Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Kikuchi Kan

Your Excellency, Minister of Justice:

I humbly beg your forgiveness for the presumption of an unknown person like myself abruptly sending such a letter without prior acquaintance.
I am kin to Kakuno Ichirou and his wife, who fell victim to brutal murder during a savage robbery in the outskirts of Chiba Town, Chiba Prefecture, on May 21, 1914.
To clarify, I am the biological younger brother of Toshiko, wife of Ichirou.
The tragic demise of my sister and her husband was extensively reported in Tokyo newspapers of the time, so I trust the incident known as 'The Chiba Town Couple Murder' still lingers in Your Excellency's memory.
Even now, whenever I recall the cruel fate that befell my own flesh and blood sister, I cannot suppress the shudder that seizes both body and soul.
When I consider that among all women who ever lived, none could have perished—nay, been slaughtered—in so merciless a fashion as my sister, I still feel my very entrails churn within me.
The mere act of summoning those memories to mind fills me with revulsion.
Yet I must first recount those events as preface to what I now dare submit through this letter.

My brother-in-law Kakuno Ichirou had been working as a magazine journalist in Tokyo until March 1914.
However, around that time, as his chronic lung condition began gradually worsening, he came to Chiba Town—where my family home, his wife’s parents’ house, was located—for a change of air to convalesce.
After consulting with my parents, we rented a small house near the sea in the suburbs with rooms of six tatami mats, four-and-a-half tatami mats, and two tatami mats where he could recuperate.
My parents, who had been living in Tokyo until then and thus had only been able to meet my sister once or twice a month, seemed extremely pleased that they could now see her nearly every day after she had moved so close by.
Fortunately, my brother-in-law's illness also began showing signs of recovery as summer approached, and my sister and her husband, I, and our parents all brightened our countenances with the thought that if he continued his convalescence through the summer, he would surely regain his health.
But even as we were rejoicing in this respite, that terrible fate was descending upon my sister and her husband.

I will never forget.
Though referred to as the night of May 21 in the third year of Taisho, to be precise, it was around four o'clock in the morning on the following day, the 22nd.
There was someone violently battering the front door of my house as if to break it down.
When I opened the door a crack in surprise, a lantern marked with the police station's emblem caught my eye.
I thought it must be a policeman or perhaps a detective, so my heart pounded as I wondered what had happened.
But that man was neither a policeman nor a detective, but rather appeared to be a police custodian wearing a happi coat.
The man did not wait for me to open the door and, while panting,

“You’re related to Mr. Kakuno, aren’t you?”
“Something terrible has happened at Mr. Kakuno’s residence right now.”
“Please send someone immediately...” he said, trying to hurry off, but I clung to him.

“What do you mean by ‘terrible’? What’s happened?”
“What’s happened?” I pressed again.
Looking back, the custodian must have known my sister and her husband had been killed, but he likely avoided the unpleasant duty of delivering such dreadful news himself.

“Apparently a robbery occurred, but I don’t know the details.”
“Anyway, they said you should come immediately,” he said before hurrying off.
When I heard the word “robbery,” a dreadful premonition closed around my chest, and I even felt a faint trembling in both legs.
When I rushed back to the entranceway, there stood my father and mother in their nightclothes.
Mother’s voice was already thick with trembling,

"What's happened? What's happened?" Mother asked tremulously.
When I said,"There's been a robber at Sister's house," Mother—

“Agh!” she cried out, clinging to Father’s shoulder as she began trembling violently. Stalwart Father maintained his composure without so much as a change in expression, “Go at once. Hurry. I’ll come right after you,” he said. With trembling hands, I changed my clothes, then grabbed an oak stick from the kitchen for protection and ran out of the house. When I looked back, Mother appeared to have been thrown into violent turmoil by the calamity that had befallen her beloved daughter, blinking her eyes rapidly as though she could barely form words, and continued trembling where she sat in the entranceway.

My house and my sister’s house were separated by about fifteen *chō*. When one left Chiba Town and went about ten *chō* along a path through rice fields, there were pine groves on both sides of the road. Once past those pine groves, my sister’s house stood along with two or three other houses. Looking back, I think I made it through those fifteen *chō* in about ten minutes, but that night, the path I was so accustomed to walking felt twice or even three times as long as usual. However, even as I hurried to my sister's house, it never once crossed my mind that my sister and her husband had been killed. All I could worry about was how much of a violent shock my timid sister and her husband must have suffered from being attacked by robbers. I was particularly worried that this might cause my brother-in-law’s condition to worsen. Because all the notable items among my sister and her husband’s clothing and such had been left in safekeeping at my house, I thought that even if anything had been stolen, it would only amount to mere pocket money, so I was not at all concerned on that point. As I approached my sister’s house, I noticed that one of the storm shutters was open, and light was spilling out from there. I thought my sister and her husband were dealing with the aftermath of having been attacked by robbers. Thinking I should show my face as soon as possible to reassure my sister and brother-in-law, I rushed into the gate of my sister’s house with all my might. Then, suddenly from the darkness within the gate, a person called out, “Hey! Who’s there?!” I thought it might be a robber and tensed up with a start. I, even so, put on a brave front and,

“Who the hell are you?!” I shouted.

Then, from within the darkness, a man wearing a hunting cap approached me.
In a voice completely different from before—calm—
“I’m a detective from Chiba Police Station. And you are?” he asked.
Hearing this, I let out a sigh of relief and,

"I see.
"Thank you for your hard work.
"I am Kakuno Ichirou's wife's biological younger brother," I said.
At this, the detective—

“In that case, please come in—but since the autopsy hasn’t been completed yet, do not touch anything,” he said.
When the detective said this to me, I shuddered as if cold water had been poured over my head.

“What?! Autopsy! Who was killed? Kakuno? His wife?” I pressed urgently.

“Well! Just go and see for yourself. How dreadful,” he said, and even this detective—who through his profession had grown accustomed to such victims—seemed to express genuine sympathy.

In my heart, I wondered whether it was my brother-in-law or my sister.
I thought my brother-in-law must have been killed because he resisted.
Through my selfish love for family, I secretly prayed the victim was my brother-in-law rather than my sister.

From the gate to the entrance was about four *ken*. When I opened the lattice door of the entrance, “Sis?” I called out. From inside came not a single sound—only desolate silence. Yet the electric light was glowing brightly. “Brother-in-law!” I called out again. But still no sound came through. I felt as though some cold, rigid mass were steadily descending from my throat into my chest, spreading until it filled me completely. My hands gripping the lattice door must have been trembling violently, for it rattled ominously. With visceral clarity, I sensed my sister and brother-in-law’s corpses lying beyond that single sliding door. Steeling myself with desperate resolve, I opened the entrance’s sliding door. Yet in that two-tatami room lay nothing unusual. Trembling with fear, I opened the sliding door to the next four-and-a-half-tatami room. There too, in that four-and-a-half-tatami space, nothing seemed amiss. But when I suddenly peered through the two-foot gap in the sliding door between the four-and-a-half-tatami room and the six-tatami room—when I glimpsed into that six-tatami space—I involuntarily cried out “Sis!” in a voice like a scream. Those were unmistakably her feet—the two pale feet thrown diagonally from the futon onto the tatami mats could belong to none but my sister. Seeing those feet, I forgot all prior terror and rushed headlong into the six-tatami room. What abomination did I witness there? From that moment until now—nearly five years later—each time I recall that scene, I cannot help but feel a terror and fury as though my chest were being torn apart and my limbs set trembling.

Your Excellency, Minister of Justice.
――Your Excellency—have you ever beheld the scene where your own flesh and blood were savagely murdered by depraved hands?
Or at the very least, have you ever endured the experience of your kin being slaughtered by another?
If Your Excellency lacks such experience, then that indescribable amalgam of dread, wrath, and grief which I felt through witnessing that spectacle must lie utterly beyond the reach of your comprehension.

My sister—my only Toshiko—the sister who had just the previous day seen me off and welcomed me with a smile—lay thrown down upon the futon with her hair disheveled, but when I saw the thin cord coiled around her neck, my entire body trembled as if battered by a violent storm’s fury.
I forgot the detective’s warning against touching anything and found myself compelled to tear that accursed cord from my sister’s neck.
I shall spare you descriptions of her gruesome death posture or the face contorted with violent agony.
The mere act of recollection terrifies me.
When I was about to clutch my sister’s ghastly corpse and wail, I suddenly remembered my brother-in-law’s fate.
Raising my eyes to survey the room, I noticed the shoji facing the engawa stood open.
There in the six-tatami room lay my brother-in-law—only his feet remaining inside, his body sprawled across the engawa.
I abandoned my sister’s corpse and rushed to him.
Yet my brother-in-law—hands bound behind his back like hers—appeared similarly strangled, his wide-staring eyes frozen in death throes as his body turned cold.
When I saw those bound hands, a rage that felt like blades twisting through my guts surged forth—tears welling from my very core streamed down unchecked.
I burst from the house like a madman and confronted the detective there: “Who killed them?
The criminal! The criminal!” I screamed.
To that detective, I must have seemed utterly unhinged.
Still gripping the oak stick in my right hand, I brandished it as if to strike even him.
The detective likely pitied me profoundly.

“Well, I can imagine what you must be feeling.”
“Even the inspector who came earlier seemed deeply troubled by your situation.”
“We’ve established a cordon, so the criminal might be caught sooner than expected,” he said.
But with the resentment and sorrow of having my sister and brother-in-law murdered, I felt I couldn’t remain still for another moment.
Yet I was utterly at a loss about what to do or how to act, only growing increasingly agitated.
I stood gasping for breath,

“Was it a robbery, or was it a grudge?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t know yet, but it was likely a robbery.”
“They were saying something about Nagasa District and Tsukaguchi being the same,” answered the detective.
I even felt that the detective’s professional coldness in his response grated on my nerves.
The fact that my sister and her husband met such a tragic end was, I believed, ultimately due to the negligence of the Chiba Prefecture Police, and I even felt an irritation that made me want to berate this detective outright.
At that moment, my father, having apparently roused the nearby rickshaw driver, came rushing over in a hastily summoned carriage.
When I saw my father’s face, I felt tears that had once stopped begin to flow again.
When Father saw my face, he said in a hoarse voice:

“How is she? Is Toshiko injured?” he said.
In those words overflowed a parent’s love for their child—his parental love.
When I heard my father’s words, my chest tightened and no words would come.

“How is she? Is Ichirou all right? Is Toshiko hurt?” he asked again.
Sobbing,

“Sis... Brother... They were killed,” I said.
Father did not utter a sound.
Blinking his aged eyes, he silently entered the house.
When I turned back to look after Father, he was half-lifting my sister’s corpse,

“Toshiko, Toshiko,” Father was forcefully patting her back.
But there was no way my sister could come back to life through such means.
After releasing my sister’s corpse, Father lifted my brother-in-law’s corpse while,
“Ichirou, Ichirou,” he called out, patting his back in the same manner.
However, my brother-in-law’s lips had already turned purple.
Father stood up unsteadily and blinked his aged eyes repeatedly,
“You bastard! How could you do this?!
No sooner had he spat those words than he began scrubbing his wrinkled face over and over with the bony back of his right hand.
When I saw my father’s grief-stricken fury, I felt a violent rage surging up within my chest once more.

“I can resign myself, but what would Oshin think?” he said.
When I heard those words, I couldn’t help but think of my elderly mother back home, anxiously awaiting news of her beloved daughter’s safety.
Knowing full well how deeply mother loved sister—being acutely aware of it—I could not help but dwell on just how devastating this news of the tragedy would be for her.
Father was looking at both corpses of sister and brother-in-law with equal measure,

“For a husband and wife to be killed together… What a cruel twist of fate…” No sooner had he uttered this than he seemed to grind his teeth in unbearable resentment.
No sooner had the sound of several cars come from outside than the detective from earlier entered and said, “The preliminary judge has now been assigned.”
Even so, I found some reassurance in the arrival of the preliminary judge.
I could not help but pray that this heinous criminal would be apprehended at the earliest possible moment through the efforts of those people.

Allow me to briefly recount what followed.
We still had the painful duty of breaking the news of our older sister’s wretched death to our mother, who had loved her more than anything else.
When she heard this，her near-frenzied state of grief—I still cannot adequately convey it，no matter how vividly I might try to describe it.
Despite Mother’s desperate pleas，Father did not allow her to go to the scene of my older sister and brother-in-law’s brutal deaths.
He allowed her only a brief moment to mourn before our older sister’s corpse was placed in the coffin.

Upon hearing of my sister’s tragic death, Mother went three days without a single morsel passing her throat.
She was exactly sixty-one at the time, but her originally thin body had wasted away in just two or three days, leaving only her two large eyes bloodshot like those of a madwoman, constantly shifting with unease.
She seemed unable to fall asleep easily at night as well, tormented by thoughts of her daughter’s death. She would doze fitfully, then suddenly scream, "Toshiko! Toshiko!" leap up like a madwoman, sit upright on her futon, mutter something incomprehensible, and then collapse into bitter weeping again.

If my sister had died of illness, even someone as emotionally fragile as my mother would not have been plunged into such grief. But the horrific shock of both husband and wife being brutally murdered in a violent robbery was more than she could bear. Since that incident, she had become listless and seemed to grow weaker by the day.

When I saw the thin cord coiled around my sister’s neck and my brother-in-law’s hands bound behind his back, I could not help but feel a hatred so fierce that I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I tore out the criminal’s liver. I thought that once the criminal was caught, I would rush to him first and trample him to my heart’s content to clear the resentment of my sister and brother-in-law. I felt I had come to fully understand how people of old endured years of hardship to exact revenge when their kin were slain. Even now, were revenge permitted, I would have crawled through the dirt to hunt down the culprit and clear my sister’s resentment—I could not help but feel this way. Had my sister and her husband been killed over personal grudges or romantic entanglements—had they borne even a shred of responsibility—my resentment might not have reached such intensity. But knowing their deaths resulted purely from robbery—that this brute had trampled their blameless lives without cause or necessity—our resentment could not help but be redoubled, tripled in its depth. When I learned how utterly ineffective that night’s police cordon proved—how three days passed, then five, without a single lead—I could not help but feel their efforts grew ever more sluggish, driving me into such agitated restlessness that remaining still became unbearable.

Father never gave voice to the grief and rage in his heart, but Mother would often say, as if it were a mantra,

“Hasn’t Toshiko’s killer been caught yet?” she would say repeatedly.
Despite our family’s fervent prayers for the criminal’s swift capture, as one month passed, then two, there was no word whatsoever from the police.
In the midst of this, as the police had to divert their efforts whenever new cases arose, the passage of time gradually diminished the likelihood of the criminal’s arrest.
Driven by an impatient heart, I sometimes visited the home of an acquaintance who was a police inspector.
When the detective saw my face, he made a somewhat sympathetic expression and,

“Please wait a little longer. Since this isn’t a grudge killing but a robbery case, it’s proving difficult to track down—but rest assured, we’ll see your unresolved grievances addressed through this process.”
“Within this year—we’ll get him for sure.”
“We’ve also formally requested assistance from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,” he said.
That was around October of that year, three or four months after my sister’s murder.
I had taken the detective’s assurance of an arrest within the year as scant consolation and relayed it to Mother.

However, it was mid-December when the year approached its end.
Since my sister's calamity, Mother had become like a living corpse; she developed nephritis and collapsed after an illness lasting barely four or five days.
Whenever I considered that had Sister lived, she might have survived three or four more years, I could not escape the conviction that the robber who killed my sister and her husband had simultaneously curtailed Mother's life.
I could not help but nurture redoubled hatred and resentment toward that beast-like being whose name and face remained unknown.

Mother, even on her deathbed, kept repeating things about Sister.

"Oh, how pitiful," she lamented.
"For a husband and wife to be killed together... That child was truly cursed." She would say this through tears, then suddenly—

"Damn you! Vile beast!
How dare you kill Toshiko!" she would rage.
And as if reciting a litany,

“Still hasn’t been caught?”
“How can there be no gods or Buddhas when a murderer swaggers about unpunished?” she would lament bitterly before resigning herself once more,

“Ah! Damn it all.
“Even if such an evil man isn’t caught in this world, when he dies, he will fall into hell.
“In hell, he shall suffer terribly,” Father would say.
And so Mother, tormented by grief and resentment over her murdered daughter, died on December 20th—was it?—following her most beloved child.
On the surface, the crime was recorded as only my sister and brother-in-law’s murder, but I cannot help but feel convinced that Mother too was brutally slain by that same criminal.
Father and I, who had been cruelly robbed of both Mother and Sister, spent our days in bitter resentment, our hearts ceaselessly gnawed at by vile, wretched memories.
The incident known as “The Chiba Town Couple Murder” seemed to fade not only from public consciousness but even from police authorities’ memories, until not a single line about the culprit’s search appeared in newspapers.
Father and I could not help growing increasingly uneasy.
At the same time, we came to curse the police who failed to arrest such atrocious villains and to loathe this world where such criminals roamed unchecked.

However, should we call this fate’s intervention?
It was October 1916.
The criminal Sakashita Tsurukichi—it was then that I first learned the name of the heinous man who had killed my sister—was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
He had been detained for suspicious behavior, but under interrogation confessed to numerous atrocities.
Among these crimes, my sister’s murder stood out like a crow’s malevolent eye gleaming most ominously from its black form—that incident radiated the most horrifying brilliance.
“Chiba Town Couple Murderer Apprehended” blared every newspaper, yet he was no mere perpetrator of this single crime.
By newspaper accounts alone, he had ended over ten lives, violated countless women’s virtue, and left multitudes of decent citizens gasping through tears of impotent rage.

When Father received the notification of the criminal’s arrest from the police station, he laughed brightly for the first time in ages.
And,
“Now Toshiko and Oshin can rest in peace,” he said as he mourned his daughter who had met a violent end and his wife who had died of grief.
That night, we lit a ritual lamp at the Buddhist altar and announced the joy of the criminal’s arrest to the spirits of Sister and Mother.
I felt gratitude toward the modern Japanese police system for the first time.
And in the old saying “Heaven’s net is wide-meshed but lets nothing through,” I felt I had come to understand a profound truth governing human affairs.

That we paid utmost attention to the course of Sakashita Tsurukichi’s trial proceedings went without saying. However, precisely because he was an exceptionally fearsome villain, he appeared to resign himself readily; when he received the death sentence at the district court, he filed no appeal and meekly accepted his punishment. It was the day of that verdict. I, wishing to lay eyes on the face of the man who had dealt such a cruel blow to our family’s destiny, made special efforts to attend the hearing.

When I saw him standing haughtily in the defendant’s dock during those drawn-out proceedings, I could not help shuddering as I had when witnessing my sister and brother-in-law’s ghastly deaths—a man with an undeniably powerful frame; bloodshot eyes beneath eyebrows thick beyond measure; a large, low-set nose of foul repulsiveness; lips thick and splayed wide—a man in whom humanity’s ferocious bestiality seemed to saturate every fiber of his being. Faced with such a man, I thought it inevitable that my frail sister and her husband had stood not a moment’s chance.

However, even this ferocious-looking man, upon receiving the presiding judge's solemn pronouncement of the death sentence, instantly turned pale and hung his head low.
Though what passed for proper punishment—no, compared to the evils he had committed it was far too lenient—when a sentence corresponding to capital punishment under current law was delivered, and that man showed appropriate fear of his penalty, I felt my boundless fury had been slightly eased.
Yet speaking from my true heart, even this fell woefully short of fully venting my anger and resentment.

I considered whether what was referred to as capital punishment truly constituted sufficient retribution under such circumstances.
This Sakashita Tsurukichi had claimed exactly nine human lives—my sister and brother-in-law among them.
Yet what he stole extended beyond those nine mortal existences.
Just as my mother endured horrific psychological devastation from my sister’s murder—so too must fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters of his other eight victims have sustained equivalent trauma.
For those nine slaughtered souls—forty or fifty bereaved kin must even now choke on tears of impotent fury.
That lives are extinguished stands undeniably among humanity’s great tragedies.
But equally tragic burns this truth—to witness one’s own father or mother or child or sibling strangled or butchered without cause—to carry that convulsive horror through every remaining breath.
In murder’s arithmetic—the victims exceed those directly slain.
Parents—spouses—brothers—sisters—though their hearts keep beating—suffer spiritual mutilation no blade could inflict.
Sakashita may have slaughtered but nine.
Yet those agonizing under his atrocities surely number beyond my father and me alone.
Considering these scales—I declare capital punishment grotesquely inadequate—ludicrously disproportionate.
Nine lives against one.
I speak not through crude numerical comparison.
Let Sakashita writhe daily from sentencing until execution—his anguish could never repay one-tenth what his multitudes endure.
Much less compensate one-hundredth part of those final moments—when innocents gasped through strangling cords—when steel severed undeserving flesh.
Thus I conclude—this judicial system’s failure to impose punishments transcending mere death upon such monsters exposes civilization’s fatal flaw.
When measuring victims’ terminal outrage—their limitless pain—their incandescent resentment against robbers who slaughter without motive or warning—how paltry seems a killer’s transient dread before lawful noose!
For when one dies through self-wrought evil—resignation comes naturally—resolve stands preordained.

However, under modern criminal law, we had no choice but to find some satisfaction in Sakashita Tsurukichi’s death sentence. Therefore, I resorted to imagining the condemned man’s sufferings in various ways to barely alleviate my resentment over my sister and her husband’s brutal deaths.

When I imagined how even the most vicious criminal—imprisoned by the state's iron-like arm, sentenced to an inescapable death, forced to steel himself against the terror and pain of inevitable execution—and how, as each day brought his execution nearer, his attachment to life would paradoxically grow stronger, leading to desperate yet futile struggles to escape his fate through agonized writhing, I was finally able to release the pent-up grief and resentment that had accumulated since my sister and brother-in-law's violent deaths.

Especially when I thought of how every single morning, trembling with dread at whether today might be the day of execution, and terrified by the anxious anticipation of when the jailer might open the door to carry out the procedure, I had come to feel that, though not fully, my sisters' resentment had been assuaged to some degree.

About half a year must have passed since Sakashita Tsurukichi had been sentenced to death. One morning, through an article in the newspaper bearing the three-line headline "Couple Murder Culprit Executed," I learned that Sakashita Tsurukichi had finally been expunged from this world. As if released from prolonged tension, I felt an uncomplicated sense of relief—yet could not help feeling a faint flicker of pity even toward this villain.

I thought that with this, everything was settled.
The hatred that had long tormented my heart was completely dispelled, and I became able to attain a gentle, peaceful state of mind like an ordinary person.
I could not help but feel a renewed sense of gratitude toward the current judicial system and criminal code.

Your Excellency the Minister of Justice.

If the incident had ended as it was, I would have had no need whatsoever to present such a letter to Your Excellency.

However, it was now a full year since Sakashita Tsurukichi had been executed.
Through a newspaper advertisement, I happened to learn that a book titled *The Confessions of Sakashita Tsurukichi* had been published through the efforts of a certain lawyer.
I found it somewhat unpleasant that traces of Sakashita Tsurukichi were being publicly disseminated in society.
Despite many victims being eternally consigned to oblivion through his murderous blows—left to decay as nameless bones beneath their graves in silent obscurity—the fact that Sakashita Tsurukichi's so-called confessions were nevertheless published in book form, that he could express his thoughts through any format whatsoever, struck me as profoundly unjust. Yet this matters not at all.
When reading this so-called *Confessions of Sakashita Tsurukichi*, I came to know that the state's punishment had its efficacy trampled underfoot by this man—that instead of meeting a death sentence befitting him, one filled with shame and suffering, he departed this world brimming with joy, radiant with glory, triumphantly—and I find myself utterly unable to contain my indignation.

That all victims who fell to his hands died writhing in resentment and struggling in bitter fury—despite this, knowing that Sakashita Tsurukichi stood upon the gallows jubilantly, showed neither terror toward the state's punishment itself nor any semblance of shame, and met death with perfect composure—I truly found my indignation unbearable.
Moreover, even the Prison Warden himself, narrating the final scene, wrote such things as: “Having cast off the heavy burden of sin, he stood with jubilant readiness in the spirit of one departing on a journey back to his beloved homeland—a sight that, they say, could not but leave all witnessing officials in awe,” and so on—uttering words of praise as if seeing off a suicide squad warrior.
If my brother-in-law Kakuno Ichirou—this Kakuno Ichirou who was bound from behind by Sakashita Tsurukichi, strangled, and died struggling—had witnessed this scene of execution, what would he have said?
My sister, who had her husband strangled before her very eyes and then herself strangled in turn—what would she have exclaimed had she witnessed this scene?
What would they say if they knew that the villain who killed them had met a death ten times, a hundred times more fortunate than theirs under the watch of the state?
Can there exist in this world such an unfair and irrational punishment?

If Sakashita Tsurukichi’s exultant end—his attitude of feeling no terror toward the state’s punishment—had arisen spontaneously from his nature as an evildoer, I would have nothing to say.
That my sister and her husband were killed by such a terrifying man—one who could stand upon the gallows with triumphant readiness even after murdering nine people—is a misfortune among misfortunes, and I can only resign myself to this fact.
Yet Sakashita Tsurukichi’s attitude stemmed not from his own volition but from his conversion to Christianity during imprisonment.
I do not here level criticism against Christianity itself.
While Christianity’s efforts to reform sinners may be natural, if its influence truly takes effect—as with Sakashita Tsurukichi—such that ascending the gallows becomes akin to climbing a ladder to heaven, can punishment’s purpose possibly be achieved?
In a world where a villain who slaughtered multitudes and defiled women enters prison, receives Christian influence, dies without death’s agony, and departs as if bound for heaven—where lies punishment’s efficacy?
For Christianity, this may fulfill its true aim, but where shall the resentment of those killed and defiled by that man—or of bereaved families like mine—find vent?
Had all victims and their kin been Christians—those who turn the other cheek or love enemies—they might have rejoiced at Sakashita’s conversion and his triumphant execution. But for those like myself, whose sister and brother-in-law were slaughtered like mere chickens and who lost their mother thereby, Sakashita Tsurukichi receiving punishment’s proper effect remains an absolute inner demand.
As a law-abiding citizen of this nation, I believe I hold the right to demand this.
I cannot endure punishment’s efficacy being weakened by religious influence.
There exists in this world a proverb: “Those who die are paupers.”

The people Sakashita Tsurukichi killed are, as far as I know, law-abiding citizens of the state.
Yet while neither the victims nor their bereaved families received even a shred of solace from the state's hands, they permit even villains—even a villain like Sakashita Tsurukichi—to meet with missionaries, encourage his religious conversion, and mitigate capital punishment's psychological impact upon him. I cannot help but consider this an utterly unfair and one-sided arrangement.
In his confession, Sakashita Tsurukichi states the following things:
"By the divine mercy of Lord Jesus Christ, who has today saved both my body and soul—thanks to this blessed grace—my current prison life stands in stark contrast to other inmates who day and night accumulate agonies of torment, their hearts bursting with manly tears, while I instead feel not a shred of unease day or night, filled only with rejoicing.
This, I declare, is as I have stated before: though to others it may appear as though I possess nothing, in truth I possess all things.
Now, the goods and money we create disappear when used, and thus are finite; but since I have received all things from God, no matter how abundantly I use them, they will not vanish and are infinite.
What I have stated above is not a discussion of my physical life and death.
'I do not keep matters of physical life and death in mind today,' he also states thus."

“Christian believers fear nothing other than God—this I declare not as mere pretext.
In the Gospel of Matthew it stands written: ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.’
This constitutes the true and certain proclamation.”

From Sakashita Tsurukichi’s own account, it would seem that through attaining Christian faith during his imprisonment, he lived in greater happiness than during his days as a robber.
That he felt not the slightest fear of execution becomes evident through his declaration: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.”
Were the state’s prisons Christian monasteries, this might prove acceptable—but given that prisons exist as institutions of state punishment, how could their purpose or the death penalty’s power be realized when keeping prisoners happier than in their criminal days reduces the penal code to “those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” thereby voiding it of all potency?

Though my understanding remains incomplete, I had once heard from a legal scholar that there exist two theories regarding the purpose of punishment—relativism and absolutism. Yet even should it come to pass that through Christian faith prisons become places of happiness and executions hold no terror, could we truly claim the aims of punishment are being nobly achieved? Moreover—is it permissible for one holding the office of Prison Warden to extol the sentiment of a prisoner being contentedly imprisoned and executed with jubilant readiness? When worldly punishments like imprisonment and death have their efficacy utterly demolished by religious faith, can those presiding over these penal institutions be allowed to voice admiring words? According to this book titled *The Confessions of Sakashita Tsurukichi*, wardens and prosecutors shower praise upon his acquisition of faith as though applauding a cat for catching mice. Is it truly acceptable for state punishment to merely impose itself upon the body, indifferent to whether prisoners inwardly scorn or welcome their sentences? Considering how crime ravages not only victims' bodies but their very spirits, would it not be precisely just—if I may say—that prisoners endure both physical and mental suffering through their punishment? When even the Prison Warden praises how this perpetrator lived happily incarcerated and mounted the gallows with jubilant readiness—while multitudes of bereaved families like myself writhe in anguish from murdered kin—what in heaven's name are victims and their survivors meant to think?

In particular, this book contains a section titled "Preaching to Jailers and Police Officers." From Christianity’s standpoint, this may indeed be commendable, but when officials of state penal institutions are made to receive sermons from the very object of punishment, does this not amount to a disgraceful spectacle?

I, who had found slight comfort in imagining that Sakashita Tsurukichi had met an end befitting a villain through the state’s punishment, upon reading this confession, found my emotions cruelly wounded. Where have my sister and brother-in-law’s resentment and our bereaved family’s unresolved grief been vented? I do not know about academic theories regarding the purpose of punishment, but we law-abiding citizens, who had trusted that our desire for revenge would be rightfully and lawfully fulfilled through the activities of the state’s penal institutions, have had our expectations utterly betrayed.

The man who brutally murdered my sister and brother-in-law stands upon the gallows laughing and repenting—there may be those who say we should forgive him, but I am not a Christian.
Those who say we should forgive a villain like Sakashita Tsurukichi are people who have never experienced having someone dear to them brutally murdered by a robber.
For me, who witnessed the scene where my own flesh-and-blood sister—clawing at empty air, eyes bulging, tongue bitten through, her clothes torn open—was brutally murdered, the notion of forgiving that heinous perpetrator is something I could never even dream of.
Even if I am called an inferior human being lacking both love and benevolence, I remain unperturbed.
I believe that as one of the state’s law-abiding citizens, I have the right to demand that my sister’s unresolved grief—and my own—be rightfully avenged by the state.
If Sakashita Tsurukichi had been allowed by the state to meet such an easy, carefree death, I believe I would have found a far more resolute course of action.
I now bitterly regret that when I glimpsed him in the courtroom, I did not at least deliver a single blow of resentment, even if I could not strike him down.

When I first read this confession, I thought, "That bastard Sakashita Tsurukichi is putting on an act." Since he was going to be executed anyway, I thought he must have feigned genuine repentance as a Christian to gain sympathy from the Prison Warden and those around him, thereby being executed in spectacular fashion.

According to this confession, it was written that Sakashita Tsurukichi had once been released from Chiba Prison after having the remainder of his sentence commuted due to good behavior.
Moreover, Sakashita Tsurukichi—whose sentence had been shortened due to good behavior—went on to kill nine people after being released.
Had the Prison Warden of Chiba Prison not recognized this man’s good behavior, my sister would at least still be alive in this world.
The man who had his remaining sentence commuted due to good behavior not only committed crimes immediately after release from prison but also, after a mere six months, killed my sister and her husband.
Sakashita Tsurukichi states the following about that night.
“On the night of the 21st, when I sneaked into a house, bound the family members, and was threatening the wife to hand over money, the husband began shouting ‘Thief! Thief!’ so loudly that I feared the neighbors would hear. Using a towel that happened to be there, I proceeded to strangle him. The wife witnessed this and screamed ‘Murderer!’ at the top of her lungs, so with a sash that also happened to be nearby, I ended up killing both of them.”
“‘How terrifying must it have been for the wife to see her husband being strangled before her very eyes,’ he writes nonchalantly.”
Looking at the aftermath of this crime, where in this man can there be anything human?
And yet, even this man could perform good deeds in prison.
I lament the lack of discernment in the authorities who shortened this man’s sentence based on his so-called good deeds within prison, but setting that aside, just as Sakashita Tsurukichi’s “good deeds” were of this caliber, I cannot help but think his so-called faith within prison walls must have been of this same variety.
Just as he had performed his “good behavior games” and managed to get released from Chiba Prison, I cannot help but think that this time—having assessed execution to be unavoidable—he died while performing “faith games,” amidst roaring cheers from those around him.
The true nature of Sakashita Tsurukichi’s so-called good deeds was quickly exposed, but this time—with no one to accompany him to heaven or hell—I believe his scheme succeeded even more thoroughly than before.
To see his faith as a sham and imagine that, while putting on a cheerful appearance on the gallows, he must have in truth shuddered before impending death—this is my sole consolation.

However, just as Buddhism has the teaching that "even evildoers can attain Buddhahood," I think that Sakashita Tsurukichi, burdened with sins he could never fully bear, may have found in them the very opportunity to attain true faith.
Therefore, I could not utterly despise Sakashita Tsurukichi’s faith from the bottom of my heart.
I also thought that he might have become a true Christian as he himself professed and, as Christians believe, been welcomed into God’s hand to enter heaven.
If Sakashita Tsurukichi’s faith was genuine, then I think he himself must have believed he would go to heaven—just as he stated in his final testament: “the joy of hastening to God’s kingdom while purifying the stains of sin from this human world.”

If we accept Christian doctrine as truth and acknowledge Sakashita Tsurukichi’s faith as genuine, then Sakashita Tsurukichi must undoubtedly be in heaven.
But if Sakashita Tsurukichi has gone to heaven, where have his victims gone?

Whether it be my brother-in-law or my sister, neither had any faith from the start.
Moreover, no matter what faith they may have held, for those who had their lives snatched away in an instant—whose souls were thrown into turmoil by thoughts of anguish and fury in death's final moments—it is unthinkable that such people could reach either the Pure Land or heaven.
I do not know well, but it is said that in Christianity, deathbed repentance is considered extremely important; however, for those like my sister and brother-in-law who were massacred, there was no room for repentance—not a shadow of a desire for salvation or a heart seeking God remained, I believe.
The heart in the instant of being killed is that of an asura.
Their state is that of hell.
If Christian doctrine were true, I think they would have had no choice but to fall into the depths of hell.
It is not only my sister and brother-in-law.
As for the seven others who were killed because of him, regardless of their faith, I believe that due to the agony of their final moments, they could never have gone to heaven or the Pure Land.
Yet Sakashita Tsurukichi—who not only took their lives but should have damned their very souls to hell—now finds that having committed such crimes instead becomes material for repentance, enabling him to enter heaven. To me at least, this seems a logic of uttermost absurdity.
Is it not as though those murdered by Sakashita Tsurukichi have become a footstool, lifting this villain—or from a Christian perspective, this saint—up to heaven?
Christians may do whatever they please for the sake of their doctrine—they may have ample recompense on their side—but when even the head of a worldly penal institution, the Prison Warden, goes so far as to facilitate and encourage this, how can the souls of the victims ever find rest?

It is said that long ago, an Italian lamented, “Fools ascend to holy offices, while Galileo languishes in prison.” If the existence of heaven were indeed real, then it would be a case of “the perpetrator in heaven, the victims in hell.”
From a religious standpoint, worldly legal distinctions may be of little consequence, but when the state’s judicial authorities forget their worldly duties and go so far as to encourage and praise “sending perpetrators to heaven,” bereaved families of victims like myself cannot contain our indignation.

Moreover, when they go so far as to publish his confession of faith, publicly declare that the efficacy of the state’s penal institutions has been trampled underfoot by Christian belief, and even permit the wounding of bereaved families’ feelings—from the perspective of judicial policy, how can this be deemed acceptable?
“Those death penalty abolitionists who claim that ‘the purpose of punishment lies in reforming criminals and guiding them to moral improvement’ would surely come to understand how natural and justified my indignation is if their own wives or children were to be killed by a robber.”

As I bring this letter to a close, I have found myself recalling my mother, who succumbed to grief over her murdered daughter without ever seeing Sakashita Tsurukichi apprehended.
On her deathbed, my mother said, "That heinous man may escape capture in this world, but when he dies, he'll fall into hell—in hell, he will suffer terribly," but contrary to Mother’s expectations, Sakashita Tsurukichi (since the Prison Warden and lawyers refer to him thus—perhaps any villain who has reformed cannot be treated as a criminal)—instead of being caught in this world—has come to go to heaven in the next.
Every time I recall my mother’s foolish expectations, I cannot suppress the copious tears that well up in pity for her ignorance.

(From the April 1919 issue of Chūōkōron)