Pathway to Japanese Literature

I. Small Happiness

For Kintarou Imamura, who hadn’t even properly completed middle school, his current position as a clerk at Asano Rubber Company with a monthly salary of seventy-five yen was thoroughly satisfactory.
He always felt heartfelt gratitude that an employer who would pay a large sum to hire someone like him—a man without any particular merits—was truly a rare blessing in this world.

With that salary, he had built up a modest yet seemingly sturdy family life.
From his rural hometown in the San'indo region, his wife had come rushing straight into their marital home—practically bypassing Mount Fuji itself—knowing literally nothing beyond village life and their own domestic existence, never having even considered that lives different from theirs could exist in this world.
She imagined that married life was something that should be conducted within the bounds of a monthly salary of seventy-five yen, as if decreed since the Age of the Gods.
Consequently, her satisfaction with their current life matched or even surpassed Imamura’s own, and just as he felt gratitude toward his employer, she offered heartfelt thanks to Imamura—the man who had brought her, a mere farmer’s daughter, to the Tokyo others envied and provided for her there.

As with the lives of many lower-ranking clerks, there was not a single change throughout the year in Imamura’s life.
Each day bound by fixed hours, it was a machine-like existence fated to shuttle between home and company.
Yet he considered this a natural state of affairs.
This was something decided even before his own birth—not only was there nothing to be done about it now, but he believed any change would only make matters worse.
Even if he were to spend his entire life as a clerk earning seventy-five yen a month, such a fate caused him no distress whatsoever.
In fact, he almost desired it.
He possessed an astonishing confidence that with this, he could maintain a fully independent life.
If prices rose, he needed only to cut living expenses by however much they increased.
He had constantly steeled himself for contingencies, determined that the current fifteen-yen rent for six-tatami and two-tatami rooms could be reduced by at least three yen if they rented just a single six-tatami room.
Moreover, he was steadily substantiating this confidence through his present way of life.
The savings accumulated over four years had already reached an amount of 270 yen or so.
And these savings were increasing at a rate of at least about ten yen each month.

Upon this modest asset were built all of Imamura’s hopes.
Somewhere in the suburbs, he would build a compact and tidy house—a six-mat room with a three-mat space. Once a month, he would take his wife and their future child out for a plate of Western food. Once a year, they would go see a play—these small desires that drifted daily through the mind of this low-paid clerk never solidified into tangible ambitions for Imamura, but flickered instead as distant future hopes, taking shape and dissolving like mirages.
Above all, the idea of building a house must have been chewed over and ruminated countless times within Imamura’s mind.
Within his mind, the imagined home had already been completely designed, constructed, outfitted with fixtures, furniture, and decorations, and was welcoming its master.
This home was his own property.
There was no need to pay rent.
To him, it somehow felt almost too extravagant.
Moreover, the remarkable quality of this blissful fantasy was that no matter how many times it surfaced in his mind, it never grew stale or mundane—always materializing with undiminished vitality and freshness, each recurrence wielding an uncanny power to thicken the atmosphere of his contentment.

II. Blizzard Night in the Metropolis

Past ten o'clock at night.
Under normal circumstances, Ginza Street would still be in the throes of evening.

It was the hour when crowds of men and women who had gathered the essence of Japan's latest fashion strolled along the promenade with untroubled steps, as though walking through their own private estates.

But that day had brought snow since morning, and by afternoon wind had joined in, turning it into a driving storm.
By around nine o'clock, two inches of powdery snow had accumulated, bringing streetcars to a standstill.
Roadways and sidewalks, street trees and rooftops—all lay buried beneath a uniform white shroud.
Save for automobiles occasionally charging through like wild boars, nothing hinted at living inhabitants.
It seemed fragile human civilization had shrunk back before nature's might, cowering like snails retreating into their shells.

Through this desolate expanse of the metropolis’s nightscape walked a lone figure advancing from Shimbashi toward Sudacho—facing the blizzard head-on like humanity’s champion resisting nature’s violence.
Nature itself seemed resolved to toy with and crush mankind’s clever stratagems at will—now roaring as it hurled gales, now falling utterly silent like a dispassionate observer.

Humans appeared to shrivel from the cold and stagger under the wind’s assault.
A dropout from life who had lost all hope in this world, disheartened by directionless grievances and self-loathing, seemed to wander aimlessly along a blizzard-swept path mirroring life’s journey.

However, Kintarou Imamura—the Asano Rubber Company clerk who had finished his ten o'clock night shift and was now attempting to walk home to Komagome—was not as pitiable a figure as one might imagine.
Walking on snowy roads wasn’t as cold as those without experience might imagine.
Even if some moisture seeped through the shoe leather into the feet, the heat from friction was sufficient to evaporate it.
If one merely quickened their walking pace slightly, the exertion would transform into heat, sufficiently warming the entire body.
Walking through snow-covered streets was rather work that made one break a sweat.
Imamura was rather savoring the cold sensation of gray snow that welled endlessly from the dark sky—slanting through the glow of streetlamps to scatter down onto his flushed face.
What appeared to be him staggering under the wind’s force was in truth his body bounding upward—propelled by springs of blissful thoughts welling up like a hot spring beneath each earth-trampling step.

Indeed, Imamura was as happy as a prince from a fairy tale.
The blizzard seemed to him like nature's accompaniment dedicated to his happiness.
For him walking alone through this desolate expanse between heaven and earth, there was no danger of his fantasies being disturbed from without.
The city on a snowy night provided an ideal environment beyond compare for letting imagination's wings spread freely.
Memories of boyhood, numerous hopes for the future, satisfaction with his current life, blessedness—these shards of thought transformed one by one into verses of joy, weaving within his mind a hymn of happiness so utterly unreal it could only exist in a fairy tale.

Above all，what tended to monopolize Imamura’s unrestrained fantasies was the child who would soon join their family．
He considered first a male child．
The plump infant—a veritable symbol of health—would before he knew it transform into a five- or six-year-old clad in a sailor suit．
He imagined taking him by both hands with his wife to visit the zoo．
He would buy him any toy he desired．
The boy would soon grow into a middle school uniform．
Academic excellence became imperative．
Baseball seemed suitable for sports... Then he shifted imagination to a girl．
Should she wear Western dresses？Would traditional kimono suit her better？
What name could he choose？
No—names shouldn’t be decided yet．
That required spontaneous inspiration．
Her face would undoubtedly inherit her mother’s round softness．
Which girls’ school might suit？
Musician or painter—which path？
Japanese ink or Western oils？
Training her in koto and flower arrangement could nurture proper femininity... His fountain of fantasies vied with sky-born snowflakes in endless profusion，each vision dissolving into the next without cease．

III. Sudden Misfortune

Dear readers, I wish to state one thing here as an impartial third party.
Can those who walk life's path under circumstances like Imamura's while holding his worldview truly be called happy?
I answer without hesitation: No.
For between the life envisioned in his mind and reality's existence lies a chasm too cruelly carved.
In today's world, the very existence of such humans as Imamura stands profoundly unnatural.
The natural selection governing human society could never long tolerate such pathological specimens.
To survive our present society demands absolute necessity of greater worldly corruption.
A man like Imamura resembles a fly plunging heedless into society's grinding gears - his crushing being both natural and inevitable, rendering belated pity or lamentation utterly futile.
The episode I shall relate - detailing how societal gears crushed him - though perhaps bearing traces of artificiality, constitutes no rarity but rather the inexorable fate awaiting such men.
It amounts merely to a condensed form of mundane phenomena perpetually occurring throughout human society in less conspicuous guises.
This digression may seem redundant, but I must briefly clarify these points to prevent misunderstanding of my peculiar stance as one practicing law.

But to return to our story—when Imamura walked straight along Hongō-dōri, emerged at Kamifujimae, turned left into a side street, and approached Kidosaka, the clock had long passed eleven.

The dwellings lining the street showed so few lit streetlamps that the path lay shrouded in gloom.
Nearing midnight at the town's edge amid such a furious blizzard, none would venture outdoors without pressing business.
You might stand thirty minutes in one spot and still meet no living soul.

On bitter nights like these, Imamura's wife would prepare hot tofu stew by custom.
Imamura suddenly grew conscious of his hunger and quickened his steps, envisioning steaming broth before him.
Then came the violence—a shattering impact at his skull's crown.
Some unyielding mass had struck full-force—a metallic clang reverberating through bone.
Dizziness flooded his brain like poisoned syrup before darkness claimed him.
Two seconds sufficed for oblivion's descent.

How many minutes had passed since then—or perhaps how many hours—he couldn’t tell.
Judging from the thickness of snow that had accumulated on his coat when he regained consciousness, at least an hour must have passed.
He staggered to his feet without uttering a word.
The surroundings were perfectly still, as if nothing had occurred.
He placed his hand on his throbbing head.
There was no sign of bleeding.
He shook his body and brushed the snow from his coat.
He picked up his hat, brushed the snow clinging to its woolen fabric, and put it on.
He hadn’t noticed until now because his hands had been thrust in his pockets, but only one glove remained.
He kicked through the surrounding snow searching for it, but it was nowhere to be found.
He must have dropped it somewhere.
He could do nothing but offer a bitter smile at this absurd incident alone.
He judged there was no need to report it to the police box.
First of all, there was absolutely no basis to conclude this had been an intentional act committed against him by another person.
He had neither seen the assailant’s face nor heard their voice.
It was nothing more than having his head struck as if out of thin air.
It might have been a roof tile or dead branch or something that had accidentally fallen onto his head from above.
In any case, since there was no evidence, filing a report would not lead to identifying the perpetrator, and even if the perpetrator were identified, it would bring him no benefit.
It would merely cause unnecessary trouble for the police officer who, like him, was waiting for his shift to end so he could go home, and waste his own time, if only briefly.
Moreover, what if this were not a human act but an accidental natural disaster?

To sue nature at the police box and have humans pass judgment—wasn’t the mere thought of it utterly absurd?

That said, as though the sudden blow from moments before had expelled all joy from Imamura's head and stolen all warmth from his body, he felt a fierce cold permeate his entire being. Not a shred of fantasy could take root in his mind anymore. The localized pain and the coldness in his fingertips rendered his whole body intensely unpleasant. Moreover, an ominous premonition somehow persistently gnawed at his heart. He felt a disgraceful shame akin to when someone who had utterly believed themselves favored by the god of fate is suddenly branded with distrust through the most blatant and grotesque means possible. He felt as though he had been thrust from the summit of relief and satisfaction into the abyss of anxiety and terror.

He felt the world suddenly plunged into darkness, his once radiant future swiftly swallowed into that void before his very eyes.

IV. Arrest

Due to a bizarre incident, Imamura was approaching the entrance of his home with an unpleasant mood when—
Suddenly, as if surging from the snow itself, three or four black figures appeared haphazardly before him and, in a manner that defied categorization as either rough or rude, seized his arms from both sides.

A person who once possessed confidence—once that confidence is betrayed—becomes terribly timid thereafter, unable to muster conviction in anything.
Seized by an obsessive compulsion, everything he does becomes a relentless series of blunders.
It is akin to how once you start losing in contests, you continue losing without end.

Imamura forgot even to protest against the utterly lawless acts of the assailant who had suddenly emerged from the darkness.
It was as though receiving such treatment were only natural, and he felt himself someone utterly unqualified to oppose it.

“Be quiet,” a burly man said in a voice like hammering nails.
“You’re Kintarou Imamura without a doubt?”
The second man spoke in a voice tinged with tremors.
The third man produced a police badge from his coat pocket. “We’re detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department.
You’re coming with us now,” he declared while carefully returning the badge to his pocket.

Imamura couldn’t control or conceal how his entire body quivered like konjac jelly.
Already demoralized by the first assault, he lacked both time and mental capacity to process this second grotesque incident that had materialized from nowhere.
He felt simply terrified without reason.
Though no others witnessed it, he experienced humiliation as visceral as being stripped naked on a crowded avenue.
Before suspicion about his wife’s absence could form, dread of her witnessing this disgrace seized him first.

“Does my wife know about this?”

“Does my wife know about this?” he asked, his entire body trembling violently.

“Shut up and move.”

said one detective in a tone utterly devoid of mercy.
Imamura's hands had been tightly bound with arrest ropes before he knew it.

He had no choice but to follow silently as ordered.
Having utterly lost his own will, there was a kind of pleasure that accompanied the feeling of absolute obedience to others' commands.
That Imamura felt no fear or anger at that moment strikes me as entirely natural.
When a greedy owner finds even a small chip in their family heirloom vase, they may writhe with frustration and regret, unable to sleep for two or three nights.
But what if this vase were hurled from a height of a hundred shaku onto a granite garden stone by the hands of a superhuman, and destroyed with such perfection that it literally became powdered dust?
No matter how avaricious a person might be, in that moment, they would undoubtedly transcend such mundane emotions as regret or frustration—if only temporarily.

He might have even burst into uproarious laughter, as though genuinely amused.
The truth that infinity's two extremes coincide admits no exceptions.

Had a scholar analyzed Imamura's psychological state in that instant, they would have found no small commonality between it and the mental state of one whose family heirloom vase—cherished more than life itself—had just been shattered in a single blow.

He had every last possession down to a scrap of paper confiscated—the detectives turning inside out every pocket of his overcoat, jacket, undergarment, and Western-style trousers as they pleased. With the appearance and mentality of a pig being driven by its owner into a pen, he was loaded into the car.

At that very moment, he regained self-awareness for an instant. An indescribable despair passed through his entire body like the wind. His lips twisted independent of his will, and the muscles around his cheeks stiffened.

“It’s hopeless!”

A craven animal’s voice slipped unbidden through his clenched teeth.
The three detectives turned in unison to skewer him with their gazes.

V. Terror

The automobile carrying a mass of four humans bore an unfeeling expression as if loaded with stones, plowing through the snow.
By the time the group arrived at the Metropolitan Police Department, the clock was well past two o'clock.
He underwent another rigorous body search, had his overcoat, hat, and jacket confiscated as evidence, and without uttering a word, was roughly thrown into the detention cell like a sack of flour.

Imamura felt hunger and cold above all else.
He felt disgust at his own animalistic instinct for experiencing hunger in such circumstances and location.
After some time, the officer in charge brought two or three blankets.
Outside, two police officers seemed to be standing guard.
He instinctively lifted a blanket with his foot, gripped it between his teeth, and wrapped it around his undergarment.
The blanket had likely been wrapped around every conceivable vile criminal's body countless times, permeated with their body odor and sweat.
He felt an inexpressible humiliation, yet still did not discard the blanket.
Far from it—the blanket even seemed like a kimono perfectly suited to him.

No matter how I thought about it, tonight’s events made no sense. Perhaps when I received that first blow, my mind went haywire—could I be dreaming now? Or rather, maybe that initial strike itself was already part of a dream, and I might actually be at home right now, wrapped in a futon, sleeping peacefully beside my wife.

The guards’ boots patrolling the corridor formed an utterly unmusical rhythm, their dry sound waves pounding against my eardrums. Each thud seemed infused with the authority of Imperial Japan’s legal apparatus, chilling me anew with every impact. Listening to this mechanical cadence, I began wondering whether I might have committed some unconscious transgression—something terrible I’d failed to recognize about myself. At moments, this suspicion hardened into what felt like irrefutable truth.

He shook his body violently, trying to cast off this abhorrent thought.

What must my wife be doing right now? What would she think if she knew I was in such a disgraceful place, making such a shameful spectacle of myself? I believe I have no recollection of doing anything wrong. But would my wife trust that? Or might she become utterly convinced of my villainy and abandon me in disgust? That she hadn't appeared when the detectives seized me felt profoundly unnatural. Perhaps she had already fled by then.

He shook his body as if to repel something terrifying and tried to drive away these delusions, but where happy thoughts had gushed forth like a spring just hours before, now all manner of abhorrent imaginings spread through his entire consciousness—seething and coiling like soot belching from factory smokestacks.

Even so he resented no one.
He had no one left to resent.
The police don't detain subjects without reason.
Then why had they detained me?
I didn't understand.
I truly didn't understand.
This was clearly unjust.
This was absurd.
But who could possibly be inflicting this injustice upon me?
He tried examining his circumstances as calmly as possible.

My wife was naturally beyond suspicion.
Yet being merely a clerk at a rubber company,I maintained no questionable associations.
I served the company dutifully.
The President himself acknowledged my faithful service with particular favor.
Having no business entering factories,I held no separate dealings with laborers.
Four other clerks worked alongside me,yet all regarded me with contempt.
The janitor remained closest to me company-wide,and I'd always treated him kindly.
As for our office boy,I never drove him harshly like others did,but treated him as an equal friend.
Beyond these connections,I might say only my parents held any relation to me worldwide.
Could there truly exist any possibility,in this tranquil existence I maintained.of becoming entangled in police affairs?

His whole body shivered with cold.
His head throbbed.
The rope dug into both his arms with a stinging pain.
His head felt like a whirlwind raging through it, leaving him utterly unable to make sense of anything.
He grew increasingly irritated by this bizarre predicament.
What did they mean to do with him?
"Do whatever you want with me.
Just settle this quickly.
But get me out of here.
I can't endure another minute in this lightless, bone-chilling room."
He thought he'd rather be taken to the gallows than stay here another moment.

VI. Chief Inspector Itakura’s Interrogation

About twenty minutes had passed.
To him, those twenty minutes felt like several hours.

The detention cell door—with its barn-like latch and utterly artless design—opened with an unspeakably barbaric grating creak.
Three stereotypical policemen, who from birth had likely never interacted with anyone but criminals, stood outside with grave solemnity.

“Come here.”

One of them barked a command in a voice like clanging sheet metal.
He obediently and silently went out like a slave.

Three stubborn policemen solemnly escorted him from three sides as if he were some dangerous wild beast, leading him to a large Western-style room brilliantly illuminated by electric lights.

Imamura felt uncomfortable emerging into the bright room like a mole recoiling from sunlight.
He could not clearly perceive the connection between his former self and current self due to the excessively sudden changes that had befallen him since several hours earlier.
His current self, shameful in the extreme, was being objectively perceived as though he were some unknown villain.
He felt an urge to laugh at himself—almost wanted to mock his own wretched state.
A vindictively satisfying sensation—something like “Look at you now!”—welled up from some hidden recess of his heart.

In the center of the room, Chief Inspector Itakura sat with perfect composure—poised like a sculpture that had occupied that space for centuries, his bearing perfectly suited to the surroundings.
He (though perhaps there’s no need to mention this) had clashed with his wife the previous evening over the trivial matter of which girls’ school to enroll their youngest daughter, who had just turned four, and had remained in a foul mood until retiring to bed around eleven—only to be roused from the edge of sleep by a telephone call from headquarters.
“What is it at this hour?” he answered scoldingly into the phone.

The duty inspector concisely explained: that moments earlier at the Asano Rubber Company office in Kyobashi, the janitor had been discovered by the President with his head smashed in—brutally murdered; that an emergency cordon had immediately been established within their jurisdiction; that prosecutors, assigned officers, and police doctors were being dispatched to inspect the scene without delay; and that suspicion had fallen on a clerk named Imamura who had been on night duty that evening.
As he listened to the call, professional intensity gradually surfaced on the Chief Inspector’s face; switching tones abruptly, he concluded with a subdued “I’ll come right away” before hanging up.
And he changed clothes in great haste and sped off in his automobile.

“You are Mr. Imamura, I take it?”

Chief Inspector Itakura spoke in his distinctive tone—unassuming yet authoritative.
This manner of speech was something he had honed over twenty-odd years of bureaucratic service.
Incidentally, it bears mentioning that he adhered blindly to the stratagem that softness overcomes hardness, habitually adopting an increasingly subdued tone when confronting more recalcitrant suspects or criminals.
From his opening salvo alone, one could safely conclude he assessed Imamura as an adversary warranting exceptional wariness.

The Chief Inspector’s tactics had an almost hypnotic effect on the inexperienced Imamura.
From their initial encounter，he found himself utterly disarmed by Itakura’s unassuming demeanor.
If I’d committed any crime，I felt compelled to spill every secret before this benevolent inquisitor.
The urge grew so strong，I might’ve fabricated some petty transgression just to bask in his approval.
Yet shackled by inconvenient innocence，he now pitied this investigator starved of confessions.
Thus I resolved—answering each query with excruciating courtesy became both civic duty and perverse charity.

“Yes, sir.”

He answered with utterly deferential sincerity.

“You’ll receive a detailed interrogation from the judge in due course, but you do know why you’ve been detained, don’t you?”

He was immediately at a loss for a reply.
In truth, he had absolutely no understanding of why he had been detained.
However, if he were to simply parrot back "I don't know," it would only deepen the other's suspicions—and more than that, he felt it would come across as downright rude.
Though somewhat strange, it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he had been detained due to a case of mistaken identity related to the initial blow he had received on his way home—yet even so, declaring "I know" outright would seem like mocking the other man and come across as unbearably brazen.

“I’m not entirely sure…” he answered, fidgeting nervously.

“Even if you don’t know clearly, you must have some recollection, hmm? Good, good.” The Chief Inspector nodded emphatically, having drawn his own conclusion.

“Didn’t you kill the janitor at Asano Rubber Company last night?”

With eyes like a seasoned huntsman assessing a bullet’s impact on prey, the Chief Inspector stared holes through his target’s face. He was attempting to gauge the impact of his ambush-style interrogation.

However, a strange reaction—utterly contrary to his expectations—appeared.
Imamura stared vacantly and asked in an emotionless tone, "What do you mean?"
He genuinely seemed not to have caught the words clearly.
The Chief Inspector tilted his head slightly, like a science teacher whose chemical reaction experiment had gone awry.
However, he quickly regained his composure.

“They’re saying it was you who killed the janitor at Asano Rubber Company.”

The Chief Inspector, perceiving his opponent as a formidable adversary, spoke as calmly as possible.
It was the demeanor he adopted when needing to forcefully impress upon the culprit that no matter how much they concealed, those here already knew everything.

Imamura shuddered violently as if doused in icy water, realizing for the first time that he faced grave suspicion. He became struck by bottomless anxiety upon noticing how every answer he had given was betraying his true feelings and being interpreted unfavorably by the interrogator. His respect for the Chief Inspector transformed instantly into hatred. His lips twisted and tongue stiffened, leaving him utterly unable to respond, so he remained silent. However, the Chief Inspector interpreted this silence as proof of audacity and employed his usual breathless "rapid pursuit method"—a tactic he always deployed in such situations.

7. Evidence

“What time did you leave the company last night?”
“I left at exactly ten o'clock.”
“And then you went straight home?”

“Yes, I went straight home.”

“So—you’re good at arithmetic, aren’t you? You left the company at exactly ten o’clock, yet didn’t reach your house’s entrance until twenty past one this morning. That means you spent three hours and twenty minutes returning home. The trains had stopped running by then, I hear—but even for someone with the slowest gait, two hours should suffice when walking from Kyobashi to your house. Especially on a snowy night like last night—no one would plod along that sluggishly. If you truly went straight home, then your claim of departing at ten must be false.”

Imamura seriously considered telling them about the freak accident he’d suffered on his way home.
Yet there was no evidence for it.
If anything, they’d likely view it as some contrived fabrication.
He found himself speechless again.
The Chief Inspector interpreted this silence as conclusive proof of guilt and advanced to the next interrogation without demanding further response.

“Is this glove yours?”

He pointed to a camel glove lying on the desk as he spoke.

“Yes, sir.”

Imamura—who had been staring at it curiously since earlier—acknowledged.

“Do you remember what happened to the other glove?”

“It seems I dropped it on the way.”

“Do you remember where you dropped it?”

“No.”

“When you bludgeoned the janitor to death, you carelessly left it at the scene.”
“It means it was found lying beside the victim, you see.”
“The discovery of one of your gloves has been clearly established through a phone call from the patrol officer.”

Imamura felt as though he had been skewered through from head to tail.
The Chief Inspector, utterly convinced of his guilt, declared with the assured demeanor of a triumphant general dictating surrender terms to a vanquished enemy commander.

"What do you say? Can you still claim you don't remember?"

"I don't recall."

Imamura said in a low voice, as if groaning.
And this very response now seemed instead like proof of his guilt, making him loathe his own ineptitude.

The Chief Inspector—who through accumulated experience had thoroughly learned that responses like “I don’t recall” constituted a true culprit’s stock phrase—advanced his interrogation without deigning to consider Imamura’s answers.

“Why would you ask ‘Does my wife know about this?’ when you’re arrested if you have no recollection? When being put into a car, would you mutter ‘It’s over’ to yourself? Since this is a major case after all, the assigned prosecutor should interrogating you soon—you’d better not go making up any half-baked lies. Hiding things won’t do you any good.”

The Chief Inspector shook his corpulent body with satisfaction while saying everything he wanted to say, then signaled with a jerk of his chin to the guard officer who had maintained an immobile stance since earlier.

Imamura felt a lump clogging his throat, unable to utter a single word. Dejectedly being led away by the police officer, to anyone who saw his figure, there was no difference from a thoroughly cowed criminal retreating.

In truth, even Imamura himself could no longer perceive himself as anything but a criminal. Caught in an utterly desperate and irresistible force, he was being fed the suggestion that "You're the culprit"—a suggestion that now felt beyond any human power to resist. He felt a fate akin to what one might experience when plummeting headfirst from the pinnacle of a New York skyscraper—utterly inescapable, leaving no choice but to surrender completely to the fall.

The events of last night flashed fragmentarily through his head and passed by. His wife’s face and the Chief Inspector’s face faded and surfaced. Each time, he felt as though an ice pick were being driven through his brain.

Needless to say, shortly thereafter the inspection team returned, President Asano was summoned as a witness, and the preliminary hearing was convened—but since its content differed little from what had already transpired, there was no need to present it there. All that need be mentioned is that the next day’s evening newspaper (since it missed the morning edition’s deadline) carried an article under the headline "Asano Rubber Company Janitor Brutally Murdered," with a subheading stating "Perpetrator Identified as Company Clerk," alongside a report that Imamura had fully confessed to the charges and was immediately remanded to the detention center.

VIII. Rather, Permanently in the Detention Center

Imamura remained in the detention center to this day.
That he was innocent, I—his defense attorney—firmly believed, having pieced together the fragmented accounts heard from him.
However, when it came to whether he would be found legally innocent, I could not necessarily guarantee that.
This might sound like an indiscreet remark coming from a lawyer, but in truth I had little confidence in my arguments' effectiveness.
First, he had never informed the judge about the unforeseen disaster encountered on his way home that night—now, raising this would only deepen suspicion against him.
Yet since the crime had been estimated to have occurred around eleven o'clock, without this statement no alibi could possibly be established.
Second, when the judge discovered the head injury sustained during that incident, he attempted to provide a natural explanation by claiming he had fallen and struck his head en route.
This however constituted an extremely unnatural account.
For the contusion sat precisely upon his crown—such an injury could only occur from falling completely upside down.
Yet a walking man cannot possibly tumble head over heels.
Third, the glove forgotten at his office being found exactly beside the victim formed too fatal a coincidence.
Alone it might have remained mere circumstantial evidence, but combined with other proofs it gained formidable, nearly decisive weight.
Moreover during preliminary hearings he had made various blundering statements.
Once uttered—whether lies or otherwise—he absolutely refused retraction.
He held that recanting statements brought shame upon a man.
This heroic notion that a man's word stood firm as iron he stubbornly clung to.
Thus his testimony became riddled with contradictions.
In essence, it led to concluding he bore this crime's burden precisely through excessive virtue—unable to cast off its weight.

The reason for this lay in our nation's—no, not our nation alone, but the entire world's—judicial systems being beholden to formalism, utterly unequipped to adjudicate complex cases tinged with the psychology of such rare defendants as Imamura.

Finally, in this case there were no other suspects.
That a crime should exist without a criminal proved unbearable for the police as an institution.
Moreover, society and the newspapers would not accept it.
Thus the police set to work with such determination that they might as well have manufactured a culprit where none existed.
This too must have been unavoidable under the circumstances.
Especially in this case, given sufficient superficial reasons to suspect the defendant, one could safely say there remained no hope for his release due to insufficient evidence unless another credible suspect emerged.
The court's greatest predicament lay in the murder weapon not having been found.
The defendant too persisted in claiming complete ignorance regarding the murder weapon.

Now then, supposing the defendant were to be found legally innocent—would that save him? Once a human life had been so mercilessly destroyed, it could not easily be mended. The defendant had never known things like curses, hatred, or grievances. Precisely because of this, he had fantasized about future happiness with his seventy-five-yen monthly income—a fantasy that had made his present life bearable. Yet through this incident, curses and hatred toward injustice had undoubtedly been carved deep into his mind. Moreover, Asano Partnership Company had gone bankrupt immediately after this incident occurred. Even were he released, the foundation of his life had already crumbled. In this depressed modern world overflowing with too many people, there wasn’t a single capitalist possessing the curiosity required to employ someone under suspicion of murder. In society’s eyes—no matter how definitively one might be cleared—a person once incarcerated would forever appear shadowed by an inescapable stain. They must endure the same treatment as Crainquebille—the greengrocer from Anatole France’s tale—condemned by public perception alone. Finally—though he himself remained unaware—his wife had been terrified into miscarrying prematurely after being summoned as a witness, burying their daughter Aiko—the joyous fuel of his fantasies—from darkness into deeper darkness. His wife had been taken back to her hometown, relatives having admonished her never again to tread Tokyo’s soil. Were Imamura to learn of this—what then? His imagined happiness had been reduced to ruins—mental, material, domestic—all through a trivial misstep, with no means left for reconstruction. I found myself thinking it would be better to keep him perpetually in detention—to let him depart this world while clinging to some wisp of fantasy.

IX. Addendum—Who Is the True Culprit?

I had intended to conclude this story here.
However, with Imamura’s public trial drawing near, a minor incident recently occurred, so I deemed it appropriate to append this as an addendum.
The reason was that—even if I couldn’t have known it precisely—my having expressed no opinion whatsoever regarding the true culprit of this case would likely have disappointed some readers.

A few days ago, having needed to conduct some research, I secluded myself at an inn in Senbonhama, Numazu, to avoid visitors.
For three days, I had been engrossed in investigating a certain significant case unrelated to this one, without even reading newspapers.

It was the morning of the fourth day.

The west wind that had been raging until yesterday suddenly stilled, leaving the sea unusually calm. Off Shizuura's coast, countless fishing boats dotted the waters like flocks of waterfowl basking in sunlight. Gentle waves lapped against the pebble-strewn shore, their rhythm marked by soft, wet whispers. I would contend that wave sounds constitute the universe's most exquisite music—a coalescence of hundreds of billions of minute tones. It was as though each collision among the infinite molecules comprising the ocean emitted its own distinct resonance, performing nature's grand symphony through countless indistinguishable notes beyond human perception.

I lay sprawled across the second-floor corridor, having thrown open the glass shoji screens to flood the entire room with direct sunlight, listening to this natural music as raptly as someone hearing waves for the first time, lying there utterly enraptured.

At that moment, the inn's maid brought a business card.
The printed characters spelling "Hidetarou Segawa" instantly wrenched my heart back from communion with nature to human connection.
For three days I'd exchanged only formulaic pleasantries with the maid during meals—my throat parched for living voices.
Segawa, who since graduating had opened a small hospital nearby yet carried about him the aura of some mystic philosopher, promised precisely the conversational balm I craved.
We'd met once or twice since this affair began.
I sat rigidly upright before the low dining table, awaiting my guest.

“Asano’s dead, isn’t he?”

After exchanging perfunctory pleasantries about their long separation, Segawa abruptly changed tack.
I couldn’t immediately place which Asano he meant.

“Hmm...”

I gave a vague reply that hovered between comprehension and bewilderment.
Segawa produced a copy of the Tokyo Newspaper from his coat pocket, spreading open the Shizuoka Edition section to indicate an article.
Under the headline "President Asano Commits Suicide," it detailed how the president of Asano Rubber Company—having dissolved his business after successive commercial failures and retreated to Arai Inn in Shuzenji—had last night accomplished an arsenic suicide once the household slept; the cause appeared to be mental derangement from financial ruin, with no suicide note discovered.

“Isn’t this the president of the company where that janitor murder case you’re handling occurred?”

Segawa said, timing his remark for when I had finished reading the article.

My memory revived itself from the instant I saw the newspaper—even as I kept reading, my brain cells maintained their feverish activity.
With that public trial looming within ten days now, my professional instincts stretched taut to their limits, driving my faculties of reasoning and imagination to their utmost exertion.
When I finished the article, I felt certain the entire mystery had unraveled.

“I’ve got it!”

As soon as I finished reading, I shouted.

“This guy’s the culprit!”

“Asano?”
Segawa responded without showing any particular surprise.
“Why’s that?”

I began speaking while chasing the plot that had formed in my mind in an instant.
However, when I actually started talking, I noticed that what had seemed completely clear still retained ambiguous portions here and there.

“You remember me telling you about how Imamura was struck from behind by someone on his way home that night.”
“That was Asano hiring a thug to assault Imamura and delay his return home.”
“Do that and Imamura’s alibi collapses.”
“No evidence would remain either.”
“Mention the head wound and they’d counter that he sustained it struggling with the janitor—we’d be stirring up a hornet’s nest.”
“What a masterstroke he pulled off.”
“With this setup, Asano used that window to beat the janitor to death himself, hid the murder weapon, left the glove Imamura forgot at the office beside the corpse, then—since Imamura happened to be on night watch that very evening—phoned the Metropolitan Police Department with feigned innocence to pin suspicion on him.”
“The murder motive needs investigating, but likely the janitor knew about some shady dealings—keeping him alive posed too much risk.”
“That’s essentially how it went.”
“With companies this ramshackle, it’s more surprising when presidents don’t dabble in graft.”
“This suicide undoubtedly stems from conscience’s torment.”
“Everything’s interconnected, see?”
“Doesn’t it all slot together perfectly?”

Even I myself had to acknowledge my reasoning held together relatively well, so I gazed at my companion with self-satisfaction spread across my face.
Then Segawa—who until now had been staring fixedly at a point in space with mystical eyes—slowly opened his mouth and began to speak.

“So you’ve reached the same conclusion after all?”
“When I first saw the article, I considered your line of reasoning too—but it’s pure sophistry.”
“For a legal mind like yours, every human phenomenon must dance within law’s narrow confines.”
“Every occurrence interconnects, each seemingly guided by deliberate human design.”
“But let me tell you—that incident was nothing but random chance.”
“You’re forcing connections where none exist, conjuring culprits from thin air.”
“Your profession assumes every unusual death demands a killer.”
“A scrap of paper near a body becomes evidence;”
“Any event sharing a timestamp with crime gets branded complicit.”
“If some joker scattered a hundred business cards and ten weapons around a corpse—which would you crown ‘critical evidence’?”
“You’re treating Imamura’s head wound as definitive proof of human malice—but nature struck that blow.”
“A dead branch—two inches thick—fell thirty feet as he passed beneath.”
“Rare, but not impossible.”
“I’ve seen the fallen branch myself at the accident site—irrefutable fact.”
“The physics align perfectly—no other scenario explains that crown fracture.”
“Meanwhile at Kyobashi office—ill-timed coincidence—”
“The old janitor collapsed during fire patrols—heart attack made him crack his skull on concrete.”
“The coroner’s report inverted cause and effect—cardiac arrest preceded head trauma.”
“No weapon exists to find.”
“Asano discovered the body during his late visit, called police—who then found Imamura’s dropped glove and crowned him suspect.”

“Then regarding President Asano’s recent suicide—as reported in the papers—it resulted from him going mad through mental exhaustion caused by business failures.”
“Every incident occurred separately, each arising independently without connection to the others.”
“Yet legal professionals like yourselves won’t dismiss this as mere coincidental alignment—you absolutely must pursue ‘resolving the truth’.”
“That’s essentially how I interpret it.”

× × ×

To confess honestly，I still do not understand the truth of this case.
I believe my interpretation holds some degree of validity.
I believe Segawa’s interpretation also holds an unshakable truth.
However，the evidence supporting my interpretation has been obliterated now that Asano is dead.
Segawa’s interpretation can only amount to summoning nature as a witness—it doesn’t constitute a courtroom issue.
When examined，the surrounding circumstances remain most unfavorable to pitiable Imamura.
I still have no confidence in my arguments regarding this case.
When I think about it，I’ve come to loathe the arguments themselves.
Humans do not possess the power to judge humans.
Even glaring errors—I cannot prove them under current law.

When I dwell on such thoughts, I begin to feel there’s no path left for me but to abandon my profession as a lawyer.
However, I can’t help but feel that any profession would be the same.
And so, I still feel compelled to make these hopeless arguments.
Not to save Imamura, but simply as my profession.

Segawa and I forgot about Imamura—that victim of human error—and drank sake in good spirits that evening before parting ways.
Segawa showed not the slightest concern for such matters and sang cheerfully.

The sea, indifferent to all things, appeared to be lapping waves upon the shore as it had since time immemorial.

(May 1926)