Pathway to Japanese Literature

Bestial Passion

I had always been confined to solitary cells and knew little of communal ones.
What we called zōbō—properly zōkyobō—were communal cells.
Six, eight, ten—sometimes more—prisoners would be crammed into rooms of six or eight tatami mats.
Signs reading “Capacity: 4 / Current: 12” hung unremarkably above cell doors.

Most were grouped by crime—thieves with thieves, swindlers with swindlers—passing months or years amiably studying their trades.
They got along surprisingly well.
Yet even amidst this harmony—as happens everywhere—quarrels frequently erupted.
Sometimes escalating to bloodshed.
But unlike disputes among honest folk outside, these clashes never stemmed from greed.
Nearly all arose from romantic entanglements.

If even a slightly pale-skinned man entered, they all fussed over him enthusiastically.
Even complete newcomers never faltered regarding the cells' or workshops' myriad detailed rules.
For every matter, they explained things with painstaking politeness.
They even protected them.
They must have been truly happy just from that alone.

As long as everyone shared this irreplaceable joy—reciprocated through the young man's kind eyes—peace prevailed.
But this wasn't enough—a man who remained unsatisfied appeared.
A man who tried to monopolize those reciprocating glances emerged.
Peace shattered.
Quarrels among prisoners nearly all stemmed directly or indirectly from this struggle for monopolistic desire.
This differed not at all from the romantic squabbles of society's upright citizens.

In every prison, among prisoners, this type of sexual passion appeared remarkably intense.

That said, even this was by no means a perverse sexual desire unique to prisoners.
In young men’s dormitories devoid of female presence, this existed everywhere.
Indeed, I witnessed at military preparatory school how these loyal and brave soldier cadets—even risking immediate expulsion if discovered—indulged fiercely in this perverse sexual desire.
It remains profoundly shameful to admit, but I too was one among them.

And yet this same I—despite having such a menacing visage that my comrades would tease how a red garment suited me like some pistol-wielding bandit—once nearly became prey to this very predation within prison walls.

One day in Chiba, as I was bathing in the tub, an unfamiliar man suddenly rushed into the space.
Prison baths, it seems, are much the same everywhere—large communal ones for groups and small individual ones that hold a single person at a time.
We would typically bathe in the large one exclusively with our comrades or else be placed individually into the small ones depending on circumstances.
That day found us all separated into the small baths—each partitioned by wooden boards and lined up in a row.
Though I thought there should be no other prisoner sharing my bath, whether through guard error or otherwise, I kept silent, intrigued by this chance to interact with another inmate.

Despite my having deliberately moved to the corner to leave space at the front, the man said “Pardon me,” tapped my shoulder, and tried to get behind me.
While thinking him a strange fellow, I shifted forward slightly.
Then abruptly he lunged in and seized me from behind.

I jumped up, landed one solid punch on the guy's cheek, and bolted out.
The order to exit the bath was imminent.

In the changing room, my comrade Muruki—a man not yet of age—was alone, his face pale as he put on his clothes.

“What’s wrong?”

Thinking it might be another case of cerebral anemia, I moved closer and asked. If we stayed in the bath too long, our group would often suffer cerebral anemia.

“Just now, this strange guy came in and suddenly grabbed me from behind, so I rushed to escape out here.”

As Muruki was still speaking with a shocked expression, all the other comrades came out. And while it might have been understandable if only Muruki had been targeted, when they heard even the pistol robber had been assaulted, everyone burst into laughter.

But in reality, it was no laughing matter.

Upon seeing the whiteness of a woman’s calf

Amidst these beast-like prisoners, I myself was like a saint or sage—a fact I mentioned earlier.
However, this too serves as no proof that I am someone who underwent extraordinary ascetic training.

People often say, "You'll be in trouble without being able to smoke tobacco if you're thrown in prison."
I was quite a smoker myself.
But I never once had trouble in prison because of that.
The moment I entered, almost instantaneously, I forgot all about tobacco entirely.
At Tokyo Prison during my first incarceration, I would often watch from my window as the guards smoked in their break room. Seeing them puffing away on those cylindrical stick-like things didn't make me envious in the slightest—it struck me as utterly absurd instead.
At that time, my wife Yasuko—who was still single and living with me in our Sakai home—sent me a postcard half in jest depicting a cat smoking tobacco.
I promptly sent back a reply along the lines of, "That appears to be what they call tobacco in books—so is it cat food rather than human sustenance?" which made people laugh and call me hopelessly stubborn.
However, that wasn't due to any stoic endurance or stubbornness on my part—it was nothing of the sort.
That was genuinely how it felt.

I had never steeled myself with the resolve that I couldn't smoke tobacco once imprisoned.
On the contrary, proceeding with the utterly carefree assumption that I could at least smoke, I had even made specific preparations for it when they came to arrest me.
Nor had I cultivated any particular practices of self-restraint or temperance.
Rather, I deliberately rebelled against such so-called morals, even esteeming trivial indulgences.

Despite that, when the police confiscated my tobacco, I bitterly resented it—yet afterward, I completely forgot about the stuff. And as I just mentioned, I even came to harbor something resembling antipathy.

I'm not some paragon of virtue or anything.
As everyone experiences, it's like when you're riding a train and see people outside smoking cigarettes—you don't feel envious, sometimes even finding it downright absurd.

The same applies to sexual desire.
Though I don't think this stems from unconscious resignation and subsequent objective criticism like with tobacco.
I believe slightly more complex circumstances are at work.

The first was the food—devoid of almost any oil, where daikon radishes or potatoes passed for supreme delicacies.
Next came the complete absence of sexual stimuli, particularly in solitary cells.
And finally, there was being utterly drained of vitality through endless reading and contemplation from dawn till dusk.

If one possessed just these three conditions, anyone could instantly become a renowned monk free from the five earthly desires—without any cultivation, anguish, or effort whatsoever. It meant either entering the mountains or entering prison.

However, just as Kume no Senjin had once slipped from his cloud, this prison sage too would occasionally revert to being a mere mortal.

While I had no such opportunities elsewhere, my greatest pleasure at Tokyo Prison lay in catching glimpses of female defendants or prisoners.
I had mentioned this briefly before.

We were always placed within either the Fourth Block or Eighth Block of the solitary cells.
These block numbers corresponded to buildings radiating semi-starlike from a central hub—the second floor held Blocks One through Four, while the lower floor was designated Blocks Five through Eight.
The Fourth Block occupied the upper level, with the Eighth Block directly beneath.
And through good fortune, I was invariably assigned a south-facing cell bathed in sunlight.

Along the southern side of this building, separated by about nine meters, ran the Tataki corridor leading to the women's prison block.
Every day, once, twice, or three times, groups of about a dozen newcomers each would invariably pass through there.
There were some quite dashing and properly attired women who appeared to be respectable wives among them.
There were also those in showy silk sashes or occasionally rope belts who looked completely disheveled.
The majority were reportedly so-called obstruction-of-traffic detainees.
I will discuss these obstruction-of-traffic detainees in more detail later.

This crowd would come clanging noisily down the corridor from the far end—clang-clang, clang-clang—their footsteps clamorous.
When that sound reached us, the gentlemen of Block 8 and its southern side would exclaim, "There they come!"
As if spurred by this thought, they would drop everything and dash to the windows.

I would always run over, barely reaching eye level with the window frame, using the cleaning bucket as a stepping stool to crane my neck, pressing my forehead against the cold iron bars, and look.
And we would exchange critiques with neighboring windows—remarks like how the second one looked rather fine, or what on earth was up with the fifth one’s appearance.
At times,

“Hey, third sister! Show us your face for a sec.” There were men who’d call out things like this. Among the women too, some would lift their sedge hats of their own accord—whether glancing our way or revealing their faces. At times, there were even those who stuck out their tongues or made crude faces.

I stared vacantly at them and was frequently barked at by the guards.

I believe this occurred during the rooftop speech incident’s violation of the Public Order Police Law. As per standard procedure, I was taken from the police to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, then from there to Tokyo Prison, where I was initially confined in that familiar chicken coop—though not the one near the visitation area I had described during Mr. Otosaburō’s time. Those holding cells were scattered throughout the facility. This particular one served as processing space where new arrivals had their belongings inspected, prison uniforms issued, and those customary status-crime-name-appearance cards created—all while awaiting their turn.

After a while, I sensed someone had entered the back-to-back chicken coop.
A chattering voice that sounded like a woman’s reached my ears.

“Hey, seems like a woman’s come in behind us.”
“Why don’t we try striking up a conversation?”

He consulted with his neighbors Sakai and Yamakawa on either side, then knocked rhythmically on the back panel.
From the other side, they immediately responded with rhythmic knocks in return.
“Hey, what are you in for?”

“And you?”

“Thief.”

“How reliable!”
“I’m an obstruction-of-traffic detainee!”
“How much time?”

“Just six months.”
“And you?”

“Mine’s two weeks—it’ll be over soon.”
“When I get out this time, I really mean to go straight.”
“When you get out, won’t you come?”
“Where’s my place?”

Through such exchanges of made-up places and names, they ended up making a marriage pact to be together after release.

"That's not exactly cheap."
"But what's this 'obstruction-of-traffic detainee' thing anyway?"

“Well, I’m not quite sure myself.”

As he discussed this with Sakai, Yamakawa joined their investigation until they finally understood that “obstruction-of-traffic detainee” came from “obstruction of traffic.” And,

“Not bad for a thief—getting done for obstruction of traffic!”

The three of them burst into uproarious laughter.
Was it that even she couldn't bring herself to state her actual profession outright, or was it merely a playful pun she had devised?

Again, I was summoned from the detention center to the court.
Additionally, I was often summoned to court from the convict detention center as well due to other charges.
Mostly by carriage, but from Sugamo, I was sometimes made to walk or ride in a vehicle.

The sight of them being dragged along—clad in red kimonos, wearing sedge hats, bare feet in straw sandals, a restraint rope fastened about their waists—was indeed enough to make women and children passing by turn their faces away and spit.
However, what those people thought mattered not at all.
We prisoners needed only to silently lower our eyes—grateful that our faces remained unseen—to the vivid red of their kimonos and the pale softness of their youthful faces.

In Russia, that barbaric nation of the West, there’s a proverb that goes “Never mock beggars or prisoners—you never know whose fate might become yours,” and when prisoners are transported, old peasant women and girls would come rushing out to give them milk, bread, sometimes even copper coins. They’d kiss their cheeks and pray, “Our Father in Heaven, grant Your special grace and happiness to this pitiful child of Yours.” Such disgraceful spectacles could never be tolerated in Japan, the civilized nation of the East. Much less would anyone ever think to call someone like our robber-murderer comrade “a reliable person.”

That was just fine.
We prisoners needed only to be granted a glimpse of your forms.
After going outside for the first time in ages, everything I saw was beautiful—or rather, strange.
Everything appeared garishly vivid and raw.
When it came to women—so long as they were women—each and every one seemed as beautiful as Benzaiten.

In the carriage, I was always placed at the very end of either the front or back. If I wasn't at this edge, I couldn't see outside properly. The sides were armored doors with only small wire-meshed windows at the front and rear. Throughout the entire ride, I pressed my face against this wire mesh until red imprints formed on my forehead, gazing outside with desperate intensity.

The faces of visiting women were beautiful too. Even after years together had made me thoroughly familiar with her features, simply gazing silently at that face brought comfort. The faint wrinkles around her eyes and uneven patches of faded powder lent an alluring charm.

My Hometown

Apart from these scattered episodes, while confined here I had no way to pass time other than reading, contemplation, or delusion.

When I grew weary of both reading and contemplation, my mind naturally turned to delusion.
And even then, having unconsciously relinquished all thoughts of the present outside world, my mind would conjure either distant past events too futile to dwell upon or, as release drew near, visions of the future awaiting beyond these walls.

Even when it came to my current wife, unless it was the time for her visits or letters—which themselves occurred only once every two months—I rarely thought of her.
And memories of women from the past came flooding back incessantly.

Fundamentally, I have never possessed what one calls a hometown.

I am told I was born in Sanuki Marugame.
However, I came to Tokyo within half a year of being born.
And at age five, I was sent with my father and mother to Shibata in Echigo.
In Tokyo, my father served in the Konoe.
Our house stood in some numbered district of Kōjimachi.
I retain almost no memories beyond the Konoe Regiment gate's appearance, our house's general state, and the rough contours of Fujimi Elementary School's attached kindergarten.

My ancestral homeland—the land of my forebears—was a village near Tsushima, roughly four or five *ri* west of Nagoya. Yet from the time I became cognizant of it, I merely visited my uncle’s house there briefly at age fourteen, and after entering Nagoya Military Preparatory School the following year, only occasionally dropped by to visit.
I feel not the slightest sense of it being my homeland.
The family register had been there, but was later transferred to my residence in Tokyo.

It was only in Shibata, Echigo, that I spent a full ten years from age five to fifteen.
After that, until I turned eighteen, I returned home every year during summer vacation.
Therefore, if I were to speak of a hometown, it would seem most appropriate to point there.

I think it was around the time when, during my first summer vacation return trip from Nagoya to Shibata, I transferred at Naoetsu to the Hokuetsu Railway, passed through Nagaoka, and reached the Sanjo area. Suddenly, through the window, I saw before me the long mountain range stretching northeast along the Iwaezumi border and was struck by an inspiration so powerful I nearly cried out in exultation. That mountain range remained exactly as I had seen it during those ten years. And scattered among them, several peaks where I once played appeared within arm's reach.

For the first time, I experienced what one might call the sensation of a hometown.

"The words someone like Sohō had said—'A hometown is inspiration'—truly sank in for the first time. Yet in my overwhelming joy at that moment, I still hadn't truly managed to intellectually recognize this as the feeling of a hometown, to dissect that sensation."
"As for those words attributed to Sohō or someone else, it seems I had actually recalled them during some later occasion."
"This sensation of a hometown was fully experienced once again when that 'certain time' arrived."
"And that this was what people called the feeling of a hometown—this fact I came to fully understand only when that 'certain time' arrived."

It was when I had spent about half a year there initially, and within less than two months after being released, was sent back to Sugamo again.
It was when the escort guard shouted "Open the gate!" at that Onigashima-like gate of Sugamo Prison, had them open the thick iron-plated door, and drove the carriage clattering over the paving stones.

I was sitting at the front edge of the carriage as usual, gazing outside through the wire mesh.
When the gate opened, the view of the prison’s wide front garden came into my eyes.
That instant.
I involuntarily rose to my feet, pressed my face against the wire mesh, and stared at the trees—whether hinoki cypress or aogiri—lined up right before the building.
And for a while—though it must have been mere seconds—I remained half-risen, dazedly hovering there, struck by that peculiar sensation.
When I noticed this, I immediately recalled the inspiration that had struck me long ago during a train ride home.
It was no different—the same inspiration of familiarity and nostalgia, now imbued with a kind of lofty sentiment.

For the first time, I truly intuited—this was the real feeling of a hometown, and that time too had been exactly the same.

I got off the carriage.
There was not a single thing that didn't evoke feelings of familiarity and nostalgia.
With every guard I met,

Even being told "Hey, back again?" sounded like a warm greeting from an old childhood friend.
And when at last I was taken to that familiar one-armed man's building where I had stayed before, greeted by the smiling nods of familiar faces, and settled into the neighboring cell I had once occupied, I truly felt as though I had returned home after a long absence.

To think of prison as being the same as my hometown or home was both not at all scandalous and rather pathetic, but since I truly felt that way, there was no helping it.

Sugamo was the prison where I was first incarcerated as a convicted prisoner and consequently made to live through my most deeply impressionable experiences.
Moreover, prisoners are cut off from all other worlds and must satisfy their emotional lives within the confines of extremely limited nature and extremely limited human interactions.
Moreover, prisoners’ lives—being inherently prone to subjectivity and highly susceptible to suggestion—in all their profound aspects, truly equate to ten or twenty years of ordinary life outside these walls.

I was constantly reminded of this hometown and my childhood and adolescence.
This was especially true in Chiba, where my prison term had been long.

I had been released, but since political movements and labor movements would not be permitted for some time anyway, I thought I might try launching a literary movement under the guise of literature—something that could be called commoners' literature or social literature.
And as a first step, I thought I would try writing an autobiographical novel about my childhood and adolescence.
A boy born into a military family, raised amidst soldiers, who entered military school with ambitions of becoming a future Army Marshal—this mischievous youth who defied easy handling—through that very military life became a soldier in the social revolution.
Even if it wasn’t something as clear-cut as that, I wanted to at least hint at this path within the boy’s life.
At the very least, I wanted to write out how all the mischief of my childhood and adolescence had been a rebellion against every authority, a sign of true life’s instinctive growth.

Whenever I recalled my distant past, I lost myself in planning this literary work.
And alongside this, under the guise of language study, I read works like Tolstoy's *Childhood, Boyhood, Youth* in the original Russian and Korolenko's *The Bad Company* in German translation for reference.
With Tolstoy, the lives depicted differed so radically from my own experiences that they held almost no interest for me.
I found myself in wholehearted agreement with *The Bad Company*.
The protagonist's father had been a judge.
There's little difference between judges and military men.
But to my misfortune, I had no friend with a beggar father who might have taught me what sort of beings judges truly were.
This forced me to waste considerable time before grasping the true nature of military men.
How bitterly this vexed me then!

However, this creative urge from that time remains unfulfilled even now.
Or rather, I had nearly forgotten it completely, and it transformed into some peculiar sort of essay writing that defies categorization as either social commentary or literary criticism.
And now at last, I find myself wetting my lips with these saccharine jottings.

Prison-made human

However, even now, I’m not entirely without some lingering ambition.
In fact, this very "Prison Memoirs"—before I wrote it for this magazine—I had even contemplated fashioning it into an ambitious literary work under titles like "Prison-made Human" or "A Human Forged in Prison."

I am clearly conscious of being a human forged in prison.
I take pride in this.

The me before imprisonment was likely still malleable—or rather, had not yet properly taken shape—a pliable, unformed human.

When I first entered foreign language school, captivated by that Chinese maxim about either becoming a general to achieve one's aims or serving an enemy nation to accomplish something, I even nursed some modest ambition of perhaps becoming a diplomat.
Moreover, right after graduating from school, I even entertained such childish notions as becoming an instructor at the Army War College and making my former classmates from Military Preparatory School days—especially the top students among them—address me as “Instructor” to put them in their place.
Even after graduating from school, I visited a certain Army professor—my former teacher and an authority in the Army’s French department—to request employment at the Army War College.
While those negotiations were progressing favorably—and just days before I was to hear the results of the professor’s efforts—I was imprisoned over the streetcar incident.
And with this imprisonment over that incident, my subsequent fate became irrevocably sealed.

Not only that—it could be said that all of my present education, knowledge, and ideological character were cultivated and tempered during my subsequent imprisonments.
It was a life in prison from the spring of twenty-two to the end of twenty-seven.
Moreover, as I mentioned before, it was a prison life that placed me in a psychological state extremely susceptible to suggestion.
How could it not have eaten into my very being, down to the marrow?

Just as I first truly came to know the feeling of a hometown in prison, so too did my intellect, emotions, and will truly develop for the first time during this life behind bars.
I came to understand the various nuances of human emotions for the first time.
For the first time, I came to understand things like comprehension and sympathy toward humans different from myself.
Objectivity grew ever deeper, and subjectivity also grew ever stronger.
And through a prisoner’s life that allowed me to view all events purely contemplatively while being unable to manifest my self in action toward them, I cultivated the latent potential of willpower that sought to break through this inertia.

I also thought about writing this *Continued Prison Memoirs* under a title like *Death’s Abode*, which would present my philosophy on issues of life and death—a philosophy I developed during my prison life.
In fact, it took me one night until near dawn just to write its beginning.

Impressions of the executioner who served as a prison guard at Tokyo Prison and tended to us defendants' meals.
Impressions of the broad purple bands left on their necks after friends' executions.
Impressions of father's death during incarceration at Chiba Prison.
Impressions regarding the death of a close friend.
Impressions regarding the natural deaths of flies dripping down from prison beams.
Impressions regarding the prison death of a comrade.
Impressions regarding the insane death of a comrade after release from prison.
Countless other imprints—various profound impressions, or rather engravings—if I were to enumerate them all, forged my philosophy regarding the problem of death.

In truth, when I finally left Chiba Prison for the last time, I felt for the first time that I had become somewhat of a proper human being. Wherever I went in society, I felt I had become able to express myself as a unique individual without reservation. And I came to hold a kind of pious religious sentiment toward my prison life—as if it were trials given by God, divine blessings.

Prison life is a microcosm of broader societal life.
Moreover, it is a microcosm with its crucial points intensified.
And to face this intensification, one must meet it with an equally intensified psychological state.
Could there possibly be a better method for forging humans than this?

Societal life was vast.
There were endless places to flee.
Therefore, the hearts of humans living there tended to become lax.
A truly blood-dripping profound inner life could not be easily sustained.
There were also various considerations of earthly relationships.
There were also various pleasures that made one forget everything.
That human could not be forged by lazy people.
And humans are originally made to be lazy beings.

When I was finally released from prison and saw society again, I was astonished to find those humans had developed nothing but their oversized heads. Having only an oversized head is a hallmark of lazy people. They claim to think about even the most serious matters. However, in their thoughts and words, there is almost no instance where the apparent seriousness visible on the surface is substantiated as is. It is rarely ever the case that substantiated realizations run deeper than the expressed thoughts or words themselves. Instances where those thoughts and words must manifest directly into action without ceasing are even fewer.

I am the privileged one above these lazy people.
I am a prison-made human.

However, going into such detailed explanations—concretely hinting at and explaining each point in light of the facts—was not what this magazine’s editor desired. At best, it was a request for sweet, amusingly comical material.

I had digressed and soared into lofty fervor, but after briefly reclining on this rattan chair, basking in sunlight while taking a smoke, I resolved to return to those nonsensical jottings—meandering along while leisurely recalling those utterly carefree recollections from the beginning.

Executioner

Even so, what first came to mind remained the materials from *Death’s Abode* that I had begun drafting earlier.
Though I intended to develop this into a full work someday—and thus part of me felt it rather a pity to disclose it now—I resolved to set down just one example from among them as a specimen.

In Tokyo Prison—though he is no longer there now—there existed what they called prison workers.
They served in roles akin to guards' subordinates, tasked with carrying meals to defendants and similar duties.
There always seemed to be two or three of them, all young men who within a year or two of service would shed their tattered Kokura-striped uniforms and become guards bearing sabers.

Yet among them was one old man who had served as a prison worker for ten or twenty years or perhaps longer—in any case remaining in that role until the very end.
When I first saw him, he must have been well past sixty—a compact yet ruggedly built man with a visage unsettling to behold.
In truth, on the morning after my first entry into Tokyo Prison, when this man abruptly thrust his face through the meal slot, I shuddered involuntarily.
His face—pallid from malnutrition, an ashen earth tone—lay buried in a thick gray beard streaked with white, from within which not-particularly-large eyes glinted restlessly.
Within that gleam mingled both the ferocious light seen in robbers and murderers' eyes, and the viciously persistent glint observed in loan sharks or crone moneylenders.
Moreover, his voice held a low hoarseness yet thickness—imbued with subterranean force—a voice that pressed its demands without relent.
Even when uttering brief phrases, it resonated like a beast's growl.

“Press your thumbprint here and hand it over.”

Suddenly being barked at like this with a delivered meal and its request form shoved toward me, I remained dazed for some time, fixated on those thick, wrinkled earth-toned fingers protruding before me.

“Hurry up.”

Startled anew by that voice, I hastily pressed my thumbprint and extended the application form while gingerly peering at the man’s face.
Then instinctively, abruptly, I recoiled.
What a horrifying, repulsive, vile face!

It was the first delivered meal.
After spending one night each at the Kōjimachi police station and the Metropolitan Police Department and then going two and a half days without a single grain of rice or drop of water passing through my throat, I finally managed to obtain what resembled a proper human meal.
And yet, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the chopsticks right away.
The man’s voice, fingers, and face hovered before my eyes.
Especially when I thought about those fingers—even after finally picking up my chopsticks—I felt nauseous.

The defendants all often joked around with the other prison workers.
They would even make selfish remarks about how little soup was served or how few ingredients were put in.
At times,

"What do you think you are, just a prison worker?!" There were even those who snapped back.
Moreover, even after that prison worker became a guard, everyone still treated him with the same casual familiarity or contempt as before.
There was a prison worker-turned-guard—this man still works as a guard even now—whose surname bore resemblance to a courtesan’s pseudonym, such that when he came for night patrols and clattered up the second-floor ladder steps, prisoners would drawl “Mister ○○~ee” in sickly sweet voices to mock him.

However, no one exchanged a single word with that Old Prison Worker.
Even my aforementioned friend the robber-murderer comrade would mostly just exchange glares with this Old Prison Worker in silence.
The guards too, while they would sometimes loudly reprimand the other prison workers, were markedly reserved toward this Old Prison Worker.
They never spoke except for official business.

The Old Prison Worker carried out his assigned duties haughtily and with self-satisfaction even as he was shunned, reviled, and feared by all.
And if anyone dared comment even slightly on his actions—be they defendants or superiors—he would immediately glare and bellow at them without distinction.
I never once saw this man smile.

Gradually, I began to develop an interest in this man.
The creepiness and periodic irritation of being shouted at remained unchanged from the start, yet precisely because of this, my impression of him grew ever deeper, and my interest in understanding his humanity intensified all the more.
One day during exercise time—I who had made it my practice to inquire with that man about every prison matter—spoke to the robber-murderer comrade, he who always provided clear answers to any question, regarding this Old Prison Worker.

“That old prison worker—what the hell is he anyway?”

That very morning during breakfast, after complaining that the amount of ingredients in the soup was meager, the robber-murderer comrade had been yelled at by the Old Prison Worker.
And so, I brought it up and casually asked.
And I, at best,

“Yeah, him.”
“That guy used to be a chief guard, but after clashing with the warden, he got demoted to regular guard. Then in the end, he was even busted down to prison worker.”

I had expected nothing more than a reply of that sort. But I saw the robber-murderer comrade’s expression darken before my question had even fully left my lips. And I was startled by how unexpected that answer was.

“He’s the one who does this.”

The robber-murderer comrade spread the space between his thumb and index finger and pressed it against his own throat.

I fell silent.
The Robber-Murderer Comrade also said nothing beyond that.

Ever since then, whenever meals were thrust out by this Old Prison Worker—those thick, wrinkled, earth-toned fingers I had previously found repulsive—I stared at them with even greater disgust.
At times, I would involuntarily turn my eyes away from them.

I later heard this when Kōtoku and the others were killed—apparently, the executioner received one yen for each execution performed.
And apparently, that Old Prison Worker would drink away all of it that very night.

I heard that he had resigned from his position for some reason immediately after Kōtoku and over a dozen others were killed.

Now, having written this far, I recall those fingers I had temporarily forgotten, and remember the broad purple band marks around the throats of my friends' corpses, renewing the horror of that time.

Once, I read Hugo’s Five Minutes Before Execution.
I also read Andreyev’s The Seven Who Were Hanged.
The latter I read much later, in Chiba Prison.
At that time, I certainly felt a shudder.
But now, even when I try to recall those narratives, not a shred of that visceral shudder from back then surfaces.
All I can recall now is the memory of how those ghastly scenes and psychological depictions had been rendered with such masterful skill and visceral power.
But those two facts alone—those two facts that I saw with my own eyes and felt in my own heart—the moment I recall them, the visceral reality of that time surges forth immediately.
Before the memories of surrounding scenes and my own emotional state at the time even surface, I first begin trembling violently.

“I’m trapped here.”

It was a certain day in Chiba.
After returning from the exercise yard, I had been resting for a while when suddenly a single dragonfly flew in through the window.

Whenever a leaf fell or a petal drifted in, I would immediately pick it up, lose myself in various associations, and play with it for a time.
In spring, cherry blossom petals would often come floating in from who knows where.
Not a single cherry tree stood within view from the window.
Aside from several young Chinese parasol trees lining the window and a lone tree in the distance that Sakai called the "Sparrow Tree"—always swarming with countless chirping sparrows—not a blade of grass grew.
And so this single cherry blossom petal—that could only have flown in from beyond those tall red brick walls—must have poured immeasurable solace into hearts of prisoners already steeped in sentimentality.

Everything was dear.
Especially things from the outside world were dear.
A child's crying voice that probably came from the guards' quarters.
The chorus of elementary school students walking along the road.
Flutes and drums during spring and autumn festivals.
Occasional winter night calls of "nabeyaki udon."
Moreover, living things—anything sharing even the slightest connection with my existence—were unbearably dear.
A kite wheeling through sky, crows flying high at duskfall, sparrows chirping beyond the window.

However, now one of those living creatures had come flying into the room.
I immediately closed the window.
And after chasing it frantically around the room—swinging a broom, hurling a rag—I finally managed to catch it.

I had meant to keep this dragonfly.
Whether it could be tamed or not—I didn't think dragonflies possessed enough intelligence for that to even be a question.
But if possible, I wanted to feed it something and grow closer to this insect, if only slightly.

I sandwiched the dragonfly's wing between the pages of a book to hold it in place and began pulling out the sturdiest-looking thread from the obi I had on hand. I intended to tie those thread fragments into a long cord to tether the dragonfly.

Yet as I worked—glancing intermittently at the dragonfly struggling in the thick Western book that pinned its wings, limbs flailing like someone wringing their hands—just when I thought I had extracted a considerable length of thread, a shudder suddenly ran through me as if struck by lightning. And then, while abruptly standing up with the dragonfly’s wing in hand, I hurried to the window and released it outside.

Even after returning to my seat, for some time I couldn't comprehend what I had just done. I couldn't even begin to grasp what that lightning-like sensation had been. I simply sank down abruptly, seeming to think vaguely about something. And as that dazed state gradually gave way to clarity, I remembered that while pulling out the thread, the thought "I'm trapped here" had passed through my head like a brief flash. And so I understood everything completely. This flash gave me an electric jolt, moved my body to the window, and made me release that dragonfly.

I may still be, as the world now imagines me, an utterly savage human being.
At least even now, within my body, copious amounts of barbarian blood still course.
At every opportunity, it seeks to gush out from somewhere within my body.
I will never deny it.
Savage games, savage mischief, savage combat.
As for all other brutal matters—I who from childhood loved them above all else and yielded to none, I who was forged through them—I will never claim this inclination does not remain within me in no small measure.

As a child, like everyone else, I often killed dragonflies, cicadas, frogs, snakes, cats, and dogs.
I even hunted cats and dogs.
And I would brazenly commit acts of cruelty so extreme that other children would either avert their eyes or flee, all while taking smug satisfaction in it.
I hardly ever thought insects or beasts were cute or pitiful.
The only beast I ever found cute was the horse.
Father's horse would often carry me and gallop unrestrained across the wide drill ground.
But as for all small animals, I thought nothing of torturing and killing them whenever I found them.

And yet now, even here in prison with this dragonfly, I felt such profound shock merely from trying to keep it by my side.
Regarding things like animal abuse or cruelty, since becoming an adult I had of course felt great shock both rationally and emotionally.
But never before had I felt anything so strongly, so intensely, so deeply while actually committing such acts myself.
And in that moment, I felt new blood surging torrentially through my body.

After that, whenever I recall this matter, I laugh at the sentimentalism of that time.
Yet when I reconsider,
Could it be that my sentimentality is in fact the true human heart?
And could it be that precisely because I was a prisoner, I was able to truly see this true human heart within my own body?

Handcuffs and Leg Irons

This too occurred during my time in Chiba.

One evening, when three or four prison guards came clattering down the corridor with loud footsteps, I wondered what was happening and quietly peered through the usual peephole. Each holding several sets of handcuffs, they opened the door to the cell across from mine.
In that cell, which had remained vacant since that morning, a new man had entered.

“Enough, stand up!”

The guard who had entered first bellowed in a loud voice at the man who was bowing.
The man stood up hesitantly.
He was a fair-skinned, seemingly innocent man of about twenty-five or twenty-six.

“Stick your hands out front!”

Again that prison guard roared.
Meanwhile the other guards noisily filed into the cell still wearing their shoes.
I couldn't see what they were doing.
The only clues came from the relentless clanging of handcuffs and the guards' muttered complaints about sizes being too small or too large - enough to deduce they were shackling the man.

"Why would they do such a thing at this hour?"

At first, I thought they were putting handcuffs on that man to take him somewhere.
I had never seen them handcuff anyone except during such times—or perhaps when someone became uncontrollably violent.
That man had neither acted out even once nor uttered a single sound since arriving.
However, once the guards had fitted handcuffs that fit snugly around the man’s wrists, they tossed out a “There, good. Now sleep with this,” and briskly departed.
I simply couldn’t comprehend the meaning behind it.

Early the next morning, two or three guards came to the man’s cell again, this time removing the handcuffs and taking them away.
I grew increasingly unable to comprehend its meaning.

When the prison laborer came with work hemp bundles around noon, I watched for a gap in the guards' attention and asked.

“What’s with that guy across the way?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing really.”
“He wasn’t in solitary before—just over in the communal cells.”
“Since he kept trying to hang himself, they finally moved him here.”
“So they keep him handcuffed like that all night to stop him moving.”

Thus night after night they clamped on the cuffs, morning after morning took them off—day upon day, week upon week, continuing for what must have been two or three months.
I never learned why that man tried to kill himself.
All I knew was they’d found him hanging—three times, four times, five or six times—or halfway there already.

And one evening, seeing that man handcuffed behind his back at the waist, I wondered how he could possibly sleep like that. Attempting to find out, I painstakingly tied my own hands behind my back with a hand towel and tried sleeping that way.
At first I tried lying on my side, but when my shoulders and arms grew unbearably painful, I turned over onto my stomach.
However, finding this still unbearable, I turned my body sideways again, this time in the opposite direction from before.
I even considered tossing and turning like this all night long, but finding it utterly unbearable, I quickly undid the hand towel.

Then there was this man—not from our building—whom I often encountered on the path to and from the bathhouse. He too wore handcuffs, even leg irons, and dragged a heavy weight-like object chained to him as he walked.

That man was also around twenty-five or twenty-six, slender-faced, and if anything, a gentle-looking man.

I had long heard about this punishment where they made you drag around a weight-like thing called "da"—I’ve forgotten the kanji. Back during my military preparatory school days, when I visited the Army prison on a tour, I had seen the actual da in person. However, I also heard at that time about another device—a leather contraption where turning a handle made it tighten around the body with a creak—and that keeping this applied for just two or three minutes would leave any man deathly pale. They said such things were hardly ever used anymore.

Yet now, I saw before my very eyes a man dragging that da.
Positioned at the end of a long column of prisoners, he moved his legs less with slowness than with laborious effort—each step a visible struggle.
But more unbearable than his gait was the sickly pallor of his face and the same ashen whiteness of his withered limbs.

What crime could warrant such punishment? When had this torment begun? I never found occasion to ask anyone.
Nor did I possess the courage to make such inquiries.
And even had I known—what difference would it have made?

Even we chatterboxes would fall completely silent when encountering that man, simply exchanging glances.
Arahata, who was always next to me, made a face as if about to cry, his eyebrows twitching.
And no one could look directly at that man for even a few seconds, merely glancing in his direction.

No matter how many punishments they endured,

Thinking of this punishment reminds me that among prisoners there exists a man who, no matter how many penalties he endures or how often he suffers them, refuses to obey prison regulations until he finally attains a sort of extraterritorial status. In any prison, at any time, there is always at least one such man.

That death-row inmate from Tokyo Prison—the robber-murderer comrade I had cited so many times—was also one of them.

In Sugamo, being in that half-infirmary prison for the disabled, I naturally never encountered such types; yet even at the court's temporary lockup, I met someone who appeared to be a fellow Sugamo prisoner.

To stave off the boredom of being kept waiting so long in temporary detention, I wandered about the cell. Then a guard came and ordered, “Sit still on the bench and don’t move.” The court’s temporary holding cell was located in the basement of that large building, with an earthen floor where one or two benches sat. But sitting on a wooden bench for hours made my buttocks ache and grew tedious, so during such waits, pacing about the cell had become my habit. Since I’d never been reprimanded for this before, I immediately began arguing with the guard. When he persisted in spouting incomprehensible nonsense, I started shouting insults at him so loudly that all the other guards came running. This apparently greatly impressed the other prisoner who’d been there with me.

“You’re still young and full of vigor—that’s good. Give it your all. Half-heartedness won’t do. Either become utterly docile and earn the full trust of the officials—if you do that, they’ll overlook minor violations. If not that, then you’ve got to fight like hell. Fight and fight and fight your way through. Brace yourself for two or three rounds of reduced rations, two or three stints in solitary—and fight like hell. If you do that, in the end they’ll still let major violations slide. But half-heartedness won’t do—you’ll just keep getting scolded forever. If they say you farted, you get reduced rations. That’s pointless. Even a guy like me used to raise hell back in the day. Even so, after enduring five rounds of reduced rations and three stints in solitary confinement, they stopped scolding me over major matters. Whether I wanted to sing songs or lie around sprawled out, I could do whatever I pleased.”

The man over forty kept insistently explaining things to me—though I couldn’t fathom what he took me for.
Indeed, he seemed the sort who could endure five or six rounds of reduced rations, three or four stints in solitary confinement, even being kicked and beaten by five or ten guards descending on him at once.
His physique remained robust, his speech carried weight, and there lingered about him an air of unbroken defiance.

I’d long known about prisoners like that robber-murderer comrade who indulged in considerable willfulness.
But I’d always assumed this privilege stemmed solely from their death row status.
Among condemned inmates, I’d later encountered two or three others of that stripe. Yet that ordinary convicts could wrest such freedom through equivalent sacrifice—this revelation came to me first through his account.

And then later in Chiba, I actually encountered such a man for the first time.
Even now I remember his name—a man named Watanabe something, serving the maximum four-year sentence for resisting officials, the same charge as mine.

I had known this man since those days, as we had been in the same building at Tokyo Prison and he often came to clean the lock on my cell.
He had initially been imprisoned at Kōfu Prison for theft or some similar offense when he got into a major brawl with guards, resulting in charges of resisting officials that saw him transferred to Tokyo Prison.
There was a scar about three sun long stretching from his forehead over his nose down to below his eyes.
There were also scars of the same size on both cheeks.
In addition, there were several large bald scars on his head.
Those were all apparently inflicted by guards in Kōfu with swords.

“At first, when the twelve or thirteen of us from our cell had decided to plan an escape and went out for exercise, we let out a roaring cheer.”

Then one day, as the man polished the lock, he began speaking in a spirited yet hushed voice.

“Then, the dozens of others who were with us also let out a roaring triumphant cheer together.”
“Those guard bastards were damn surprised, you know.”
“In the meantime, we ten-odd men ran over to the kitchen beyond the exercise yard, each grabbed one of the stacked firewood logs, raised a fresh triumphant cheer, and advanced toward the guards.”
“Then those guard bastards turned pale, trembled violently, clasped their hands together, and started apologizing, begging us to spare them.”

Watanabe continued speaking cheerfully, glancing furtively at the guards from time to time while hiding his face slightly behind the ajar door.

Then they all swarmed toward the gate and finally intimidated the gatekeeper, allowing the leading ten-odd men to temporarily exit beyond the gates—but soon, reasoning that escaping in such a manner would only lead to immediate recapture, they turned back and returned.
And they were all put back into their cells.

For the next two or three days, a war between prisoners and guards continued both inside and outside the cells.
The prisoners sang songs.
The guards scolded them for it.
Due to such provocations—spitting at each other, hurling abuse—the guards finally drew their swords.
They brought bamboo poles, attached sabers to their tips, and thrust them into the cells.
The prisoners removed the toilet lids and panels, using them to block the attacks.
Eventually, the guards brought a pump and poured scalding water into the cells; the prisoners covered themselves with futons to block it.
After such disturbances, Watanabe finally ended up going to negotiate in either the warden’s or the chief guard’s office.
There, he said he was slashed by several guards.

“Hey Boss, those bastards who slashed me were the same ones who’d begged for mercy with clasped hands in the exercise yard before, right? Those bastards are truly despicable.”

Having finished speaking, Watanabe closed the door of the lock he had long since polished and moved on to polishing the lock in the neighboring cell.

In Tokyo Prison, perhaps because his trial was still ongoing, this man remained extremely docile.
And when he was finally sentenced for resisting officials and transferred to Chiba, he initially behaved with utmost docility—but before long, angered by something, he once again became an uncontrollable force of chaos.

“Hey Boss, once I’m out this time, I’m done with burglary.”
“It’s just too absurd, you know?”
“No matter how much I raise hell, nobody gives a damn about some burglar.”
“So this time, I’m going to become your disciple, Boss.”
“Come on, Boss—once I’m out I’ll definitely come. On your side, the more hell you raise, the more it builds your reputation, right?”
“And even when you end up in prison, you get to live like a feudal lord there.”

When I was about to be released in roughly six months, Watanabe came and said such things; though somewhat troubled, I simply told him, "Ah, come then."

Yet even now, this man still hadn't come for that so-called "apprenticeship". Where he was, what he was doing—who could know. I supposed he'd probably been thrown into some prison again. He had been just the ideal burglar—a small-built, nimble-looking young man—but.

However, this "apprenticeship"—even if he never came for it—was something I had already entered into with him from my side. After that, I once penned an ode to him titled "The Beast" in my magazine.

Again, from the cells on the other side came the sound of raging chaos.
Shouts erupted.

They sang songs.
They pounded on the wall panels and made a racket.
Still, the officials pretended not to notice and left them be.
No matter how much reduced rations they ate,
even when confined to dark cells,
even when shackled,
since they still persisted in starting up disturbances,
the officials finally became powerless to deal with them.

They were complete madmen—beasts!

But I—these madmen, these beasts—
I’m so envious I can’t stand it.

That's it!
I must undergo more training to become stupider.

I refuse to die in prison.

The prisoners I envied were these beasts and, on the other hand, the lamb-like patients.

The Sugamo Infirmary wasn’t visible from where we were, but whether in Tokyo Prison or Chiba, the path to the exercise yard always passed in front of the infirmary. A neat little building with large windows like those of an ordinary house—or perhaps entirely glass-paneled doors—seemingly well-ventilated and warm, stood nearly year-round surrounded by flowering plants and other blossoms. And among those flowers, patients in white garments wandered about leisurely.

I truly wanted to find a way to become a patient.
If I were sentenced to five years, ten years, or even life imprisonment, I even thought that aside from becoming one of these patients, there would be no way for me to survive.
Even tuberculosis would do.
Anything would do.
In any case, it had to be an illness that would take a long time, and I needed to get admitted there.

But once, in Sugamo, I managed to get admitted to this infirmary.
On the path I walked to court as mentioned before, I tripped and tore off the nail of my big toe.
There, it developed pus.

The Sugamo Infirmary was divided into three buildings: one for mental health patients, one for tuberculosis patients, and one for general patients.
I was admitted into the last of these.
It was far better than the third-class or second-class wards of mediocre hospitals.
Mine was a three-mat room, with tatami flooring laid out as one would expect.
I could spread out a straw mattress there, bask in sunlight all day through the room-wide window, and spend my days lying down while gazing at the various plants and flowers outside—that would suffice.
For nursing staff, they selected the most exemplary prisoners—particularly those who had once held considerable social standing.
For me, a certain Waseda University student known as the 'Geisha Killer' comrade was exclusively assigned.

It’s said that Kōtoku, having entered this infirmary, bribed a certain guard to read the *Yorozu Chōhō* newspaper every morning and enjoy an evening drink of one or two *go* each night.

If I could drink alcohol, I could have had wine or brandy anytime.
The nurses would steal it from the pharmacy.

The doctors treated me well too, without putting on bureaucratic airs.
The guards were all saints, and I was able to conduct myself so properly that I hardly even felt like I was being imprisoned.

The meals were far better than those of ordinary prisoners.
The pork soup, normally served once a week, was now served twice.
Moreover, the pieces of pork were several times more abundant than usual.

After spending over a month in this infirmary, nearly forgetting I was even a prisoner, I left the prison with several letters from the nurses and others rolled up inside the bandages on my leg.

However, since this was merely something like injuring a toe—a trivial matter—I could afford to speak so carefreely, but what if I had contracted a more serious illness?
I had previously said I wanted to enter the infirmary—even if it meant contracting tuberculosis.
Now I had indeed brought back that very illness as a souvenir from Chiba. Though it was nearly cured now, what if several more years passed and I fell ill again—if the disease worsened and I had to return to the infirmary?

In Chiba, immediately after we left, our comrade Akabane Iwaana died in prison from a trivial illness.
After that, two or three comrades from the High Treason Incident also died incarcerated.
They would keep dying this way endlessly.

I didn’t care how I died—but death in prison? Never.
At the very least, among all possible deaths, I’d avoid that carceral end by any means.

Corrupt Prison Chaplain

The worst part of prison is winter.

A single padded garment and a single underrobe.
No shirts and no tabi.
There was not even a hint of heating.
There wasn’t even proper sunlight.
With all this and food devoid of oily substance, it became utterly unbearable.

I did calisthenics; I kicked the wall.
I pressed my body against the wall.
When I went out for exercise, I would spend nearly the entire two daily thirty-minute periods running.
However, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get warm.

I performed cold water rubdowns.
And it was water drawn the night before that had almost always frozen.
Apart from this cold water, there was almost no means of warming oneself.
So when I woke up in the morning, I first performed a rubdown.
Before going to bed at night, I would rub my entire body until it turned bright red, then curl up like a nori roll in a single thin futon to sleep.
They say to roll up like a burrito, but you couldn’t sleep like that.
Even during daylight hours, constant shivers would rise from around my knees, and at times my legs would tremble as if dancing uncontrollably.
And my upper and lower teeth clattered together.
When it got to that point, I stripped naked and rubbed my body down even two or three times a day.
With this, I could stop the trembling for at least an hour.

The greatest pleasure during winter was the bath.
At the “Undress!” command, they hurriedly took off their clothes; at “Enter bath!”, they plunged into the hot water.

There was even a “Wash your body!” command.
In water so hot they could barely enter, they endured until their skin turned bright red.
If it wasn’t that hot, the evening bath before dinner wouldn’t retain its warmth until bedtime.

On rare occasions, dinner’s special treat would be miso soup made with salmon or trout heads finely chopped and used as the main ingredient.
That night, I could indeed sleep slightly warmer.

Even so, strangely enough, they rarely caught colds.
In early February, Yamakawa—a man who had served four months for violating the Newspaper Law and who, with his bad lungs, caught colds nearly year-round—emerged from there without having caught a single one.
And immediately upon release, he was struck down by the usual influenza and lay in bed for nearly a month.

It was during one such winter day in Chiba.
The elderly prison chaplain serving as Chief Chaplain came to visit.

The prison housed several Buddhist monks serving as chaplains.
In some institutions there were said to be Christian priests, but most belonged to the Shinshū sect.

I had heard that ordinary prisoners were gathered weekly in a hall they called a chapel—adorned with an Amida Buddha statue—to listen to these monks' sermons. But for us political prisoners, the chaplains occasionally visited our cells themselves instead.
Most monks didn't actually preach sermons.
They merely exchanged seasonal pleasantries and idle chatter before listening to our grievances about prison conditions—then left without resolution.

This Chief Chaplain in Chiba was already an elderly man over sixty at the time, rumored to be a respected figure in the region after working in prisons for ten-odd or twenty-odd years. Try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to accept that reputation as deserved. Above all else, those small shifty eyes of his gleamed with a fox-like cunning. Whatever he said invariably sounded like a sermon. There was no trace of sincere warmth or compassion—the kind that should exist when humans face one another as equals. And there was always something that betrayed the thoughts lurking in his heart: "I'm an official! I'm the Chief Chaplain!" I had long counted this man's visits among Chiba's many unpleasantries.

“How are you finding it? It seems rather warm today.”

With an affected smile that carried a hint of mockery looking down on us from somewhere, he immediately offered his usual weather greeting upon entering.
I found this man’s smile the most detestable among all his unpleasant traits.
Moreover, now that I had been interrupted in the middle of reading Tolstoy’s Resurrection—having been forced by those footsteps to suddenly hide my book and pretend to be working—this only intensified my aversion to that smile.

"What warmth? Can't you see me here shivering like this right now?"

I shouted these words internally while looking up at his face again.
And then, suddenly—

“Hmph! If you’re wearing five or six layers of padded garments, you must be reasonably warm.”

I snapped venomously.
In reality, his emaciated body—like a withered tree—was swaddled in layers of bulky clothing.
And yet, he kept both hands bent at his sides and was still clutching his body tightly as if cold.

The Chief Chaplain’s gaunt, pallid face suddenly took on an even bluer cast, and his fox-like eyes gleamed with intensified malice.
I kept my head bowed in silence while pretending to twist the hemp rope.

No sooner had the Chief Chaplain turned his body than he stepped out into the corridor and slammed the door shut with a terrible crash.
I immediately threw the hemp rope aside and retrieved Resurrection from where it was hidden under the futon.
And feeling pleased, I picked up where I’d left off and began reading again.

For several months afterward—or perhaps until my eventual release—I managed to avoid seeing that unpleasant old chaplain's face.

After my release, I heard that this Chief Chaplain had persistently urged the wives visiting their husbands to come to his home. It was said he claimed to want detailed discussions about their husbands' conduct, but apparently harbored ulterior motives—knowing they wouldn't come empty-handed. In fact, a comrade's wife reportedly brought gifts to visit him each time she came for meetings and received lavish hospitality. However, my wife, having learned from comrades released earlier about the state of relations between him and me, ultimately never went to visit him, I'm told.

About two years later, I came across a newspaper article stating that this Chief Chaplain had been imprisoned in Chiba Prison for bribery—though I later heard he was released due to insufficient evidence.

I recently heard an amusing story about the prison chaplains. Early one morning, they went to meet Arahata and Yamakawa—who were being released from Tokyo Prison—at a delivery shop in front of the gate. Both men had grown slightly thinner and considerably paler in complexion, yet they emerged with vigor.

In one of the delivery rooms, they engaged in pleasant conversation for a while.
Those being welcomed and those welcoming were largely seasoned prison veterans.
Those being welcomed vigorously disseminated their newly acquired knowledge.
Those welcoming related the abruptly changed state of worldly affairs.

“Hey, did you know Hōgetsu died and Sumako followed him by killing herself?”

I believe it was Sakai who asked the two.

“Ah, I know about that.”
“Actually, there’s something amusing related to it.”

Arahata interjected with a cackling laugh before Sakai could finish speaking.

It seemed Arahata’s wife had attempted to keep him informed about worldly matters by writing as if they shared a close connection when conveying news of Hōgetsu’s death.

“Why yes, I was under Sensei’s tutelage for quite some time at school.”

Arahata told complete lies to the chaplain who had come upon seeing that letter.
Arahata had met Hōgetsu only once at some kind of meeting.
Of course, there was no teacher-student relationship whatsoever.
"Well... I have a request."

Arahata paused briefly before speaking.

“Given that situation, while we aren’t exactly close relatives, would it be possible for you to conduct a memorial service?”

The Chief Chaplain, thinking this was another troublesome “request,” had initially frowned slightly, but upon hearing the nature of the appeal, the wrinkles on his face relaxed.
Until then—given they were discussing a deceased person—he had deliberately maintained a gloomy complexion, but it suddenly began to beam brightly.

“Why, certainly—it’s no trouble at all.”

The Chief Chaplain said this and took Arahata to the chapel. Arahata had wanted to see this chapel at least once. And he wanted to make some priest chant sutras for him—to indulge in the ironic pleasure of disrupting that monotonous life.

“So then—did the priest chant sutras for you?”

I asked while Arahata was gulping down a cup of tea.

“Yeah, he did it alright.”
“And he must’ve thought it was some grandly virtuous act or something.”
“Gave us a real long one too.”

“That’s good then.”

Everyone doubled over laughing.

“And so through this connection—when Sumako killed herself—that very same chaplain came straightaway to tell me…”

If I were to keep writing, there would seem no end to it—but I shall stop here.
I had grown tired of writing.
The reader must have had enough by now as well.