Pathway to Japanese Literature

I was, at that time, thinking about the plot for a newspaper serial novel.
It was about an impoverished noble who incurs the resentment of a nouveau riche and is materially oppressed through various means.
The noble writhed in his struggle to break free from this oppression.
However, in his writhing, he instead fell into the trap laid by the nouveau riche and became a legal criminal—that was the plot.

I wanted to depict the part where that nobleman, driven to desperation, commits a crime under the law as realistically and plausibly as circumstances would allow.
I wanted to steer clear of the commonplace scenarios typical of popular fiction.
With that in mind, I considered consulting a legal specialist.

I mentally counted the old friends of mine who had become law graduates.
Among my high school acquaintances, there were several who had become law graduates, but all that came to mind were those who had joined shipping companies and gone overseas, those who studied political science and entered the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, or those employed at Mitsubishi—I could hardly recall any law graduate specialized in legal matters who might entertain my consultation.
Amidst them, I suddenly remembered a middle school friend named Ayahe who, last year, had left the Kyoto District Court, come to Tokyo, and was now working at the XX Law Office in Yurakucho.
When he had first come to Tokyo, Ayahe had sent me a notification postcard, and the name of that XX—the famous lawyer—had remained etched strangely clearly in my mind.

I visited him for the first time in six or seven years since we had met when Ayahe was at Third Higher School.
He had grown so pale he was nearly unrecognizable from his student days.
And lingering in his clear yet lifeless, cold eyes were remnants from his three or four years as a prosecutor.
He welcomed me warmly and devised a crime that would fit into my novel’s plot.
He put considerable effort into devising it while referencing various articles of the Penal Code.
On top of that, he said the following.

“Ah, I must say it’s admirable that you, as a novelist, are paying such attention to legal details.”
“Well, when we experts read novels by present-day authors, we find quite a few strange points.”
“Cases that should only carry imprisonment with labor are written as imprisonment without labor—or crimes punishable by three years or more of imprisonment with labor reduced to two years—there are quite a few strange discrepancies like that.”
“Moreover, I am quite dissatisfied that novelists’ materials never step beyond their own lived experiences.”
“If we were to make a request—we’d like writers to handle far more cases rooted in legal frameworks—that is, intriguing civil and criminal matters—as their material.”
“For a country to become fully law-governed—each individual’s conception of law must develop further.”
“To that end—you writers must pen more legally-grounded cases—let people understand how vital law is to human life.”
“If you intend this—I could share various experiences from my prosecutor days.”

While making such opening remarks, he told me the following story.

“When the rickshaw passed through the great gate, I couldn’t help but feel both a profound disillusionment and an accompanying loneliness as I thought, ‘Ah, so this is Shimabara.’”
“I’m ashamed to admit that was my first time going to Shimabara.”
“I had spent six years in Kyoto from my high school days through university, yet until that time, I had never once laid eyes on the famed Shimabara, despite its long-standing renown.”
“Once or twice, friends had invited me with offers like ‘Would you like to see the courtesan procession?’—but I, being proper… or rather, timid—could not bring myself to set foot in such a place.”

“So until that time shortly after graduating university, the Shimabara I had envisioned remained the Shimabara of novels, plays, folk songs, and legends—a pleasure quarter like those depicted in woodblock prints, with grand buildings lining the streets and beautiful courtesans coming and going.”

Therefore, on that day—it was indeed early November—when I was ordered by the senior prosecutor to go on assignment to Shimabara, I could not suppress the peculiar interest stirring within my heart.
The fact that I was going to Shimabara—and moreover, to inspect the double suicide that had occurred that very morning—meant that my excitement was twofold: interest in the place itself and interest in the incident.

“The phrase ‘Shimabara Double Suicide’ floated beautifully in my mind like the title of a novel or play.”

However, when the rickshaw passed through what seemed to be the main gate and rushed into the brothel district, and when I saw—through the lowered celluloid window of its hood, bathed in the dull afternoon sunlight of November—the stagnant rows of low-roofed, decaying buildings, the very fact that this was the famed pleasure quarter made it feel all the more wretched and pitiable.
Like a terminally ill patient cast aside by their doctor to await death, every last house seemed left to crumble into decay.
Through the gaps in the noren curtains bearing family crests, every last one of the interiors I could see appeared to me as manifestations of things darkly and gloomily heading toward ruin.

When the rickshaw turned into the alleyway, the building that appeared before my eyes was even more wretched—no, hideous would be more fitting.
Every last structure was cheaply built with splintered woodwork, their garishly painted lattices and vermilion-red barred windows exuding a stiflingly unpleasant sensation.
Even the characters scrawled on the soot-blackened corner lanterns—names like Dai-ni Seikairo and Aikawarou—projected a vulgarity one might expect from some provincial brothel quarter.

In front of the brothel where the double suicide had occurred stood an officer from the local police station, so I immediately recognized it.

By the time I alighted from the rickshaw, none of the excitement or interest I had felt upon leaving the courthouse remained.

That brothel was one of the crude two-story houses lining this street.
Upon entering, an earthen floor extended Kyoto-style toward the back. To the left lay rooms where family members and prostitutes lived, while to the right stood a box staircase allowing customers to ascend directly to the second floor.

The double suicide had of course occurred upstairs.
When I—having been received by the Inspector—was about to climb this box staircase, I suddenly noticed through a gap in the pale yellow noren bisecting the earthen floor a woman who appeared to be the house madam staring fixedly at my face.
She was a woman with a broad receding forehead and eyes containing an uncanny light—the sort one could never forget after a single glance.

I climbed those staircase steps quite energetically.
Then the Inspector, who had gone up ahead, moved his body sharply to the right upon reaching the top.
I paid no mind to such things and climbed all the way up without hesitation.
There at my feet—having just climbed the staircase—lay a strange object. In that moment, I truly thought so.
But when I suddenly noticed, my sock-clad foot nearly stepped on the disheveled hair of the woman lying supine in the corridor.
The agitation I felt then—I can still recall it to some extent.
I had assumed a double suicide would involve bodies lying properly in some room.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear the act had occurred in the four-and-a-half-mat room beyond the landing. As the woman collapsed, thick congealed blood from a dislodged sliding door had smeared across every inch of tatami within.
In that blood lay an old chintz-patterned futon spread out, the woman's legs barely resting upon it.
The room had a ceiling so low it brushed my head, dim even at midday with only a small skylight. In that shadowy corner lay bowls and sake bottles cluttered haphazardly—remnants of their final meal.
The walls were yellowish sand-plaster typical of Kyoto's pleasure quarters, but closer examination revealed blood sprayed across the far wall as if someone had held it in their mouth and misted it out.

Still unaccustomed to such scenes, the moment I saw that ghastly spectacle, I felt as if doused in icy water. Yet for the sake of the observing Inspector and clerks, I maintained a facade of composure and first examined the woman's wound. Her carotid artery had been cleanly severed—all the blood in her body seemed to have erupted from that single cut, thoroughly soaking her soiled flannel nightgown from chest to knees before spreading across tatami mats and corridor in a vast crimson pool. But what struck me more than the wound itself was her ravaged face. Though undeniably that of a woman nearing thirty with delicate features, her parched bluish skin resembling cracked earth and eyes with festering red corners made it impossible to recognize as a human face. It didn't even register as something alive. All I perceived was an indescribable wretchedness.

The man who had failed to die had been moved to another room and was receiving treatment from a doctor.
The primary purpose of my inspection was to interrogate the man and ascertain whether it had been a forced double suicide, and even if consensual, whether there were facts indicating he had assisted in her suicide.

The fact that the two of them had left suicide notes left no room for doubt that this was not a forced double suicide, but there was ample suspicion of assisted suicide.

I went to the separate room where he was said to be lying in order to interrogate the man.
Upon looking, the man was a square-faced artisan-like man around twenty years old with cropped hair, but the bandage tightly wrapped around his throat wound had swollen enough to engulf his jaw.
His face was drained of color, his eyes dull and vacant, but even a layperson could immediately tell the wound wasn’t fatal.

Before beginning the interrogation, I had heard from the police an overview of the two individuals' backgrounds and circumstances leading to their double suicide: that the man was from Fukushima Prefecture—a Nishijin craftsman conscripted for military service beginning in December; that the woman from Tottori Prefecture had worked nearly ten years in Shimabara yet remained bound by unresolved debts with her indenture unexpired even as she turned twenty-nine this year; that she had always been gloomy and withdrawn; that she had recently received news of her mother's illness back home and made "I want to visit her" her constant refrain—a wish her indentured status rendered impossible to fulfill, much to her bitter frustration; that the man had begun visiting in early October with that day being his sixth or seventh visit; that their suicide pact occurred around seven in the morning while household members still slept; that approximately thirty minutes later the madam finally heard the man's groans; that when she rushed upstairs the woman had already stopped breathing entirely; that she wrested away the dagger still held by the man; and that before using the blade they had drunk volatile oil yet failed to die.

After hearing these sequential facts, I commenced the interrogation.

When I was about to begin questioning, the Inspector and constable attempted to seat the man upright on the floor.
The young man tried lifting his head—apparently aggravating his throat wound—and lay motionless with gritted teeth, enduring the pain while struggling to rise.

“If it’s painful, you can stay like that,” I cautioned, but the Inspector cut me off—

“Oh, it’s nothing. He’s perfectly fine.”
“It’s just a cut to the trachea; there’s no danger to his life,” he said, this time scolding the young man,

“Now then!
“Straighten up and get your mind straight!”
“You won’t die from a wound like this after all.”

As he said this, he gave a single firm tap on the shoulder.

The heartrending sympathy I felt for the young man was immediately suppressed by my professional conscience.
By the time I began the interrogation, I had already adopted the tone of an ordinary prosecutor.
By that time, I had gradually learned the knack of interrogating defendants.

“Now then, I have some questions for you. What’s done is done—no use dwelling on it. So don’t overthink things—just tell me everything straight, like a man.”
“You’re the sort of man who’d go through with something this drastic. Answer me decisively—cleanly and without hesitation, like a man should.”
“Understand?”
“Don’t sit there scheming in your gut—‘If I say this they’ll take it that way, if I say that they’ll take it this way.’”
“If you think before speaking, it becomes a lie.”
“If it becomes a lie, nothing will line up.”
“If nothing lines up, even the truth becomes lies.”
“Understand?”
“So if you make me accept it as truly being how things happened—what’s done can’t be undone—it’ll work out best for you in the end.”
“Being honest straight out—that’s the smartest move here.”

Whether prosecutors or preliminary judges, they surely said things in this manner before beginning an interrogation. And if you didn’t allow the other party’s mind to relax, they’d just keep lying and cause problems.

“Well? Are you planning to tell me everything like a man?”

When I pressed him like this, the young man—unable to move his bandaged neck—let out a moaning voice from his wounded throat,

“I will speak like a man.”
“I will state it,” he replied.
Yet most defendants, even as they answered like this, told lies.

“What’s the woman’s name?”
“Nishiki.”
“When did you start visiting her?”

“From early October.”

“So it hasn’t even been a month yet, right? How many times have you visited her up until now?”

“This makes the sixth time.”

“How much did it cost you each time?”

“Oh…” The young man hesitated briefly, then swallowed painfully before answering, “It cost between six and ten yen.”

“How much do you earn at the factory?”

“About one yen and fifty sen a day.”

“Hmm, so after deducting things like food expenses and bath fees from that, about how much remains per month?”

“Hmm… About ten yen remains.”

“I see. So only about ten yen remains, and yet you go out six times a month, spending six or seven yen each time—no wonder the money would run out.”

“Uh-huh…”

“So you must’ve gotten the money from somewhere else, then.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Meaning you had someone get it for you.”

“Uh-huh!
“I borrowed about twenty yen from friends.”

“Anything else?”

“I borrowed ten yen from my parents.”

“Hmm. That makes thirty yen in total.”
“A debt of that size isn’t unpayable.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why on earth did you do such a thing?”

The young man seemed to be lost in thought for a while, but suddenly began coughing violently and spat out frothy blood from his mouth.
Because of the injury to the trachea, blood was leaking into the mouth.

I worried that my interrogation might worsen the young man’s condition, so when I asked the police doctor, he replied with a calm expression,

“What?!
“No problem.”
“No matter what you do, his life isn’t in danger.”
“Don’t worry—please proceed,” he said.

Reassured by this, I addressed the young man once more.

“Look, thinking that way won’t do.”
“Just say it plainly—plainly.”

The young man wiped the blood around his lips with a handkerchief while,

"I was supposed to be conscripted this year, so I thought I'd save up money before enlisting to please my parents—but with this situation, I couldn't save anything and fell into debt. And that woman... she was so pitiable. She kept saying she wanted to go back home just once to see her mother, but it reached a point where she couldn't return. So we came to discuss how we might as well die."

"Hmm."
"So you discussed dying together?"
"But calling it debt—it's such a trivial amount."
"And if the woman wanted so badly to return home, why didn't you just take her there?"
"It's not some distant place—it's Tottori, isn't it?"

“Uh-huh!”
“But that wasn’t possible.”
“Truly.”

“Hmm, what you’re saying does seem reasonable on the surface. But dying over just that alone… it doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Stop thinking and try saying it straight.”
“If you think before speaking, it’ll turn into a lie.”

When I said this, the young man replied, a faint flush coming to his pale face as he spoke.

“I threw away my life for her sake—I would never tell a lie!”

The young man became somewhat agitated, but I maintained a cold demeanor as I spoke.

“Is that so? If that’s how it is, then fine—but it still doesn’t sit right with me. The fact that it doesn’t sit right with me means there’s something unresolved in your heart, isn’t there? If you can’t speak the truth at a time like this, isn’t that a disgrace as a man? There must be some other reason. Didn’t you do something bad?”

“No—I’d never do anything bad!” the young man blurted out urgently, but as blood must have leaked from his wound again, he began coughing painfully.

My mind had by then become entirely consumed by professional detachment—even as the young man suffered, I no longer felt the same depth of sympathy that had initially welled up within me.
Not only that, but finding my opponent quite persistent, I suddenly shifted the course of my interrogation.

“Now, setting that aside—who acted first? Was it you, or was it the woman?”

“I said I should die first, so the woman stabbed the dagger into her throat, then stuck it into the tatami and gave it to me.”

“Hmm. So how exactly did she stab herself?”

“She turned the blade upward and stabbed her throat. Then the blood streamed down.”

“Was it her right hand or left that held it?”

“It was the right.”

“I see.”
“Then what did you do?”

“Then I took the dagger and stabbed myself once, but it hurt so much—so much that I instinctively stood up.”

“And then?”

“I think I let out a groan.”
“Then I just lost control.”

“I see—so you lost control? Then how did that blood get on the wall?”

“In my agony, I leaned against it.”

“Then what did you do?”

“When I came to my senses, the Madam had snatched the dagger I was holding.”

“Hmm. I see.”
“So that’s how it was.”
“That Nishiki woman was quite something.”
“But that’s a lie, isn’t it?”
“Try saying again how that woman stabbed her throat.”

Making someone repeat the same thing twice was our standard interrogation tactic.
If the defendant was lying, inconsistencies would inevitably surface.
Yet even so, forcing the wounded defendant to repeat his account couldn’t help but feel cruel.
But back then, my burning professional resolve instantly smothered such qualms.

Even so, the young man repeated the same thing so as not to contradict his previous statement.

“Is that so?
“That woman did it alone!
“But didn’t you help her?
“Don’t you think she’s pitiful?
“After all, you were both going to die together anyway.
“If the woman was suffering, isn’t it human nature for you to take her hand and lend her strength?
“Isn’t that what’s beautiful about being human?
“Whether it’s good or bad is another matter—isn’t that how it should be?”

When I first glanced at the woman’s corpse earlier, I couldn’t help but think she looked like someone with bad lungs—an emaciated woman who bore no resemblance to the courageous figure the man had described. I’d believed from the start that this was a case of assisted suicide. What’s more, when I’d examined it briefly earlier, I’d noticed how cleanly the wound had been pierced with a single thrust.

“Well?”
“I simply can’t imagine that woman possessing the courage you ascribe to her.”
“That’s precisely what baffles me.”
“Well?”
“Why not just tell the truth?”
“The truth is you stabbed her yourself, didn’t you?”

The young man, while clearly flustered,

“No, no—that’s unthinkable! Unthinkable!” he denied.

“Then I’ll ask you this—how did that scratch come to be on the woman’s throat?”

The young man’s face flushed red before he fell silent.

“You helped stab her, didn’t you?”

The young man faintly shook his head sideways.

“So you claim to have no memory of it? When the woman stabbed her throat—are you saying your hand never touched her body?”

“No.”
“We embraced each other.”

I inwardly exclaimed, “Got him!”

“The two of you embraced each other. Hmm.”
“You didn’t mention that earlier.”
“Ah—the two of you embraced each other.”

“We were holding each other when she stabbed her throat, and we fell over together.”
“So when blood started flowing, I tried to press it down.”

“What you’re saying keeps edging closer to truth.”
“But it needs more honesty.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Just say a little more of what really happened.”

“So, the woman struggled and clawed at her throat with her hands.”

“I see.”
“So that’s how the scratch came to be, is it?”
“Since such things do happen, that could also be considered true.”
“But you should think carefully.”
“Ordinary women are weak-willed creatures, you know.”
“A notorious poisoner like Oni no O-Matsu or General Nogi’s wife—a paragon of feminine fortitude—might pull off a clean death with one thrust. But could a frail woman like her manage such a thing? Anyone with half a brain would see it’s impossible!”

When confronted with this line of reasoning, the young man fell silent as if at a loss for a response.
I thought I was almost there.

“There’s no need for me to ask you about this—we’ve known everything from the start. Since we’ve brought the attending physician, we already know most details without your input. But I’m asking to see whether you’re a man who tells the truth—whether you possess any merit at all.”

When pressed like this, the young man writhed in apparent agony, but—

“Oh，Your Honor．”
“I want to die．”
“Please，kill me！”

He let out a scream-like cry and began to sob plaintively.

I said to the young man in a scolding tone:

"What do you expect to accomplish with such weakness?"
"Isn't this the most critical moment of your entire life?"
"Isn't this the crucial moment to correct your past mistakes and live honorably as a reborn man? If what you did was wrong, isn't this the time to splendidly fulfill your duties—as an apology both to the deceased and to society—and be reborn anew?"
"If you keep spouting lies at such a critical moment, you're nothing but worthless scum—the dregs of manhood."
"Come now, stop spouting such weak-willed nonsense about wanting to die—why don't you cleanly confess the truth?"
"Like holding the end of the dagger's handle for her a little, or pushing her a bit when you fell together—or something."
"Spit out the truth!"

“In my frenzy, I don’t remember clearly, but when we fell together, my hand might have gone to her throat.”

The young man had finally started to speak the truth.
I couldn't help but let a smug smile surface on my face.

"I see, but you must know what you did yourself. No—or rather, you think you've got it figured out, but from a normal perspective, it still doesn't quite make sense."
"If I were in your position, I'd understand perfectly well—but why don't you try explaining it in a way that makes sense to ordinary people?"
"But I'm not telling you to lie."

The young man remained silent for a while, but finally, as if resolved,

“When I thought it through properly, she’d stabbed herself and was suffering so much that I climbed over her and grabbed what was left of the dagger’s handle.”
“I pushed it all the way in for her.”

“Which hand did you use?”

“I used my right hand.”

“What were you doing with your left hand then?”
“You didn’t just leave it dangling up in the air, did you?”
“What position were you in at that moment?”

“Actually, I held the woman’s neck with my left hand for her.”

“I see.”
“So now everything makes sense.”
“So there’s no inconsistency in your account.”
“So you should have said so earlier.”
“So there’s no inconsistency in that matter.”
“I understand well.”
“But there’s one more thing I don’t understand.”
“How about you just say it plainly without thinking too much?”
“If that’s how it was, why don’t you just come out and say it plainly?”
“Why don’t you explain it in a way that’s easy to understand without forcing it?”
“Come on—while you’re at it, tell me why you did this.”

“That is as I stated earlier.”

“Hmm, what exactly did you say earlier? Why don’t you try saying it once more? I’ve heard so much already that you might be getting confused. Try telling me again in detail.”

This was done to give the criminal an opportunity to confess the truth.

“It was that I’d thought to save up some money before going to the military and make my parents happy, but debts piled up, and then that woman—”

“Ah, right—that’s exactly what I was asking about earlier. Just say it without overthinking that part—people often talk about painful goodbyes, but once you return home and get drafted into the military, you’d naturally have to part ways with that woman too, wouldn’t you?”

“Actually, I’ve told you various things already—what I’ve said so far is one part. The other part is that I hated the idea of enlisting in the military. So when I desperately decided and told her, she said ‘In that case…’ and that’s how it ended up like this.”

“Is that correct? If you say anything different from now on, suspicion will be cast upon you, hatred will be heaped upon you, and in the end, it’ll only be to your detriment.”

“That’s exactly right—there’s absolutely no inconsistency.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than despair surfaced on the young man’s face, and he collapsed backward as if crumbling.

It had been made clear that he had committed the crime of assisted suicide.
The penalty for assisted suicide is imprisonment with labor for six months to seven years or imprisonment without labor.

When the young man’s interrogation ended, I could not suppress the pride and satisfaction—stemming from a sense of duty, as though I had skillfully extracted a confession—that welled up within my heart.
Nearly an hour of grueling interrogation had left the young man utterly exhausted. Even after being laid on a futon, he continued breathing laboriously through his shoulders. I stared at him for some time with the gaze of a hunter surveying his freshly felled prey.
As I felt pity for the young man who had been ensnared in the intricacies of my interrogation and confessed with unexpected ease, I even found myself harboring contempt toward his naivety.

At that moment, the Inspector approached me and whispered in a low voice that the young man couldn’t hear,

“Please come with me. The autopsy is underway.”

When I heard that, I returned to the original four-and-a-half-mat room where the woman’s corpse lay.
Indeed, the woman’s corpse had been laid straight on the futon.
Stripped of her wrinkled, grimy cotton-flannel sleepwear, her appearance was even more wretched and pitiful than before.
The blue, emaciated skin around her chest retained not a trace of elasticity resembling human skin.
Her exposed ribs and jagged arm joints were vividly demonstrating this woman’s ten years of wretched life.
Moreover, the waistcloth wrapped around the lower half of that body was so appalling that anyone who glimpsed it couldn’t help but turn their face away.
It was flannel, but its original pink had faded, with white blotches forming here and there that were soiled gray.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that white cotton had been sewn over the flannel in the manner typical of ordinary women’s undergarments. However, where the white cotton had turned a grayish-black, spurting blood had soaked through, staining even the cotton portion to match the flannel’s soiled pink.

The woman’s throat wound was rapidly cut open before our eyes, then her chest and abdomen were successively dissected. The police doctor, with the practiced, dispassionate motions of someone preparing a chicken for cooking, examined the lungs, heart, stomach, and intestines before stating she showed traces of pulmonary catarrh.

As I watched the autopsy unfold, I felt my emotions growing heavy like lead. Her malnourished, emaciated body hurled the wretchedness of her past life into my chest with more force than anything else. That she—after struggling for ten years without glimpsing dawn’s light to escape this hellish brink—would plan suicide came to seem so natural it verged on self-evident. Speaking of advance payments, it must have been some partial sum—three hundred yen or five hundred at most. That she, whose mind and body had been shattered for a decade by such money, would seek through death to escape a predicament otherwise inescapable struck me as utterly natural.

The true evil of modern prostitution lies not in the act itself, but in how capitalism’s poison permeates even this world—how prostitutes’ own blood and sweat fatten those called brothel owners. It is that poor people’s children become bound by meager sums, prey for brothel owners who devour them down to the bone. As these thoughts crystallized, it began to seem that for such victims, escaping their hopeless predicament through death was both final rebellion and sole escape route.

With such a wretched body, in such miserable clothing, performing such degrading work—I thought how much happier this woman might have been to commit suicide in one decisive act rather than endure it all.

At that moment, I thought of that young man who had helped this woman commit suicide.
This woman clearly desired death—and death would be her ultimate liberation.
Why does the act of him helping this woman hold the dagger as she struggled to commit suicide constitute a crime?
What could possibly be unreasonable about her considering death when she’d been crushed and suffering in modern society’s most unjust crevices?
And just because she died—how many people would suffer any loss?
Would the madam suffer any loss?
No—had she not already had her fill of her blood and sweat?
Do we not lack any pretext to obstruct her death?
Even if we were to prevent her death—would there be any way to save her?
And yet—why must that young man who merely assisted her when she sought death be punished?

At that moment, I suddenly recalled the words I had told the young man earlier as a means of interrogation.

...Isn’t the woman pitiable?
After all, you two were going to die together anyway.
If the woman was suffering, isn’t it human nature for you to take her hand and lend her strength?
Isn’t that a noble thing for a human to do?

The words I had spoken as a means now rebounded powerfully within my chest.
In a situation like that young man’s, isn’t adopting an attitude like his something that should be affirmed by all as natural human emotion?
Isn’t that a noble thing for a human to do?
And yet, must the law pursue and punish him—this man who failed to die and now suffers?

As I dwelled on these thoughts, I came to view my earlier behavior—how I had threatened and cajoled the wounded young man to extract a confession and taken pride in it—as despicable. My professional conscience was teetering on the brink of collapse.

We arrived around two o’clock, but by the time all procedures were completed, night had fully fallen.
It was when we were trying to leave and waiting for the rickshaw to arrive.
During the inspection, private individuals had been strictly prohibited from going upstairs, but since everything was now concluded, we permitted the household members to ascend.
Then, the first to come up—as if lying in wait—was the Madam of this house whom I had noticed earlier.

When she saw my face, she bowed low like a flattened spider, yet all the while kept staring coldly at me from beneath her brow—then, as if struggling to speak,

“Sir, wouldn’t it be fine if I took that ring?” she said.

“Ring!”
“The ring—what about it?”

The Brothel Madam gave a slight ingratiating laugh, but

“Oh.
Because that child has it on.”

When I heard that, I couldn’t help feeling a peculiar revulsion.

“So you want the ring on the corpse’s finger?”

“Oh!”
“Yes, sir.”

I wanted to shout her down from the outset.
But my prosecutor’s rationality held my emotions in check.
To strip a ring from a corpse—by any measure of ordinary human feeling, no matter what creditor-debtor relationship existed—was a horror beyond human decency.
Yet legally speaking, it amounted to nothing more than relocating an object.

“Very well.”

I had no choice but to answer with such bitter resignation.

The Brothel Madam, claiming she was too frightened to go alone, had a detective accompany her to the room where the corpse lay.

As I watched the Brothel Madam depart, my heart became filled with a strange, oppressively heavy emotion—neither quite rage nor sorrow nor melancholy—yet one that felt ready to rupture.

When ordinary people die, even after their last breath has left them, they are respected and treated as if still living—indeed, more so than in life. But she—she who had struggled desperately while alive, she who had been spat upon again and again—the moment her breath ceased, she was handled like mere matter itself. To think that the final adornment she wore must be stolen by the very brothel owner who had tormented her throughout her life—tears of pity for her tragic fate pooled in my eyes, utterly beyond my control.

The Brothel Madam soon returned with the ring she had removed.
When I examined it, it proved to be a roughly fourteen-karat gold ring shaped like a crescent—worth no more than eight or nine yen at most.
At that moment, overcome by a sudden surge of emotion, I said these words.

“What are you going to do with that ring?”

The Brothel Madam fidgeted nervously,

“That girl has a mountain of debt, so I’m thinking of selling this to help cover it.”

“I see.
So you’re going to sell it to someone, then.
If you’re going to sell it, then sell it to me.
How much does it cost?
Ten yen is not exactly cheap.”

“Oh yes. That’s perfectly fine.”
“That’s perfectly fine.”
“But what on earth are you buying this for?”

“Enough! It’s fine.”

With that, I bought the ring.

At that moment, a rickshaw arrived.
I stood up and, disregarding the Madam’s puzzled gaze, entered Nishiki’s room.
And I slipped the ring I had bought from the Madam back onto her emaciated finger.
Despite it already being mid-November, the corpse lay covered only by a faded crimson Yuzen-dyed single-layer kimono, which somehow looked faintly cold.
But her face alone—truly, with eyes closed as if sleeping—was, for me in that moment, the greatest comfort.

I said in a scolding manner to the Madam, who had timidly come up behind me to see what I was doing.

“Listen.”
“This ring doesn’t belong to Nishiki.”
“It’s mine now.”
“If you take this ring again, you’ll be in for it, I’m warning you.”

I dismissed whatever the Brothel Madam was saying fearfully and descended the ladder steps.

After getting into the rickshaw, I regretted that my final act—so abrupt in front of the attending Inspector and detectives—had been too impulsive.
But though I later came to regret it, the truth remains that in that moment, I was caught up in a strange excitement that drove me to act as I did.