Pathway to Japanese Literature

This is an incident that occurred at a certain court on a certain year, month, and day.

At the front, the Presiding Judge sat formally attired alongside two associate judges.
To the left sat the Prosecutor, to the right the Court Clerk, and behind the judges’ bench under the window, three trainees in suits were observing for training purposes.
The dim winter light passed through the windows and reached only halfway across the courtroom.
The defendant’s and defense attorney’s seats far below were already dim, while the spectator seats arranged behind them were gloomy almost like twilight.
Having been made to remove his woven hat and having had his handcuffs unlocked, the Defendant—utterly submissive to the jailer’s directions—was crammed into two tightly packed rows within the box below the clerk’s desk.
There were six of them.
Not a single defense attorney was present.

The Presiding Judge took two or three of the records passed from the Court Clerk and selected one from among them because he had determined that this was the first case to be heard.

“××××.”
The Presiding Judge looked equally at the documents and the defendant’s seat, then called out the name.
The Defendant who had been called stood up,

“Yes,” he said, bowing timidly.
The gazes of fourteen or fifteen spectators uniformly gathered toward this person.

The Defendant was still a young man of twenty-one or twenty-two.

There was not a single aspect of this Defendant’s appearance that gave a favorable impression to those who saw him.
In defendants of this sort—one might even say typically—the skin was coarse and lacked luster.
His eye sockets were sunken, and his eyes were dull.
The skin of his cheeks sagged, and when he closed his mouth, thick vertical lines crawled left and right.
Naturally, his mouth lacked firmness, and his lower jaw was long and slightly protruding.
The only features that somewhat harmonized the aberrations of his face were his high yet small-nostriled nose and broad forehead, but the shape of his head, immediately discernible beneath his closely cropped hair, at once suggested its asymmetry.
His head was of the so-called dolichocephalic type.
And it looked exceedingly fragile.
One might even fear that if grabbed, it would squish and collapse.
His entire frame was emaciated, and the shoulders clad in a plain cotton-padded garment—whose weave pattern had faded beyond recognition—drooped limply from the long collar line that split in both directions, presenting a wretched appearance.

He placed his hands unsteadily on the edge of the box where he had been confined, looked down, and waited for the judge’s questions.

“Are you ××××?”
The Presiding Judge repeated his question to the one with this imbecilic face.

“Yes.”

“You were sentenced to one year of penal servitude in the first trial, and you filed this appeal because you found that verdict unacceptable—is that it?”

“Yes.”

“What part do you find unacceptable? Are you claiming the sentence is too harsh? Or asserting there was no factual basis for the crime?”

“Yes—well—it’s not that I peeled off the postage stamps—the postage stamps…”

“Enough. Wait.”
The Presiding Judge fixed his eyes on the page he had turned to in the records.

“Where were you born?”

“My birthplace is…………”

“×× Prefecture ×× District Natori Village 328, right?”

“Yes, no—it’s Watomi Village.”

(The Defendant’s pronunciation was extremely unclear—so unclear that one could scarcely distinguish between “Watomi” and “Natori.” On this point, the first trial records already contained errors, and now even this Presiding Judge struggled to discern it. It should be noted that hereafter too, many of the Defendant’s responses would contain similarly unintelligible pronunciations.)

“What, Watori Village?”

“It’s Watomi Village.”

“Watomi. Is ‘wa’ the character for peace?”

“Yes.”

“Is ‘tomi’ the character for wealth?”

“Yes.”

“Watomimura 328.”
“Very well.”
“Address—”

“My address is…………”

“You don’t have one now?”

“Yes.”

The Presiding Judge concluded the questioning as was customary, then turned through the records and located the original text of the first trial’s verdict.

“According to the first trial’s verdict, while employed as a mail collector at ×× Post Office, you committed the following acts: first, stole one set of Imperial Funeral commemorative postcards from a mailbox at ×× Town ×× Address on [date]; second, peeled off and stole three-sen postage stamps one-by-one from letters in a mailbox at ×× Town ×× Address on [date]; third, likewise stole one compact flashlight from a parcel mail item at a certain relay office destined for a certain post office on [date]. These are the facts.”
“So you’re saying this is what you find unacceptable.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you find it unacceptable? Are you claiming you didn’t steal anything?”

“The stamps... the postage stamps—I didn’t peel them off or anything like that.”

“You didn’t take them? How could that be? Didn’t you confess during the first trial?”

“I... I never said I peeled them off…………”

“Nonsense. You did say it yourself, didn’t you?”

“The postage stamps had peeled off………… That day there was heavy rain…………”

“The stamps had peeled off.”
“Why?”
“That day there was heavy rain…………”

“Such weather-related nonsense doesn’t matter.”

“Yes.
“The rain poured down, and the letters got soaked…………”

“The letters got wet.”
“Are you saying the stamps had peeled off?”
“You idiot.”
“Enough of your nonsense!”
“When delivering mail, who would let letters get soaked in the rain?”
“If you took them, just admit it outright.”
“Keep up this nonsense and you’ll regret it!”

“No.
“The rain splashed in through the mailbox opening.”

“So what?”

“The letters piled up until the mailbox was filled to the brim…………”

“That doesn’t matter at all.”
“So in short—you’re saying those stamps had peeled off?”

“Yes.”
“One was stuck there…in the corner of…”

“And another—”

“When I put them in the bag, the letters were soaked and peeled off by themselves.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I set those aside………….”

The Defendant vexed the Presiding Judge’s ears with an excruciatingly incomprehensible rural accent.
For the Presiding Judge—whose only aim was to conduct the trial proceedings as succinctly as possible—these muddled responses proved profoundly frustrating.
When he irritably pressed with questions, his own diction turned abrasive and his voice boomed louder.
The Defendant grew increasingly cowed and increasingly spewed disjointed explanations.
What the Defendant had been attempting to convey was this:
That day had seen torrential rains, and with the mailbox crammed full of postal items, several letters near its opening had become soaked through as rainwater seeped in.
As a result, when retrieving them, one stamp had peeled off and fallen inside the mailbox, while another had come loose when transferring them to the bag.
Thus he had set those two stamps aside—without any thought of theft—and left them there………… (Since the Defendant had been cut off by the Presiding Judge before finishing his account, the author surmises what followed:) Then, while meaning to report them upon returning to the post office, time slipped away oddly until he finally missed his chance to do so and wound up using them for personal needs.
He had not peeled off and stolen those stamps from the outset.

If he could get them to listen to this explanation, the Defendant seemed to think his charges might be somewhat reduced.

However, the Presiding Judge did not consider that worthy of any consideration.
Had the stamps peeled off, or had he peeled them off and taken them?
The Presiding Judge thought he had no time to investigate such detailed matters.
Therefore, the Defendant's explanation that the letters had been soaked by rain was dismissed with a rebuke and went unheeded.
Misunderstanding that the Defendant was claiming people had deposited rain-soaked letters into mailboxes, he rebuked him to cease such foolish excuses.
And without attempting to resolve that misunderstanding—that is, proceeding with the trial in his state of incomprehension—
However, this was standard practice for judges in this country.
The reason being that judges in this country were ordained to determine criminal facts simply and clearly, with no need to investigate such matters as defendants' interests.

The author was using Japanese to sketch the courtroom scene here, so readers might have taken this as a depiction of Japanese judges' trial conduct—but that would have been their hasty assumption.
Japan was a constitutional state，a rule-of-law country，a civilized nation; its judges were mostly law graduates.
They were judges thoroughly versed in progressive criminal law theories and criminal policies.
They were people who held as their ideal conducting fair and thorough judgments toward His Majesty’s children with boundless compassion and sympathy.
That even a single citizen weeping under injustice should exist was deemed a great disgrace to the history of that sacred era—they were people who could not help but tremble with fear and self-reproach.
These individuals exercised judicial authority under the Emperor’s august name.
The Emperor being whom these individuals revered as heaven and god，should there have been any rudeness or misjudgment in their exercise of judicial authority，they considered themselves to have been great sinners who had defied both heaven and god.
In judges of Japan who were so devout and solemn，the utterly uncouth manner of trial proceedings then being described by the author could never possibly have existed.
The author，being incapable of wielding foreign languages，had perforce narrated events as though occurring in Japanese courts using Japanese—a regrettable necessity indeed—and thus entreated readers to graciously extend their understanding as they perused that account.

Judges of a certain country conducted such uncouth trials day after day.
However, there were exceptions here.
This occurred when the defendant had a defense attorney present at the trial proceedings.
Moreover, this was when said defense counsel had already demonstrated both earnest rectitude and an audacious fearlessness to openly rebuke the judges.
In such cases, judges would adopt a somewhat courteous demeanor, conduct the trial proceedings with meticulous care, and make efforts to listen quietly to the defendant’s statements.
However, they merely listened.
If one thought there existed an intention to listen and incorporate that into judgment materials, that expectation would be thoroughly dashed.
These individuals merely showed courtesy toward defense attorneys.
That neither benefited nor harmed the Defendant’s interests.
In the end, it resulted in the same outcome as when they didn’t listen.

The Defendant in this case had no defense attorney.
With none present, the Defendant could not express even a tenth of what lay in his heart.
Whether he couldn't do it or even if he could—if that failed to sway the judges' minds—then it mattered not at all.
Yet once made a defendant, one would naturally want to say all they wished; and if after saying their fill they still received an unreasonable verdict, perhaps they could resign themselves to it.
Judges of this country simply had no time to exercise such complex emotions.
Everything before their eyes was a criminal.
If they just quickly threw them into prison, the matter would be settled.
Considering only this, the Presiding Judge interrogated the Defendant, and as the Defendant underwent questioning guided by this policy, the trial advanced.

“I set those aside………….”

“So you ended up taking them, then.”

“Yes. I... I... I t-took them... but...”

“Enough.”

In the public gallery, a multitude of thoughts were stirring.
From the very beginning, all of them had been comparing—while listening—the Defendant’s gelatinous, faltering statements with the Presiding Judge’s desiccated interrogations.
The Presiding Judge refused to properly hear what the Defendant was saying, and they collectively found it maddening how both parties’ intentions remained utterly disconnected.
The Defendant’s attitude—hesitating three times in his reluctance to say “I took them”—nearly made some spectators burst out laughing, but upon realizing they were in the solemn courtroom, they barely stifled their laughter.
Did the Defendant have no parents?
What of siblings?
What hardship could have driven him to commit the crime of theft for a mere six sen?
How much was his daily wage, and how much would have sufficed for his livelihood?
Was he actually unable to make ends meet?
Was his allowance so meager that he couldn’t make ends meet?
Failing to provide even a sufficient allowance to live on while assigning full workloads was tantamount to saying that whenever there’s an opportunity, one should steal or cheat to sustain their lives.
If we say that the value of labor is determined by supply, then the Defendant, who resigned himself to inadequate compensation (to sustain life), was himself mistaken in that very resignation.
But that was an unavoidable matter.
For this country’s workers are filled with precisely the kind of people who still wish to resign themselves to such conditions.
With the Defendant’s own power alone, there was nothing he could do to affect wage increases or decreases—such was the reality.
However, among the spectators that day, not a single one had made such earnest observations.
They merely listened to the exchanges between the Defendant and the Presiding Judge, took interest in the tangled sequence of events, and concluded that crimes and trials were nothing but absurdities.

The Presiding Judge was satisfied with the Defendant’s statement of “I took them.”

The Presiding Judge rendered nonexistent the Defendant’s “I took them, but...” along with its trailing hesitation, declaring instead: “Enough.”
He then moved to the next interrogation.

“Concerning the first matter...‥there’s no error in your theft of the Grand State Funeral commemorative postcards—correct?” The Presiding Judge reformulated his inquiry.

“Yes... That... That...”

“And you took the flashlight too.”

“Th-that... That... The package had split open........”

“You’re saying you took it, then.”

“Yes………… The package had torn open………… And the postcards………….”

“So you became a mail carrier starting in September, is that it?”

“Yes. I did some training.”

“And you committed the crime in question between September 15th and 18th,”
Having said this, the Presiding Judge glared intently at the Defendant.

“You were hired from the start with the intention of committing theft.
“You became a mail carrier and immediately committed this crime, didn’t you?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.
“The commemorative postcards for the Grand State Funeral………….”

“Enough.”
“I’ll have the evidence read out.”

The evidence documents that the Presiding Judge read were all necessary to establish the Defendant’s criminal acts.
No—they served no purpose other than establishing those criminal acts.
Needless to say, they offered no benefit to the Defendant—not a single piece of material provided insight into his state of mind.
Naturally, there could be no descriptions deserving of sympathy.

The Prosecutor—who had been lounging in his chair with half-closed eyes and an air of boredom—stood up to deliver his closing argument.
The Defendant’s appeal was dismissed for lack of grounds—the entirety of the Prosecutor’s argument amounted to nothing more than this.

With this, the trial of this defendant was concluded.

If there are those who call this trial crude, the author has something to say to such people.

First, the total value of the goods stolen by this defendant amounted to approximately three yen.
Because the Defendant had unlawfully stolen these three yen worth of goods, the postmaster investigated, the police investigated, the prosecutor’s office investigated, the first trial court investigated, and now the appellate court had investigated.
Even at an average of thirty minutes each, this consumed two and a half hours of high-ranking officials’ time.
Moreover, from clerks to court attendants—and if it’s a public trial—an attending prosecutor and associate judges were also necessary.
This defendant had been detained pending trial for over two months, with the state bearing the expense of more than ten sen per day in wages, requiring carriages for transport and jailers for custody.
The expenses spent for the defendant alone since the crime would not have been less than one hundred yen.
Moreover, the state had lost one worker.
Who had caused this much trouble to the state? It was undoubtedly due to the Defendant’s misconduct.
What, then, should one respect and protect in such a person?
The author could scarcely comprehend such things.
The author must be profoundly grateful to such a state, to such courts, and to this foolish work for the blessings of civilization.

"Ugh, ugh."

The Presiding Judge snapped his eyes open as if startled awake from a dream. He lay flat on his back with his hands clasped together serving as an improvised pillow beneath his head. Having returned home past four o'clock still wearing his office suit, he had been sitting at his desk when some inexplicable irritability overcame him, causing him to collapse before realizing it.

His wife had apparently been taken to the theater by her sister, leaving the maid alone to keep watch.
That had been the first thing to displease me from the very start.
Despite these thoughts, he once again sank into silent contemplation.

I did not find my wife’s behavior amusing.
Even though it was already time for them to return, she should have fully understood how dissatisfied I would feel coming back to an empty house.
It was all the fault of that sister from Ushigome who lured her out.

When he took off his shoes and opened the door, the room's air felt unpleasantly cold.
When I looked around, every object in the room—from desk to bookcase to Chinese lion statue on floor—gleamed coldly as if declaring "Who might you be?", appearing utterly unfamiliar to me.
I threw down my cloth-wrapped bundle in frustration and sat at my desk.
Even charcoal in brazier lay scattered haphazardly.
"Subjecting me to such unpleasantness..." With surging anger I cursed my wife and sister.
When maid came saying "You should change," I inwardly shouted "Who'd bother changing?" resolving stay like this till her return—determined show her.
That would likely ease my frustration somewhat.
As kept thinking these things,I gradually grew more depressed.
Couldn't help feeling everything weighed on mind.
Beyond dissatisfaction with wife's absence,I felt greater dissatisfactions anxieties swirling round me.
I live by will.
Never been governed by emotions.
Can proudly declare never obsessed material things.
Though always said so—complete bluff.
Am person whose emotions fluctuate violently.
Yet through studying law,came understand somewhat spirit order discipline.
That becomes crown garments outward conduct—at least forms outwardly accurate semblance.
Tonight cast off all covering heart,became utterly naked—now driven solely emotions.
Not moved intentionally—like grafted branch springing back when weight removed—emotions rebounded own accord after removing reason's weightstone,began wanton activity.
Made no attempt suppress—rather let surge unchecked—resolved watch intently see outcome.

“What’s got you so dissatisfied?”
I posed the question to my own heart.
Who would answer such a thing?
Now my emotions were severely disordered.
How could any logical path be charted for what to do or how?
I was chaotically dissatisfied.
Starting with those bastards’ faces I’d seen today—everyone was unpleasant.

He sat up.
He propped his cheek on his hand at the desk and silently gazed through the glass at the garden.
In a corner of the garden—no more than eight tsubo in size—a single sasanqua, mingled with small hinoki cypress leaves, bloomed in pale hues, suffusing the twilight with an ephemeral, lonely mood.
Immediately beyond the bamboo fence lay the neighboring single-story house’s weathered plank shutters, and through an exceedingly narrow, uneven triangular gap in this vista, only a distant stretch of sky could be glimpsed.
The sky held no color.

He recalled one of his colleagues—a man with hawklike eyes and a thick beard growing from his chin.
"Administrative officers do advance quickly, don't they?"
Having said this, that man looked at me and smirked.
I had been paging through the official gazette at that moment.
It was precisely the section containing the appointments list that man had indicated to me.
A certain Takai had become bureau chief at some ministry.
He had been my classmate—a man who never even qualified as my rival.
Though we both graduated together and entered the judicial branch, that man soon transferred to the administrative division, aspiring to become a prosecutor.
Gradually entrusted with greater responsibilities, he had suddenly risen to bureau chief amid this recent political upheaval.

"I’ve been rotting in the same place like this for years on end."
"And not a hint of promotion in sight."
I don’t mean to envy that man’s circumstances, but my instinct that hungers for renown and gain gave a twitch.
The face of that bastard—who’d shoved himself right under my nose while darting looks between my expression and the official gazette as he said "Administrative officials do advance quickly, don’t they?"—seemed poised to proclaim, "Let me bestow upon you this sneer, contempt, and pity."

“Things still haven’t settled down at all, you see,” Takai welcomed me cheerfully.
The morning of the day before yesterday, I had visited his official residence to congratulate him on his promotion.

Despite it being before nine o'clock, someone who appeared to be a local notable had already arrived in the reception room.

“Apologies for the mess—please come in.”
He himself tended to the fireplace fire and straightened chairs, then pulled me over as if to make me sit down.
The room—a rather narrow space that might measure three by seven *ken*—was surrounded by bookshelves and display cases jumbled together in disarray. Though none of the items scattered haphazardly about—ornaments here and there, a leopard skin, clocks, vases—were particularly memorable, they sufficed to illustrate the breadth of his social connections.
He had been chattering to the earlier visitor about predictions like the dissolution of the Diet when he burst into effervescent laughter, saying, “Well, what can you expect from a half-baked official like me?”
That I had been listening to this self-satisfied laughter with such spiteful resentment was naturally beyond his consideration.

“So what?”
The Presiding Judge stiffened abruptly.
He clenched his fist and pounded the desk.
Together with a dull thud, one of the Western books that had been piled haphazardly on the desk slid off.
The cloth cover had come slightly open, and from within it emerged a single letter.
It was a letter from the aunt that had arrived yesterday.
The Presiding Judge picked it up.

The aunt was a tall woman—rare among Japanese women—who at first glance seemed robustly built but proved utterly frail when ill.
After passing fifty, she developed a dry cough and would huddle inside the kotatsu whenever cold weather came.
Hearing those feeble yet cavernous coughs that seemed to rise from her very core made being near her feel perilous.
Even within the same city, travel between Sugamo and Aoyama was hardly convenient.
It seemed likely that avoidance originated from the Presiding Judge’s side.
That he had been separated from his mother in childhood and raised by this aunt nevertheless left some residual fondness in the Presiding Judge.

"Relatives are nothing but shackles to me."
"That’s all there is."
Holding a proxy-written letter stating that his aunt’s illness had reached a critical state, he muttered thus.
Her sharply protruding shoulders made her neck appear increasingly elongated; a vulgar mole on her left cheek, eye corners curved like keys, a habit of glaring at people with upturned eyes, and a mouth that would launch into tedious, smooth-tongued lectures whenever they met.
When he imagined that harsh face groaning and lying in a grubby six-mat room, everything became utterly detestable.

"Even so, I sent the money.
Though I suppose I have to go—anyway, this morning I sent twenty yen, a great sacrifice for me."

"This much and no more."
………….
Even if I showed my face………….
I am not a doctor.
The illness will not heal.
"As long as she sees the money, Aunt will be happy."

In that depressing room, to avoid visiting the death of that repulsive human, the Presiding Judge had not begrudged even a considerable amount of money.
"I’d attend weddings or housewarming parties anytime, but sick people and funerals? No thank you."
He would always say such things and be laughed at by his wife.

"Aunt will surely be pleased."
The Presiding Judge sat up from the floor holding his letter, imagined the bowing patient before him, and laughed bitterly.

"What if it didn't arrive?"
Abruptly he recalled a troubling matter.
A faint throbbing pulsed near his spine.
Not having sent it registered mail now filled him with particular unease.
"All to save ten sen," he thought with sudden self-loathing.
What should I do if it doesn't arrive? Send it again?
If I don't send it, my intention means nothing.
Even claiming theft would equate to never sending it in Aunt's eyes.
That I'd meant to send something—perhaps even Aunt and relatives would grant me that much. But granting changes nothing—Aunt's hands remain empty.
I did only what was required of me, yet if this proves utterly futile, my actions yield no result.
No—they did yield.
Only this result of enabling theft.
And that consequence—unforeseen and unwelcome.

“It was raining heavily that day…,” he had said—and with that, the Presiding Judge recalled today’s courtroom proceedings regarding the postal theft.
That fool-faced man actually had the gall to steal postal items.
Human will forms the foundation of all actions.
Morality, law, and other principles that critique human behavior—all are constructed upon the development of this will.
As an institution for transmitting this crucial will, the state itself has created a postal system and manages its operations.
The security and secrecy of communications.
If this were lost, who would dare call Japan civilized?
That bastard is a malefactor destroying civilization.

The Presiding Judge glanced around himself for no particular reason.
His eyes came to rest on the handcuffs.
The fastener had come loose, and the knob dangled down.
Flustered, he hurriedly reattached it.

Look at this button.
I bought it for seventy-five sen three years ago.
If I still had that twenty yen, I could buy twenty more.
All because that bastard stole it...

He fixedly contemplated the criminal. A rainy day... A day of heavy rain. Tall houses pressed down in rows as if leaning over. Every one of them red brick. And not a single window anywhere. The road squeezed between these towering houses became a mere narrow strip. The rain lashed sideways in driving sheets. Water crashed against walls and fell like waterfalls. All sand had washed from the roadbed, leaving pebbles jutting up jagged. Walking here might make them bite into your feet. Then a black shape came clattering into view. No sooner had it crushed through the pebbles than it halted abruptly at the corner. There stood a red mailbox wearing a demon's face. The black-clad monster crouched over it, tampering—but soon the illusion pierced through his dark clothes and flesh alike, laying bare how hands interacted with box. His hands pulled out letters one by one from the overstuffed container. Five, ten, twenty. He grabbed whatever came to hand and flung them carelessly aside. After two or three repetitions of this motion, he finally extracted a single envelope. Without uttering any "Ah! This one!" yet writhing as if all expectation, anxiety and desire coalesced into that envelope, the monster stared with mad fixation. "That's mine."

If you mimic a stutter, you end up stuttering for real.
If you mimic a madman, you end up becoming one for real.
While I was concocting these delusions, I might have ended up truly becoming a paranoid delusional.
This was utterly foolish.
In this world, things are such that the wishes one hopes will come true are not easily realized, while at the same time, the groundless fears one worries will cause trouble surprisingly manage not to materialize.
Disasters tend to come intruding from one unexpected quarter to another.
In such times perhaps one needs the discipline not to thrash about—but otherwise, to let one’s nerves heighten unchecked, to conjure up scenes like a single-act play before one’s eyes, to be seized by terror and gloom from such visions—none of these are commanded by the will.
My life was not so frivolous as to be disrupted by the tremors of trivial sensations.

“The Defendant is by no means a villain.” This was an argument defense lawyers often made in court.

“The Defendant never intended to commit a crime.
At that time, an extraordinary misfortune had befallen him.
Factor A.
Factor B.
The relationship between Factors C and D.
The Defendant found himself trapped in an inescapable predicament and confusion, compelling him to commit the act constituting these criminal charges.
It became an unavoidable necessity.
The Defendant is by no means a villain.”

If one were to put it that way, there would be no villains left in the world. However, I cannot immediately accept this defense. Human freedom is not like the freedom of birds in the sky. It is freedom organized by social structures. It could be called restricted freedom. The law defines the limits of human actions, drawing a single rope to demarcate where one may move and where one may not. That line of demarcation is the boundary between good and evil. It is at that critical point—whether one pauses to take a breath or not—that good and evil diverge. In that moment, someone leaps across without even pausing for breath. Their legs become entangled in the rope and they collapse abruptly. This is the majority of defendants in court. Even if one claims there was no malicious intent in this, the law does not permit it. Society’s order does not permit it. Especially in cases such as today’s postal theft, those who had been eyeing an opportunity from the very beginning are beyond all consideration. For the criminal in question, the very plan of the crime constitutes its entirety. It should be said that they carried out their planned actions precisely as intended. In terms of destroying the order and trust of a nation's communications system, he possesses a deep-seated malignancy. For such a defendant, there is no sympathy, no extenuating circumstances to consider. He is a villain who must be severely punished.

The Presiding Judge picked up the book that had fallen under the desk.
And then he shook his head two or three times.
His head was heavy; his heart ached slightly.
I wonder if I’ve caught a cold or something.

The Presiding Judge, having thought this, flopped back down again.

Note: This piece is entirely a work of fiction by the author. Particularly the latter half is entirely a fantasy. I particularly wish to inform readers of the futility of searching for who might have served as models. (Taishō 2 [1913] – First draft / "Subaru" Taishō 2 [1913] – Second version / Included in Chikushōdō)