,

“No, nothing in particular…”

She answered vaguely and entered the women’s bath washing area.

As the sliding door closed, the bathhouse owner's wife felt an inexplicable flicker of suspicion and thought she should check the women's bath area just to be safe.
But at that moment, the owner's voice came from the direction of the men's bath.

"Hey! Bring a futon quick!
Hey! Where are you, Yuzou? Yuzou!"

With her thoughts in disarray, the bathhouse owner’s wife locked the back door and rushed back to the men’s washing area.

It seemed Youkichi’s body had been lifted out, and there, various people were in an uproar.
A crowd of bath patrons—some too distracted by the cold to cover their exposed parts, others lacking even the composure to do so—along with neighbors who’d rushed over upon hearing the commotion and strangers who appeared to be passersby now surrounded the bath in a clamorous throng, some with their tabi socks soaked through, others with their hems still hitched up.

“Hey! Won’t someone bring a futon already?”
“What’s wrong with Yuzou? Where the hell has that bastard gone?”

“Well, I don’t know.”
“Couldn’t he have run off to the police box or something?”

“That can’t be right. The officer from the police box has been here for ages. Doesn’t he have questions for Yuzou? He’s probably waiting. Yeah, more importantly, I’ve been telling you to bring a futon quickly—”

After this heated exchange in intensely agitated tones, the wife muttered under her breath and dashed into the back room. She dragged a futon out from the closet and then, mustering all her strength, carried it back toward the boiler room. There, two or three young men from the neighborhood stood peering into the men’s bath.

“Everyone, has the guest already died?”

“They say he might survive. Just bring the futon quickly!”

However, when the wife noticed several police officers and what appeared to be detectives standing rigidly near the doorway with severely grim expressions, she found herself strangely unable to grow fearful.

“Excuse me—could you open this here!”

The wife called out to someone nearby and jerked her chin toward the women’s bath entrance.

From the silently opened doorway, she took a step into the women’s bath and once again involuntarily cried out, “Ah!”

The group at the doorway reflexively turned toward her voice and, in unison, widened their eyes with a startled “Oh!”

“Oh! There’s trouble in the women’s bath too!
There are people… people in the women’s bath too…”

The bathhouse owner’s wife, having thrown the futon onto the tiled washing area floor, shouted this—all within an immeasurable instant.

The police officers and other men who had been fixated on the men’s bath incident came surging into the women’s bathing area at once, drawn by her cry.

Chief Judicial Officer Akabane Naozo’s pallid face had materialized unnoticed among them.

“God Almighty! This woman was murdered with a weapon!”
“Everyone—keep your distance!”
“This is dire.”
“You—make urgent arrangements and secure surveillance immediately!”

He showed unmistakable agitation as he shouted indiscriminately. Simultaneously, a man resembling a detective clattered toward the front entrance.

From above the partition dividing the men’s and women’s baths, countless peering faces all stiffened at once.
What incident could those unbearable expressions have signified—what in the world had occurred?—

On the white-tiled floor of the women’s bath lay the corpse of a young woman, fallen face down.
No—more than anything else, what imprinted itself most powerfully on the minds of those who glimpsed it was the pool of vivid gore suffusing that expanse of white tiles, like crimson pigment dissolved in water.
And there lay the nude body of that young woman, contorted in an unnatural posture that bore witness to her terrible agony.
——

Chief Judicial Officer Akabane Naozo strode briskly toward the corpse and examined it alone.

The woman had long since ceased to be. At the base where her left neck met her shoulder, a sharp blowdart remained deeply embedded. The massive bleeding appeared to have stemmed from this wound. Yet her body still retained some residual warmth—the absence of rigor mortis across her well-fleshed, undeniably voluptuous form made every witness imagine the crime's visceral freshness. This woman had likely been killed amid the men's bath commotion. As this realization took hold, Chief Akabane methodically observed how profound terror and unease began etching themselves across the gathering faces.

However, upon surveying the area, there were no open windows in the bath chamber, nor did there appear to be any gaps through which a blowgun could have been fired. Then, what flashed through Chief Akabane’s mind was that Yuzou had not shown himself.

“You there, I implore you to search Yuzou’s room above the boiler room.”
“It’s a place designed to be climbed via a narrow ladder.”

After whispering instructions to one subordinate, Chief Akabane next ordered another subordinate to call headquarters to arrange Yuzou’s arrest as a suspect and set up a cordon.

Immediately, as the two men departed to carry out their tasks, Chief Akabane summoned the bathhouse owner and his wife with a glance.

The bathhouse owner stood at the front of the doorway, his flushed face completely enveloped in terror.

As for the wife, her eyes fixed on the futon she had thrown down, she stood frozen with her mouth agape. Regardless of how the surrounding people were faring, they seemed incapable of making such distinctions; their eyes remained merely fixated—obsessively—on the woman’s corpse.

“Does either of you recognize this woman’s face?”

At Chief Akabane’s questioning, the couple—having finally regained their senses—looked once more at the woman’s corpse that had been indicated to them, but their answer came only in the form of shaken heads.

One after another, those present at the scene were questioned in turn, but their answers were brief—all claimed no knowledge regarding the woman’s identity.

As if struck by some thought, the wife mumbled in a low voice—so faint that even those beside her could barely catch it.

"But... how strange!"

"What? Where exactly was it strange?"

At Chief Akabane’s voice, the entire group jerked their eyes up along with the wife. And noticing that Chief Akabane’s eyes seemed to take some interest in her words and behavior, an even tenser silence fell.

The wife, with the anxiety of having uttered something unthinkable, stared back intently into Chief Akabane’s eyes.

"But now... how strange!"
"Didn't I just say that?"

"Well, but that's—"

However, the wife, realizing the futility of evasion, timidly opened her mouth.

"Well, you see, when they found that customer who'd sunk in the men's bath earlier, it was right under my nose."
"I got so startled and tried to run back inside."
"Then, just at that moment, a woman—completely naked—collided with me."
"Without thinking, I blurted out, 'You mustn't—go back quickly—' and she retreated toward the women's bath. But just then a dreadful suspicion struck me, so I called out, 'Is everything all right over there?'"
"Then she said, 'No, nothing's wrong,' and was supposed to come right over here—but then I just remembered it now, so I blurted it out."

“Ah—so the woman you saw—could she be this dead female patron? Take a good look!”

Told this by Chief Akabane, the wife now furrowed her brows and cast another fleeting glance in that direction, but—

“No, they’re completely different. What with the dim lighting and my own flustered state, I couldn’t see clearly—but I do remember the woman I saw having bobbed hair. This customer has her hair done up in a ginkgo-leaf bun, you see—but when it comes to the fleshiness and body shape, if I think they seemed similar, it does feel that way somewhat…”

Chief Akabane turned his gaze to the woman’s crushed ginkgo-leaf bun hairstyle.—On the plump nape of her neck, several blood-clotted strands of hair coiled like snakes, a sight that inevitably conjured the crime’s cruelty.

And at that moment, Chief Akabane’s eyes snapped wide open.
For the bloodstain clinging to her shoulder—about an inch from the nape he’d been scrutinizing—seemed to glimmer faintly.

“Huh?!”

As he shouted, the bloodstain in that area glimmered sharply once more.
And simultaneously, didn’t that blood swiftly flow out toward the nape of her neck?
Involuntarily extending his palm, Chief Akabane spread it over the area to see.
And indeed, with a plop, a drop of blood formed a perfect circle on Chief Akabane’s outstretched palm.

“Ah! Blood!”

While catching the increasingly frequent drops of blood, Chief Akabane reflexively looked up at the ceiling.
Compelled by this, the nearby people likewise turned their gazes toward the high bathroom ceiling in unison.

“Ah! There—something like that—something like that—”

When someone cried out, all their eyes simultaneously recognized the same thing.

It was a high, high ceiling painted in the distinctive light blue of bathhouses. On that ceiling, at what appeared to be precisely the spot directly above where the woman’s corpse lay sprawled, a small black ring could be seen. No—what they had mistaken for black was in truth a crimson ring, a circle soaked through with blood. Wasn’t it from there that the blood dripped—drip-drip—onto the pale flesh of the woman?

Faced with this unrelenting sequence of horrors, the people’s faces twisted as if they might burst into tears at any moment.

Chief Akabane, his lips convulsing and cheekbone muscles tensing, questioned the owner.

“Guide me to that ceiling space!”
“Hurry! Where’s the way up?!”

But the owner hesitated with a completely bewildered expression.

"Huh? Wh-where would you even go up from?"

"Isn't this your own house? Calm down and think!" Chief Akabane pressed urgently, his voice low yet forceful.

“Because I’ve never gone up there even once…”
“Well, anyway, let’s try setting up the back ladder.”
“Please, this way.”

As the two, watched by the surrounding people, were about to exit through the door leading to the back, one of the detectives rushed in hurriedly.

"Chief, we investigated Yuzou's room, but Yuzou was nowhere to be found."
"We conducted a thorough search, but aside from the ceiling board in the closet being slightly warped, there were no other abnormalities."
"So when we pushed aside the ceiling board in the closet and climbed up, we found it apparently connects through to this bathhouse's ceiling—but to our astonishment..."

While giving his report, the detective looked up at the ceiling—then suddenly let out a frantic shout.

“Damn!”
“That bastard’s blood!”
“Yuzou’s been killed!”

Chief Akabane stiffened and looked up at the bloody hole in the ceiling together, but before he could process the detective’s shout—

“Hmm… So there was a dead person?”
“Male or female?”

“It’s a man! And he’s naked!”
“It does appear to be Yuzou, but the soles of his feet were white and blistered.”

“Got it!”
“Let’s go immediately—lead the way!”

Chief Akabane was about to lead the way to the back entrance but, seeming to notice something, turned around again and said.

"But this woman's identity— Let's check her clothing!"

Chief Akabane stepped over the buckets lying scattered about and went to the women’s bath changing area, where he immediately began searching through the clothing baskets strewn haphazardly about, checking each one by one.
But neither the woman’s clothes they sought nor anyone else’s garments were anywhere to be found.

“Hey—the woman’s clothes aren’t here. Search the boxes.”

The detectives began opening every box door one after another.
But they weren't found in any of the boxes.
The fact that the clothes of the murdered women's bath patron were nowhere to be found made no conceivable sense, and the entire group uniformly exchanged suspicious looks.
Even if someone had stolen the woman's clothes amid the earlier commotion, there was no reason why not even a single pair of tabi socks or a single loincloth would remain.

“Then what about the geta?”

Chief Akabane frantically peered into the doma next to the counter—but wasn’t there even a single geta sandal to be found?

"Just where did this woman come in from?"

Chief Akabane felt a numbness spreading through his brain.
But that question remained a question—in any case, they couldn't leave the corpse in the ceiling space unattended for now.

Before long, with the detective who had made the discovery leading the way, Chief Akabane and the detectives climbed up the ladder in the boiler room.
The owner of Mukaeyu, having been ordered, nervously followed behind the group and ascended.

Yuzou’s room was a mere three-tatami-mat chamber. A small window faced west, with a makeshift closet installed along one wall. Inside this closet lay wicker trunks and suitcases. True enough, one ceiling board had been pried loose. The group scrambled through this opening into the attic space.

Flashlight beams crisscrossed the darkness, sharply illuminating their surroundings. What met them upon climbing up was an unexpectedly vast ceiling cavity—so spacious it defied initial expectations. Sturdy rafters intersected overhead, creating an uncanny architectural lattice. Some eighteen meters ahead, a corpse lay sprawled face down.

Through the owner’s testimony, it was confirmed beyond any doubt that the corpse was Yuzou’s.

Chief Akabane, like a man lost in a labyrinth, remained frantically agitated yet never neglected his investigation.

Yuzou's corpse, like the brutally murdered woman in the women's bath, had a sharp blowdart embedded in its throat.
And the sea of blood spreading in all directions appeared to their hearts—numbed by successive shocks of discovered events—like a blazing velvet carpet.

However, next, the group discovered something unusual lying there.
It was a cylindrical telescope and another was a legless movie camera.
Furthermore, blowdarts that the culprit must have used in the criminal act and their tubes were also discovered in a corner.
Half-eaten pieces of bread and orange peels were also deemed discoveries that could not be overlooked.

Chief Akabane borrowed a flashlight, examined the area around Yuzou’s corpse with great care, then tilted his head slightly and said.

“Hey, can someone give me a hand here? Move this corpse’s neck about four or five inches to the left.”

With a knowing expression, one of them grabbed the corpse’s hair and dragged it to the left with a rough motion. Chief Akabane picked up one of the blowdarts and began probing the area where Yuzou’s head had lain with its tip. After a moment, there came a sharp *tock*, and a hole opened up before their eyes with a hollow *pop*.

“This is it!”

Chief Akabane peered down through the circular hole.
There indeed lay the woman’s corpse he had been examining until moments before, so far below that it made his head spin.
This was unmistakably the ceiling space above the women’s bath.

Before long, Chief Akabane impaled the bloodstained plug that had been blocking the knothole onto the tip of a blowdart and, borrowing the light from his flashlight, stared fixedly at it.
It was not merely a wooden plug or a knot in the lumber, but rather an ingeniously crafted lid-like contrivance.
And in the center of that metal lid was a hole punched through, into which a round celluloid disk had been fitted.
But that too was stained with blood.

2

Through one unexpected incident after another and the discovery of increasingly bizarre facts, the assembled detectives all stared wide-eyed in astonishment.
But more shocked than anyone—more than him—was the owner of Mukaeyu, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

He had never dreamed such a dangerous knothole existed in his own ceiling—let alone that someone had brought in telescopes, movie cameras, blowguns, and even food scraps like bread crusts and orange peels. To him, it all remained utterly incomprehensible.
Moreover, Yuzou—always so loyal, so deeply trusted—had within mere hours become a corpse lying in this unthinkable place!

He sat slumped in the ceiling space, consumed by tears of misery and terror.
Yet even through this overwhelming urge to weep, he must have sensed something amiss—springing upright, he ran his hand over the spot beneath where he'd been sitting, then cried out when his fingers brushed against something.

“What’s this?!”

The flashlight beam darted over.
The detectives’ gazes uniformly converged there.

“Gah! It’s a wire! This here’s a wire!”

The owner had been sitting on a single thin wire.
The pain from it biting into his foot's flesh had accidentally led to the discovery.

At the cry of “Wire!”, they recalled the earlier electrocution commotion.
That’s right—the incident where Ikami Youkichi had been electrocuted and collapsed in the men’s bath had likely slipped from everyone’s minds until this very moment.
To such an extent had the group become abnormally desensitized.
Now, through this wire’s discovery, it was being connected and reconsidered in their minds.

Chief Akabane strode briskly toward the wire’s location and conducted a thorough inspection of various aspects.
It was determined that this was a wax-coated bell wire, entirely distinct in type from the electric light company’s fourth-class wires snaking through this ceiling space.
Moreover, it became clear that it wasn’t particularly old.
When Chief Akabane continued tracing its path further, one end of the wire became entangled with what were termed fourth-class electric light wires and terminated near Yuzou’s corpse, while investigation of the other end revealed a magnet—of the sort used for bells—atop the ridgepole; it descended below, creeping along the men’s bath ceiling before embedding itself into the men’s electric bath wiring.
Though they couldn’t comprehend the specifics due to technical unfamiliarity, everyone at least acknowledged that some sort of mechanism had been installed in the men’s electric bath.

Chief Akabane became aware that the pattern of the case was gradually clarifying itself in his mind. The culprit must have hidden in this ceiling space, using a telescope and movie camera to kill a woman of striking physique—who may have been his lover—from above the women's bath, intending to film her agonized death throes. In short, he was a sexual deviant. To execute this crime, he first sent a powerful current through the men's bath to electrocute a patron, then exploited the resulting commotion that drew everyone's attention to the men's side. Amid this distraction, he killed the woman with a blowdart, thereby completing his objective of filming the act while likely carrying out some form of romantic revenge. This constituted the logical sequence of deductions Chief Akabane had hastily assembled.

Chief Akabane thought: Then Yuzou must have noticed something abnormal and climbed into this ceiling space, only to be promptly shot dead with a blowdart from hiding by the culprit who realized he'd been discovered. As evidence, Yuzou's corpse clearly showed no signs of struggle whatsoever.

But even so, numerous unsolved mysteries still remained.

The first was that there showed absolutely no indication of the culprit having fled.
When the electrocution commotion occurred in this bathhouse, it had been reported that a police officer from the local police box immediately across from Mukaeyu recognized the stampeding women patrons fleeing in disarray; through questioning them he promptly learned of the incident and without delay set up guards at both front and rear exits.
The male bath patrons who had been present at the electrocution incident had also been strictly ordered by police officers not to move while Youkichi was being treated.
Even the neighbors and passersby who came rushing in afterward were all being detained.
If not even a single stray cat had made it outside, then the culprit must undoubtedly still be inside Mukaeyu at this very moment.
Even if the culprit were to leap out through Yuzou’s room window, it would be impossible for them not to be noticed by the watching officers.

Second was why Yuzou had recognized the abnormality in this ceiling space and come up here. Even if he had been in an agitated state, there was no reason he would come up to such a place alone without informing others.

Thirdly—and most suspiciously—not a single item of clothing or geta from the woman brutally murdered in the women’s bath had been found. Even if there had been someone among the women’s bath patrons at the time—a light-fingered individual or panicked person—who took the woman’s garments, such brazen action as leaving behind not even one tabi sock or yumoji waistcloth would have been impossible under those circumstances. As for the missing geta, such lukewarm conjecture deserved to be overturned entirely.

The final remaining question was this: when the women’s bath patrons who must have been there at the time—no, who were unquestionably present—fled, how had not a single one realized this woman had been murdered? Even allowing that women might be timid, there remained ample reason for suspicion when considering that point. However, this too could be deemed somewhat reasonable if we assumed the murdered woman had maintained composure throughout the incident—either continuing to soak alone indefinitely or pretending to rinse herself off—but when imagining a scenario where none of the female patrons kept such calm, it became impossible for the culprit lying concealed in the ceiling space to have secretly kill a woman or film the act while awaiting his planned opportunity. Thus, this aspect too remained dubious.

Chief Akabane, exhausted from thinking and feeling his head swim, came back downstairs with the group.

While descending the ladder from Yuzou's room to the boiler room, Chief Akabane saw the bathhouse owner's wife emerge from the inner living quarters carrying a tea tray. At that very moment, he suddenly remembered something he'd forgotten earlier—the wife had mentioned encountering a strange naked woman beneath the boiler room. Despite that woman insisting "There's nothing wrong in the women's bath," mere minutes later they'd discovered a female corpse there. When that suspicious woman entered the baths, the victim's body must have already been present—yet she'd said nothing about it. Could she have dressed herself in the murdered woman's clothes and geta before calmly walking out the front entrance? But if so, where had she come from originally? Where were her real garments? Even assuming she were the killer, it made no sense—a woman wouldn't lurk naked in ceiling spaces, nor would she film murders from within the women's bathing area.

Even as he thought this, Chief Akabane knew that locating the brutally murdered woman’s clothing and geta would prove most crucial in solving the case, and so he commanded one of the subordinates trailing behind him.

“Search through all of Yuzou’s belongings in his room—women’s items might turn up.”

One of the detectives who had started descending the ladder immediately turned back toward the room upon being told this.

Before long, after what seemed like five minutes had passed, the detective poked his head out from Yuzou’s room and answered energetically.

“Chief, we found something. Some kinda weird stuff turned up!”

“Hmm, I see. What is it?” came the Chief’s voice.

“Hey, come take a look at this!”

The detective contorted the area around his cheek in a strange manner and flashed a lewd smile.
Chief Akabane climbed up the ladder as he was told.

In the center of the room lay a discarded wicker trunk packed full of nude photographs of women.
These consisted mainly of cheaply printed salon-style postcards and what appeared to be newspaper and magazine clippings, but from deeper within emerged academic books on female nude studies bearing German text.
Yet despite this discovery, the specific woman's clothing they sought remained nowhere to be found in the room.

However, now that matters had reached this point, they could no longer consider Yuzou with such dismissive ease.
For as those belongings made clear, Yuzou had undeniably been a consummate sexual deviant.

After a while, the detective pulled out a telescope case from the corner of the closet.—Chief Akabane’s mind was growing increasingly confused.……

Just then, someone who had come to the boiler room called out, “Hey there!”
It was Police Doctor Murayama, whom Chief Akabane knew well.

“Thank you for your efforts. Truly.”
“Now then, Mr. Akabane—about this Ikami Youkichi fellow who caused the electrocution incident—”
“He appears to have largely regained consciousness, but keeps repeating that he wants to go home.”
“I’ve tried reasoning with him to no avail—it’s quite vexing. What would you advise? If we oppose his wishes too strongly, his heart might become dangerously agitated. Unless there are objections, I thought we might release him temporarily—”
“Indeed, his physical state makes escape utterly impossible.”

“Then let him go home.”
“Have two or three officers accompany him.”
“But you did complete the background check?”

“We had Officer Murayama from the local police box handle that after administering the injection.”
“Officer Murayama—show me that investigation report.”

The one who was called and came to the boiler room was Officer Murayama Tatsuo in uniform.
He had been assigned lookout duty from the very beginning of the incident and knew nothing whatsoever about either the route of the crime or the progress of the investigation.

“Officer Murayama, this may be unrelated, but I understand you conducted a background check on the electrocuted man—”

When questioned by Chief Akabane, he replied with a disciplined “Yes,” took out a notebook from his pocket and flipped through it, then began to read aloud from a certain page to make his report.

“Wait! Show that to me alone!”

Being told this, Officer Murayama, realizing that the bathhouse owner and his wife as well as other non-official individuals were present around them, handed over the notebook to Chief Akabane with a wry smile, keeping the page open.

And in an instant, Chief Akabane’s face flooded with radiant joy.

“This is it! We’ve identified the culprit!”

“Huh?! You’ve identified them? Then… does that mean Ikami Youkichi is the culprit?”

With a bewildered look that showed he couldn’t comprehend, Officer Murayama retorted.

“No, that’s not it.
Kashida Buhei—it’s that man without a doubt!”

The group, unaware of the circumstances, stared suspiciously at Chief Akabane’s face as he resolutely made his declaration.

“Ah, thank you, Officer Murayama.
Thanks to your notebook, we’ve unexpectedly identified the culprit—no, rather, a prime suspect. My gratitude!”

Chief Akabane’s increasingly unexpected words—however, this was how it came to be.

Initially, when Chief Akabane received Officer Murayama’s notebook, there had been no mistake in his purpose being to glance at the identity of the electrocution victim, Ikami Youkichi.
However, as he tried to look at it, the text unintentionally written before those investigation items caused him to recognize a ray of enlightenment.

It was—

Minor offense not prosecuted (written apology submitted)

Motion picture photography business; sale of motion picture equipment and accessories; and film development and duplication services.

Kashida Buhei (24 years old)

(Address)

It was a memo containing entries unrelated to today’s incident that had been recorded earlier.

Chief Akabane, upon glimpsing it, had instantly been able to sweep away the doubts that had been coiling in his mind. This was because he had intuitively deduced the culprit based on three factors: that the young man named Kashida Buhei resided within Officer Murayama’s jurisdiction; that his occupation held the key to unraveling the case’s mystery; and that his history of being made to submit written apologies to police box officers for minor offenses painted a telling behavioral pattern.

Upon hearing this explanation, the detectives—who had all been equally lost in a fog of confusion—came to share the same opinion.

But in any case, unless they investigated Kashida Buhei's whereabouts—as there was also the concern of an alibi—the agitated detectives looked up expectantly at Chief Akabane's face as if awaiting his orders.

And yet, Chief Akabane appeared composed for some reason, showing no desire to hurry.

"A police cordon has been set up. If we go to headquarters, they must have arrested him by now!"

What a carefree demeanor he now displayed, completely replacing his previously gloomy complexion!

3

However, the fact that Chief Akabane’s deduction had been correct became clear when the group withdrew from Mukaiyu Bathhouse and returned to headquarters.

“Chief, you’ve done excellent work.”
“All suspicious individuals caught in the police cordon have been placed in detention cells.”
“And there’s this one completely peculiar fellow…”

Upon hearing the words of a detective who reported as if lying in wait for the group’s return to headquarters, Chief Akabane blurted out:

“...A man in women’s clothing with a bobbed haircut—named Kashida Buhei. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Ah! You’re well informed. He’s the guy we previously made submit a written apology over a soft crime case.”

Chief Akabane, looking satisfied, turned to his accompanying subordinates and for the first time allowed a pleasant smile to cross his face.

The full picture of the case became clear through Kashida Buhei's interrogation.

He had long nursed an outrageous ambition to cinematograph young women's death throes as they perished in anguish.
This stemmed chiefly from his perverse sexual desires, though his professional fixation on morbid curiosities—thoroughly ingrained by this point—also contributed as a partial factor.
Through extensive research and meticulous planning, he had ultimately discovered this fantasy could be made reality.
The most feasible method proved to be utilizing the electric bath at Mukaiyu Bathhouse—his regular haunt.

First, he meticulously studied both the interior and exterior of Mukaiyu Bathhouse in his daily routine, then selected a young woman endowed with distinctive physical beauty, planning to brutally murder her using a specific method during her bath.

On the dawn of the day the incident occurred, he prepared his store's product—a roll of film—and developing solution, then bundled these together with a compact camera from the shop, food items like bread and mandarins, and a bob-cut wig into a furoshiki cloth, and headed to the back entrance of Mukaiyu Bathhouse.
Then, after hiding in the shadows and observing various movements, around ten o'clock in the morning, he took advantage of Yuzou's lapse in vigilance and slipped from his room into the ceiling space.
Needless to say, he had thoroughly prepared and researched before infiltrating in this manner.
He opened the boiler, threw his own clothes and geta into it to burn them, then stole Yuzou's clothes directly from his room and infiltrated the ceiling space.

He naturally possessed considerable electrical knowledge. Therefore, he planned the electrocution in the men's bath, and the technical operations required to execute it were completed in under ten minutes without difficulty. When this was finished, he went to the knothole in the women's bath's ceiling—a mechanism-equipped spot he had previously identified as Yuzou's secret observation post—and installed his brought camera in place of the telescope Yuzou had mounted there.

Eventually, the moment arrived when he became captivated by the physique of that day's sacrificial victim (later identified as Oteru, a twenty-two-year-old restaurant worker who had come to visit her aunt living near Mukaiyu Bathhouse), finally steeling his resolve to implement his plan.

It was just before noon.
The women’s bath patrons numbered merely three aside from Oteru.
In the men’s bath—as previously mentioned—there were Ikami Youkichi and four others; having gauged the timing, he applied high voltage to the men’s electric bath.
Sure enough, his plan bore fruit, and Ikami Youkichi became the victim sent into a frenzy.
From that point onward, at least the surface-level commotion unfolded as previously described.
However, among the women’s bath patrons—excluding Oteru—the other three had all been preparing to leave, so they seized upon the neighboring commotion to flee in haste.
Yet Oteru alone lingered restlessly by the bathtub.
This stemmed both from feminine modesty deterring her from darting out naked and the solitary atmosphere preventing her from ever deeming the adjacent incident serious.
But regardless, for Kashida Buhei, this presented the consummate opportunity.

He took out the prepared blowgun and fired it straight at her throat.
Indeed, this proved to be the fatal wound.

The beauty woven from the convulsions of this beautiful mass of flesh—rolling, collapsing, writhing in agony—was fully captured by the camera, accompanied by blood that rushed across the white tiles in a spreading stain.
Yet within mere seconds, Oteru had all too easily become still.

However, Kashida Buhei, exulting in his splendid success, removed only that film and attempted to flee immediately.
But it was at that moment.
Yuzō came up into this same ceiling space with a different purpose.
For he, upon learning of the electrocution commotion, had immediately feared that the police investigation would extend to the electrical wiring in this ceiling space—and, burdened by the vulnerability of one harboring secrets, had stealthily climbed the ladder and crawled up to remove the telescope.

Naturally, Kashida Buhei and Yuzō found themselves glaring at each other in the dimness of the high ceiling. But given that they were in a situation where raising their voices was impossible, they glared at each other without uttering a word, their eyes blazing with desperation. Eventually, Yuzō, confident in his burly strength, lunged to strangle Kashida Buhei’s slender neck. And then, with a sickening thud, the blowdart plunged deep into Yuzō’s throat. Abandoning Yuzō’s corpse—its vital point struck and life instantly severed—Kashida Buhei began his disguise with a tension bordering on terror. Just as he had planned in advance, even in the heat of the moment, he methodically donned the cross-dressing wig.

Then, descending once more to Yuzou’s room, he discarded Yuzou’s clothes and—now completely naked—gripped a black cloth bundle containing the film in his right hand, boldly climbing down the ladder to the boiler room. And just as he was about to head to the women’s bath entrance, he not only suddenly came face-to-face with the bathhouse owner’s wife there but was also briefly scrutinized. Even he was startled by this, but his delicate, slender physique successfully deceived the eyes of the distraught bathhouse owner’s wife.

And then, he quickly entered through the women’s bath entrance, passed by the corpse of Oteru—whom he had killed—and arrived at the changing area. From there, putting on Oteru’s clothes, stepping into her geta, and maintaining an innocent expression to avoid arousing suspicion from the patrolling officer, he effortlessly escaped outside.

However, even with meticulous planning and ingenious disguise, breaking through the daytime police cordon while cross-dressed proved to be a considerable gamble.

Kashida Buhei’s eventual apprehension resulted entirely from this final gamble’s failure.

And so, with the criminal’s apprehension, every detail of the dreaded “electric bath” incident—with its bizarre deaths—was fully elucidated.

Eventually, that film was transferred to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters and projected just once before all officials involved in the criminal investigation alongside the department’s leadership.

Yet those present at this screening—anticipating the death throes of a young woman—instead found themselves confronted with Oteru’s mesmerizing form gliding across waves of pristine tiles like some South Seas mermaid in dance. Each pair of eyes drifted wordlessly through intoxicated fascination.

For whether by intent or accident, that film had been shot with a high-speed camera.