Pathway to Japanese Literature

The street was already blazing.
However, the white sun still continued to scorch everything relentlessly.
And the reflected rays from the road surface were leaping into the room like fire arrows.

At the Investigation Headquarters, the parties involved were gathered around an electric fan, wiping sweat as they deliberated their investigative strategy.

“If we had the head, we could generally determine the victim’s identity from that, but…”

The Criminal Affairs Division Chief said with a sigh.

"But that head absolutely isn't in that ditch."

The unshaven detective said as he lit a cigarette.

"Even if that head were found, after five weeks it would undoubtedly have decomposed, making it difficult to identify the victim and trace the culprit from there."
"If we could identify the victim, considering how much the newspapers have been blaring about it, someone connected to them should've come forward by now."
"Judging from the lack of anyone coming forward, the victim must have no relatives—so even if they find the head, her identity will still remain unknown."
"Rather than that, since we at least know the victim is a woman, wouldn't it be quicker to investigate through women's belongings or clothing?"

The Police Chief said in such a solemn tone.

“The culprit also seems to belong to the educated class, don’t you think?”
“To separate the head and torso and discard them separately… That must have required considerable planning…”

As the Judicial Affairs Officer was about to say this, the officer at the reception desk hurried over.

“Police Chief, sir.
“A man has come who claims to know both the culprit and the suspect in the headless corpse case.”
“Will you see him?”

The reception desk officer said while straightening his posture.

“I’ll meet him for reference.”

The Police Chief said, his eyes widening.
The reception desk officer hurried back.
Suddenly, a tense atmosphere swelled forth.

“This gentleman.”

The reception desk officer said this as he ushered in a pale-faced young man wearing ill-fitting Western clothes.

“I truly know.
“The culprit is undoubtedly Dr. Kasamatsu.
“And the victim is Dr. Kasamatsu’s daughter.”

The young man spoke breathlessly, his eyes darting restlessly.

“How do you know that?”

The Police Chief said with a smile and offered a chair to the young man.

“I know.
“Since I was at Dr.Kasamatsu’s as his research assistant, I know absolutely everything.”
“To explain in detail would take some time, but…”

＝BLACKOUT＝

Dr. Kasamatsu had long exhibited faint symptoms of ideational deficiency disorder and megalomaniacal psychological defects.
Yet it was precisely this psychological defect that drove Dr. Kasamatsu to persist with such desperate intensity in his research on surgical techniques.
Dr. Kasamatsu, due to such psychological defects, harbored an extremely bizarre and terrifying ideal in his medical practice and always believed that this ideal was possible.

“The supreme ideal of surgical science lies in cervical junction.”
“It means attaching Head A to Torso B.”
“Unless we achieve this, we cannot call surgical science complete.”
“Any rural quack with moderately dexterous hands could manage limbs.”
“But cervical junction presents far greater difficulty than even the most complex thoracic or abdominal procedures.”
“Consider this—when joining other body parts, arteries, veins and nerves connect living tissue to living tissue, forming immediate functional systems. Head-torso junctions bring entirely different complications.”
“Because severing head from torso kills both components.”
“Even if we presume both parts survive X hours post-severance, and further presume successful attachment within that window—how could these weakened, suspended-animation components activate simultaneously?”
“Neurologically speaking, head and chest require mutual activation—but can this synchronization occur?”
“In other sutures, anesthetics induce suspended animation—paralyzing neurons while blood flows—so activity resumes with anesthetic dissipation. This mechanism fails utterly in head-torso cases.”
“With circulation severed and anesthetics halting function—do brain cells even remain viable?”
“But without resolve to overcome all obstacles, one shouldn’t practice surgery.”
“Naturally, this represents surgery’s highest ideal—though whether its realization benefits humanity remains unclear.”
“The consequences would prove horrific.”
“As social inequality intensifies, we might well unleash poison upon humanity.”
“Yet as a surgeon—even should this poison spread—I must pursue this research to its end.”
“Soon it will amuse me to take your young wives’ and lovers’ heads for exchange with my crone’s.”

“By that time, you all must have conducted enough research not to lose to me and reclaim those heads.”
“Now then, let us proceed…”

Dr.Kasamatsu quietly stroked his long beard interspersed with silver-white hairs, fixed his gaze upon us students with eyes that glared at each individual face, and continued speaking in a resonant, rust-tinged voice.
It resembled less a conversation than a recitation.
The lecture hall was steeped in a severe, abnormal atmosphere; from our student seats, not even a harsh breath could be detected.
Every one of us sat motionless, breath suspended, eyes magnetically fixed upon the doctor’s lips.

What should have been a general prologue serving as his inaugural lecture felt more like hearing the introduction to some terrifying magic act. I felt something like silver threads quivering down my spine.
And Dr.Kasamatsu, while glaring at us students with piercing eyes, kept a constant smile playing at his lips—yet it was an unsettling smile that somehow made the cold severity in those staring eyes even more intense.

We simply could not feel close to Dr.Kasamatsu.
The reason I came to feel even slightly close to Dr.Kasamatsu was when I began commuting to the laboratory adjacent to the hospital within his residence, serving as his research assistant in clinical surgical techniques.
Moreover, it was not a direct emotional connection with Dr.Kasamatsu himself, but an indirect one that could only be felt through his daughter.

Why Dr.Kasamatsu had specifically chosen me as his research assistant remained a mystery to me.
Yet it appeared Dr.Kasamatsu was gradually attempting to arrange a marriage between me and his daughter.
Simultaneously, he seemed intent on having me inherit his research.
This dual purpose perplexed me.
Why would a surgeon renowned not for theoretical research but for clinical skills—a man with magician-like dexterity—select someone as clumsy-handed as myself? The answer eluded me.
If interpreted charitably, one might say Dr.Kasamatsu—aware of his own mental deficiencies and intellectual opacity—had sought to supplement his shortcomings through me.
If viewed maliciously, one could argue he had stolen my surgical discoveries to immediately implement them through his magician-skilled hands.
Though my hands proved hopelessly inept, in matters of intellectual clarity, sensitivity, and excellence, none in our class could rival me—not even Dr.Kasamatsu himself fell within reach of my capabilities.

Dr.Kasamatsu spoke of his bizarre ideal in surgical science within the university lecture hall as though it were a mere distant fantasy—yet in truth he had already come to fully believe in its feasibility.
Not only had he come to fully believe its feasibility—in his own laboratory he had already embarked on that grotesque experiment.
It was truly bone-chilling research—an experiment of utmost grotesquery—the laboratory resembling nothing less than a hellish tableau.
Where he abducted them from—Dr.Kasamatsu always brought living humans he seized and placed them upon the experiment table.

“Dr. Kasamatsu!”
“Even if your research were indeed possible, aren’t the sacrifices too severe?”

I often couldn’t help saying things that way.

“Sacrifices?
For research’s sake, aren’t all sacrifices unavoidable?
If that’s unacceptable, then I’ll abandon this research outright!”

With a voice that bellowed, scornful yet solemnly resonant, Dr.Kasamatsu roared.
It was a voice both austere and menacing.
I would shrink back at Dr.Kasamatsu's voice like a mouse cowering before a cat's cry, left completely unable to utter another word.
Why this was so—this psychological phenomenon—remained beyond my own comprehension.

“However, I shall continue to the bitter end.”
“If you find it repugnant, cease your involvement.”
“No matter what objections are raised, I shall persist for surgical science.”

Dr.Kasamatsu would leave me outside the laboratory door while shouting such things, then drag a woman into the room to serve as experimental material for his research.

I was completely at a loss as to what to do.
And I came to fear Dr.Kasamatsu.
The growing dread that Dr.Kasamatsu—with his mental defects—might at any moment reduce even me to experimental material for his research intensified within me day by day.
Yet around the time I had come to fear Dr.Kasamatsu in this way, a certain emotion—one that tried inexorably to keep me from leaving him—bound me fast.
It was an emotion mediated through the doctor’s daughter.
Between the young lady and me was a seething euphoria.
Although between the young lady and me, not once had we used words like "(love)" or "(romance)," I could nevertheless clearly perceive intentions beyond words through the expressions contained within her eyes and smiles.
The young lady likewise must have clearly received my intentions beyond words through my eyes and smiles.
And between the young lady and me, precisely because we did not put it into words, the euphoria shared between lovers increasingly seethed with intensity.
My love for the young lady—an all-consuming blaze that could incinerate everything to ash—surpassed even my terror of Dr.Kasamatsu.
And rather, I found myself developing a lingering attachment to Dr.Kasamatsu’s bizarre ideals in surgical science.
Even if it was a bizarre ideal, should there appear even the faintest glimmer of feasibility in its theoretical foundation, and should Dr.Kasamatsu prove unable to complete it within his lifetime, I found myself wanting to take up and continue that research afterward.

However, Dr.Kasamatsu’s bizarre experiments always ended in failure.
The human body placed in suspended animation by anesthetics, with its neck severed, simply would not reattach—like the head of a clay doll snapping off.
Despite the dark red blood clinging thickly to both incisions, there was no discernible trace of blood vessels, and even the muscles had acquired a clay-like brittleness.
Dr.Kasamatsu must have been applying some potent chemical agent other than anesthetics to this suspended-animation corpse.
And the suspended-animation corpse had already become XXX.

“Dr.Kasamatsu!”
“Did you use some other chemical besides anesthetics?”

I couldn’t help but ask in that manner.

“Isn’t that only natural?”

Dr.Kasamatsu snapped scornfully.

“What did you use?”

“What good are you if you can’t even grasp that?”

Dr.Kasamatsu had become extremely irritable.
And then Dr.Kasamatsu, in a self-destructive frenzy, plunged the scalpel into various parts of the corpse with a sickening squelch.
Dr.Kasamatsu’s mind had long since become utterly deranged through paroxysms.
It was not only Dr.Kasamatsu but even I who observed it nearby—the decapitated torso had become bulkier, more grotesque, and eerier than when the head had been attached, uncannily altered in this way.
A frenzied impatience—as though wanting to smash everything into utter chaos—whipped storm-like through every nerve.
And Dr.Kasamatsu must have felt that emotion of mine with dozens of times more intensity.
Dr.Kasamatsu first proceeded to sever both legs from the torso that had already lost its head.
And so, the torso—now bereft of both head and legs—grew still eerier and more misshapen, spreading outward ever wider to the sides.

“Shit!”

Dr.Kasamatsu, venomously spitting curses, proceeded to sever the eerie arms—which were gradually expanding grotesquely outward—in a half-crazed frenzy.
No!
Was it not half-madness but rather the torso—gradually expanding even as it was being severed—that was driving Dr.Kasamatsu to insanity? Or was it that Dr.Kasamatsu, already a paroxysmal madman, was dismembering the torso? In any case, Dr.Kasamatsu had by now become a true madman.

My heart pounded violently, my head swaying unsteadily—I could no longer bear to watch.
I fled from that laboratory where Dr.Kasamatsu was roaring something at the top of his voice back to my own room.
While feeling as though a wheel of fire spun through my skull, nausea overwhelmed me and—utterly drained—I collapsed face-first onto the bed.

After Dr.Kasamatsu’s horrifying experiments, I would be left physically and mentally ravaged, incapable of action for days on end.
Then upon this exhaustion of flesh and spirit, a gloomy misanthropy would assail me with renewed ferocity, threatening to snap what remained of my surgical aspirations.
Yet the searing euphoria simmering between the doctor’s daughter and me inevitably congealed into tenacious longing.
Caught between craven urges to abandon surgical research and this stubborn attachment to the doctor’s daughter, I lingered in anguished indecision—days passing without once leaving my room.

“What are you dawdling for?”

While saying such things, Dr.Kasamatsu—who hadn’t shown his face for days—suddenly peered into my room.
I shuddered.
I could only stare wide-eyed in astonishment, unable to utter a word.

“Why don’t you conduct an experiment?”
“Conduct the experiment!”
“Surgical medicine values clinical practice over theory!”

“Hah!”

I trembled uncontrollably while standing rigidly at attention.

“No matter how much you understand in theory, if your hands won’t move as they should, surgical practice amounts to absolutely nothing, I tell you.”

It was as if those words were blatantly insulting the clumsiness of my hands.

My self-esteem seethed and danced wildly.
But I was terrified of Dr.Kasamatsu.

“Especially since you’re so clumsy with your hands—if you don’t thoroughly practice wielding the scalpel, you’ll never become a surgeon!”

“Hah!”

I flared up with rebellious fury, and though my emotions were in utter disarray, I somehow found Dr.Kasamatsu terrifying, so on the surface I feigned obedience.

“Come here at once!”

Dr.Kasamatsu ushered me into the laboratory as if taking custody.
I shuddered violently.
In an instant, my heart shifted abruptly from rebellion to terror.
However, trembling violently with terror, I still followed behind the doctor.

“There!”
“This is it.”
“Now practice with this.”

Dr.Kasamatsu said this and gave me two pieces of flesh.
They were large pieces, each seemingly weighing seven or eight kin—nine or ten pounds apiece.

I felt as though all the blood in my body was concentrating somewhere around my heart and on the verge of congealing as I faced them.

“Hahaha! Are you shocked? Like that, you’ll never become a surgeon! Hahaha!”

Laughing scornfully, Dr.Kasamatsu nevertheless slammed the door shut with a bang and left.

In my heart, a different rebelliousness once again seethed forth, and I threw myself into practice with ferocious intensity. First, I extracted nerves and blood vessels from that raw chunk of flesh, then meticulously connected nerve to nerve and vessel to vessel. I tried my utmost effort—arms smeared with blood, whole body drenched in sweat—but my clumsy hands simply would not move as I willed them to. And I was assaulted by violent impatience. Inescapable impatience coursed through my entire body, and my heart began pounding with a hot, violent, rapid palpitation. At the same time, my head began to seethe. Following that, dizziness came. And then, before I knew it, I lost consciousness with my head still thrust between the two chunks of flesh.

No matter how much time passed, the opportunity for me to attend actual surgeries—such as dissections or incisions—never came.
Moreover, opportunities for me myself to perform surgery on living humans were, of course, nonexistent.
No matter how much time passed, they remained experiments for research and practice to hone my skills.

However, the day finally came when even I could test my skills through surgery on a living human.
That was because the Doctor's daughter had developed a swelling on her neck.
Since Dr.Kasamatsu happened to be away, I promptly took the young lady into the laboratory and laid her supine on the operating table.
The young lady, who trusted me completely, lay obediently supine on the operating table, awaiting my surgery without harboring the slightest fear.
I immediately bound the young lady tightly to the operating table with restraints so she couldn’t move at all—but the problem was that I didn’t have any anesthetics on hand.

“This is a problem. I don’t have any chloroform, cocaine—no anesthetics at all…”

I inadvertently muttered that.

“We don’t need any anesthetics.”

She said this with surprising composure.

“But without anesthetics—it’ll hurt.”

“I’ll endure the pain. If I endure it now, it should feel better afterward. Never mind that—just hurry up.”

"But how pitiful..."

“But you want to perform the surgery, don’t you? I don’t mind. I’m enduring it, so hurry up now.”

She said this and urged me on.

“In that case…”

I should no longer have been hesitating.
I immediately took up the scalpel.
Yet despite this resolve, I could do nothing about my increasingly violent palpitations.
But while suppressing my racing heart as much as possible—forcing myself not to perceive the young lady as human—I excised the neck tumor in one swift motion.
At that instant, the young lady screamed—"Aah!"

“It’ll be over soon.
“Soon.
“It’ll be over soon—just hold on.”

While crying out those words, I quickly scraped away the decayed tissue with my scalpel, gratingly.
She continued shrieking “Aah! Aah!” for a while but gradually seemed to find relief, her voice growing lower and weaker by the moment.
However, to my renewed dismay, I had not prepared any sterilized gauze or similar supplies.
All I had was a single roll of bandages.
But then, a new discovery in surgical medicine flashed through my mind like lightning.
I immediately regripped the scalpel.
And I swiftly and cleanly cut out a lump of meat from her thigh to fill the wound hole in her neck.
She let out another scream—“Aah!”
However, now was not the time to dwell on such things—but the first attempt had been a complete failure.
Because my clumsy hands, coupled with my somewhat flustered state, made it impossible to cut out a lump of flesh identical in shape and size to her neck.
So I excised that thigh flesh once again.
Compared to the neck, the thigh was largely insensate and lacking in nerve tissue—using flesh from the same individual to fill that wound cavity would constitute the most ideal form of flesh graft therapy. However, this time too, the piece proved too small and ended in failure.
I excised yet another piece of flesh.
And it was on the fifth or sixth attempt that my clumsy hands finally succeeded.
Upon finishing the flesh grafting, I immediately wrapped the bandages round and round.

“Stop that!”

In that instant, I was struck violently.
Dr.Kasamatsu had entered the room unnoticed and suddenly struck me.
And behind Dr.Kasamatsu stood several young hospital-based doctors who had never before entered this laboratory.
My head grew thick with numbness as I listened to the shouts of Dr.Kasamatsu and the young doctors standing there with terrifying expressions—their voices reaching me like events from a half-dream, distant beyond measure—before collapsing into a landscape swirling with Cubist complexity.

When I regained consciousness and stood up unsteadily, Dr. Kasamatsu and the young doctors were surrounding the bloodstained operating table with grim expressions. On the operating table lay the young lady’s corpse, dismembered. Dr. Kasamatsu, having seen me wrapping bandages around the young lady’s neck at that moment, must have leapt to the conclusion that I had succeeded in attaching the head to the torso. Driven by jealousy, he must have struck me and immediately unwrapped those bandages to check. However, since the wound covered only part of the neck, he likely mistook it for one already beginning to heal. This delusion must have violently agitated Dr. Kasamatsu and driven him mad. Thereupon he must have severed that neck in his own attempt to succeed at attaching head to torso—ending in failure—then proceeded to dismember the corpse piece by piece. At any rate, only the head remained standing upright beside the corpse.

(--Alright!
I'll take that head and escape)

At that moment, I thought--well--

(And I'll embrace that head and die together with her.)

I felt too sorry to leave her to die alone, and so I suddenly resolved to commit double suicide with her head.
And the moment that thought flashed through my mind, I clutched her head and rushed out of the laboratory.

“Stop! You there!”

“Wait! Wait!”

A tempestuous outcry arose as the young doctors desperately chased after me.
However, upon exiting the laboratory, I immediately jumped down into the garden and climbed over the high brick wall.
And I ran non-stop from Kasamatsu Surgical Hospital all the way to that cliff on the coast no more than one ri away.

And so I jumped into the sea from that cliff while holding her head, but whether fortunately or unfortunately, I was able to crawl back onto land having lost her head in the sea. I plunged once more into that deep black trench, but still I could not die. However, this was by no means a blessing for me. And still now I want to die by any means possible; ever since then I had been wandering in search of a place to die—until I happened to hear of this recent case.

The victim in this case—the Headless Corpse Case—was, of course, Dr.Kasamatsu's daughter, and the culprit was undoubtedly Dr.Kasamatsu.

Dr.Kasamatsu, unaware that I had leapt from that cliff holding the young lady's head, knew only of my plunge into the trench—laboring under the misapprehension that her head lay at its bottom—and thus disposed of her torso, arms, and legs in that same location.
Most likely, this constituted an attempt to shift the entirety of criminal culpability onto me.
However, given that I have survived thus, Dr.Kasamatsu cannot possibly evade responsibility for that crime.

=Blackout=

“Please go immediately and restrain Dr.Kasamatsu.”
“If left unrestrained, not only will he undoubtedly kill more people for his experiments, but who knows what other horrors he might commit.”
“Go restrain him at once.”

The young man pleaded as though gasping for breath.

“Of course we can’t let that go unchecked.”
“Then let’s head out with you immediately.”
“You lot come along as well.”

The police chief said this while standing up and jerked his chin at the three detectives.

“Wouldn’t it be better if the Police Chief didn’t come?”
“Just the three of us…”

“No—I’m coming too.”

The Police Chief said this as if brushing off the detectives’ words, drew his saber, donned his cap, and strode toward the entrance.
The young man, without needing to be urged, followed agitatedly behind the Police Chief, writhing as if in torment.
After that, the three detectives followed behind, exchanging glances and smirking.

Outside, a car was waiting.
With the Police Chief leading, the five of them leaped into it.
The car immediately zoomed off.
At the same time, the young man began chattering again.

“As for how Dr.Kasamatsu disposed of the human corpses used in his experiments—though I have never actually witnessed it—could it be that he also threw those dismembered body parts into that trench?”
“So because the hands and feet ended up belonging to different people, and the neck and torso became those of others as well, that’s why they couldn’t identify the victim no matter what, don’t you agree?”
“No matter how much they try to identify the victim based on that head, if the torso belongs to another person or the legs don’t match, they’d be utterly unable to make sense of it, you see…”

“It’s Dr.Kasamatsu!”
“There!”
“That’s Dr.Kasamatsu right there!”

The young man pointed toward the brick building from the car window.

“Stop the car!”

The car was halted just past the hospital gate.
The five hurriedly disembarked.
Through gaps in the garden trees flickered glimpses of a silver-bearded old gentleman pacing before the red brick structure, hands buried deep in his white surgical gown’s pockets.
The young man sighted the old gentleman and broke into a sprint.
The Police Chief and three detectives pounded after him in pursuit.

“Kasamatsu!”

The young man spotted the old gentleman and lunged at him.

“Whoa!”

The old gentleman let out a cry of surprise and leaped back.
But it was already too late.
The young man grabbed the old gentleman’s arm.
At the same time, the old gentleman’s pince-nez fell to the ground and shattered.

“Hey! Someone come here!”
“Someone! Anyone!”

The old gentleman struggled within the young man’s grasp while shouting for help at the top of his voice, but the young man absolutely would not release his hold—and he too began loudly summoning the detectives.

“Hurry with the rope!
“Hurry with the rope—I’ve caught Dr.Kasamatsu!”

The detectives took out hemp rope from their pockets and clattered off.
—But that rope did not bind the old gentleman—it fastened around the young man’s wrist.

“That’s my hand.”

The young man shouted and tried to pull his hand.
At the same time, two or three men came running out from the brick building and bundled the young man tightly into a blanket.
The young man stuck only his head out of the blanket and could no longer move at all.

“Ah! Police Chief—have you come as well? My, my—”

The old gentleman said with a smile as he approached the Police Chief.

“Actually, since there was something I wished to discuss with Dr.Okano, I came along as well—”

“Well now—”

“Dr.Okano! Would you be so kind as to come to the police station, even if it’s an inconvenience? I would like you to conduct a psychological examination of this young man in our presence. Since we seem to have found a lead in the headless corpse case.”

“That would be acceptable, but…”

“Then let us converse at ease in the car.”
“By the way, Dr.Okano—aren’t you inconvenienced without your glasses?”
“Oh, not at all! It’s nothing so severe.”

Dr.Okano, director of the mental hospital, said while pressing his nasal bridge.

“Shall we proceed then?”
“Then you all come along in a separate car with that young man—I’ll go ahead with Dr.Okano.”

The Police Chief said this and, together with Dr. Okano, left the raving madman there as they walked off toward the gate.
The car, once it had taken on the two passengers, departed the municipal mental hospital and immediately entered the bustling streets.
The Police Chief began speaking while letting his body sway to the slight motion.

“Dr. Okano! That young man keeps insisting—with such fervor—that you’re the perpetrator of this headless corpse case, and that your own daughter was the victim.”

“Oh! That’s interesting. Does he truly believe I have a daughter?”

“—That’s correct. However, he doesn’t recognize you as the director of Okano Mental Hospital—he believes you to be a surgeon named Dr.Kasamatsu, and seems to have developed affection for this Dr.Kasamatsu’s daughter. Though he intensely fears you under this delusion of you being Kasamatsu, he still appears bound by his feelings toward the daughter...”

“I didn’t know that—that was my blunder. Had I known romantic feelings were involved, it might have been resolved quite simply… What an unfortunate miscalculation.”

Dr.Okano, director of the mental hospital, said this and—as if exhaling a sigh—cradled his head in both hands.

The car curved around the street corner,jolted once,thens wayed violently.Dr.Okano lurched forward unsteadily.“So，that young man has convinced himself that you and she are Dr.Kasamatsu and his daughter,and he fervently believes you killed the young lady.”The Police Chief,having finished recounting the young man’s story in full,lita cigarette.“I had truly donea regrettable thing.I hadn’t noticedatallthatromanticfeelingswereinvolved.Thatwasmyblunder.”

Dr. Okano repeated regretfully.

“Why did that young man think she was your daughter?”

“As soon as she saw my face, she would cry out ‘Father!’”
“And again whenever that young man sees my face, he cries ‘Dr.KasamatSu!’ and immediately starts asking questions about surgical techniques.”
“That young man came to my hospital very recently…”

=Blackout=

When I received word that he had settled into his hospital room, I feigned having mistaken the room and unassumingly stepped inside his quarters.
It had always been my practice to discreetly observe patients' daily behaviors—diagnosing their conditions through these actions, formulating hypotheses about the illness's origin, then developing therapies based on those conjectures—but in his case, the symptoms indicating the disease's etiology manifested with unusual intensity.
Despite my pretense of accidental entry, the moment he saw my face, he rose to his feet, eyes flickering with astonishment and eager recognition.

“Oh!”
“Dr.Kasamatsu!”
“I’m Nishitani.”

He said this and bowed politely.

“Oh!”

I gave a slight nod.
I realized he was mistaking me for someone named Kasamatsu, but in this situation, it was necessary to let his imagination run free and peer into his mind.
For that purpose, I refrained from initiating conversation as much as possible and adopted an entirely passive attitude toward his words.

“So then, it was Dr.Kasamatsu who had me brought here, wasn’t it?”

He said with a faint smile, as if finally relieved from dark suspicions.

“Ah!”

“Was there something you required?”

“Ah!”

I said it simply but didn’t know how to proceed further. If I destroyed the fantasy I had painstakingly built up to that point, I would be completely at a loss.

“Am I to assist with the experiment?”

“Because we simply couldn’t manage without you.”

“But can someone as clumsy as me truly establish themselves as a surgeon?”

“It’s no longer about manual dexterity—it’s a matter of intellect now.”

“I do have confidence in my intellect, but none whatsoever in my hands.”
“Last time too, I grew despondent over my clumsiness and tried to escape.”
“Being permitted to assist your research—working alongside you—brings me such joy.”
“Yet if continuing indefinitely still won’t let me stand as a surgeon...”
“Had that not been the case, even I wouldn’t have fled.”

“More than manual dexterity—for you—it’s a matter of intellect.”

“Dr.Kasamatsu! However—if the ideal of surgical art lies in joining heads to torsos—can such a thing truly be achieved?”

“Research will be required...”

I deflected with vague responses. Through this exchange, I began dimly grasping the etiology of his condition—he must have been either a surgical student or recent graduate who assisted a certain Dr.Kasamatsu. His neurasthenia likely developed from anxiety over his hands’ inadequacy—those crucial surgeon’s tools—though what tormented him most were those relentless questions: Could one practice surgery despite clumsy hands? Was there no surgical field prioritizing intellect over manual skill? Could head-torso transplantation—surgery’s supreme ideal—ever be realized?

Simultaneously, I discerned his profound timidity—not merely an incapacity to witness operations, but knowing surgery ill-suited him yet clinging to that ambition for social propriety’s sake. This pathology stemmed from thrashing agitation—a hesitant soul paralyzed by indecision.

I gave considerable thought to that therapy.
However, in the end, it seemed best to make him abandon all aspirations of becoming a surgeon.
I needed to thoroughly negate his deepest anxieties—compelling him to believe that "clumsy hands make one wholly unfit to be a surgeon... surgeons are mere laborers where intellect comes second... even head-torso suturing proves impossible in practice... only those with magician-deft hands succeed..." thereby forcing him to relinquish his lingering hopes.
Simultaneously, I had to hammer into his mind how terrifyingly gruesome surgical work truly was.
To achieve this, performing a horrifically cruel surgery that ended in failure seemed most effective.
Concretely speaking, I would pose as a researcher of head-torso suturing, appoint him as my assistant, conduct brutal experiments repeatedly doomed to fail.
Yet practically speaking, procuring experimental materials proved difficult.
But then an idea suddenly surfaced.
I immediately ordered a hospital room cleared and arranged with equipment resembling either a dissection lab or operating theater.
For the first time, I revealed my extreme and bizarre therapy to doctors, orderlies, and nurses.
Naturally, no one objected.
Thus I finally began the treatment.

“Mr.Nishitani! Today I’ll be conducting an experiment on a living human, so come here. Can joining a head to a torso truly be achieved?”

When I said this with a solemn face, he was already trembling violently with an expression of astonishment. However, paying no heed to such matters, I took him along and forcibly led one of the nurses who had been waiting in the reception room to the laboratory. As the nurse shrieked and resisted, I forced her inside like a demon, leaving him standing trembling before the laboratory door. In the meantime, I bound a life-sized doll to the operating table in place of the nurse. Then, after pulling him inside the door, it was effortless to make his utterly confused mind perceive the doll as a human in suspended animation through anesthetics.

“Did you apply any other chemicals besides the anesthetics?”

He fearfully reached out to touch the human while asking such questions.
He did not realize it was a doll, instead believing the body in suspended animation had stiffened due to the chemicals.
That was extremely convenient.

“Isn’t that obvious?”

I barked.

“What did you use?”

“How can you not know such a thing?”

I barked again. And adjusting my grip on the scalpel, I severed the neck. To the incision I applied paint matching blood's hue. The small bottles brought in as anesthetics and other chemicals were in truth all blood-colored paint, and daubing this upon the incision without his notice proved equally facile. Then I feigned strenuous effort to unite head and torso, but when he saw the incision devoid of vessels or nerves—hardened and crumbling—his bewilderment only deepened. Thus I too simulated frenzy: adjusting my scalpel's grip anew, I severed the doll's legs before proceeding to amputate both arms. At this, timorous soul that he was, he abandoned me there and fled the laboratory.

However, my therapy was by no means a failure.
The young man Nishitani, trembling so terribly in fear of that experiment, fled from the laboratory into his room—and once there, did not emerge for nearly a week.
And during that week, he wandered lost along his own path as though forgetting to eat or sleep.
Had there been no extraneous emotions complicating matters, it would have been only natural for him to abandon his aspirations as a surgeon altogether.
With that renunciation—and with his spirits lightening—it was equally natural that his dazed state should gradually guide him toward recovery.

However, I went even further—imposing experiments designed to make him recognize his manual clumsiness more profoundly than its actual merit.
The task involved giving him two pieces of pork and having him connect nerve to nerve, blood vessel to blood vessel within those meat fragments—though suturing nerves and blood vessels in dead tissue would prove difficult even for highly skilled surgeons, particularly since I had already extracted those very vessels and nerves beforehand.
It was truly a demonic exercise, pitiful yet necessary to cure his condition.
Yet he undertook the task with utmost earnestness.
He worked until his arms were smeared with blood, eyes brought so close to the flesh that his nose nearly touched it while probing for nerves and vessels.
Utterly drained of all vitality, he buried his face between the two meat slabs and nearly lost consciousness.

We had believed ourselves sufficiently vigilant in our monitoring, but our grave oversight lay in having failed to realize that the young man Nishitani had developed romantic feelings toward a certain female patient.
Of course the young man Nishitani—alongside other patients who would never voluntarily enter such a place—rushed to investigate upon hearing screams from the laboratory, but by then it was already too late.
The young man Nishitani had gouged a gaping cavity in the female patient's throat and been attempting to implant flesh excised from her thigh into the wound, but the female patient had already died.

“Stop that!”

While shouting so, I knocked him down and replaced the corpse with the doll in that interval—but such efforts proved futile by then.
I attempted to make him thoroughly aware of his own clumsiness using that doll, but when he regained consciousness, he suddenly seized its head and fled.
We immediately gave chase, but his figure had already vanished beyond recovery.

Blackout.

“So you see, what that patient fled clutching was not a human’s severed head, but a doll’s head...”

Dr. Okano concluded his account in this manner.

“Then isn’t there some crime underlying this incident? If we reduce this to mere despair over manual clumsiness, doesn’t that make the delusion rather too elaborate? I can’t shake the feeling that this Dr.Kasamatsu—this surgeon—actually exists somewhere...”

“There must be someone somewhere serving as the motive behind these fantasies.”

At that exact moment, the car arrived at the police station’s main entrance.
The Police Chief gripped the hilt of his saber and stepped out first.
The elderly Dr.Okano followed.
At the same time, from the car that had been following behind, Nishitani Young Man got out under the escort of three detectives.
Nishitani, while his hands were bound up, pressed forward as if fending off the three detectives, closing in on the Police Chief and the others from behind.
The Police Chief and Dr.Okano immediately ascended the staircase at their side to the upper floor.
Nishitani took the lead among the detectives and clattered up the stairs in pursuit.
And when he reached the top of the stairs, he suddenly began to bellow.

“Kasamatsu!
“Kasamatsu!”
“You devil!”

The detectives tried to grab his hands, but he slipped free from their grasp and ran up the stairs, shouting.

“Kasamatsu!
“It’s no use trying to smear your sins onto me!”
“You fiend!”

“I don’t think of shifting my own sins onto others…”

The one who had spoken while turning around was not Dr.Okano. He appeared even more shabbily aged than Dr.Okano—an elderly man with a long silvery-white beard and a dreadfully emaciated frame. Yet despite his gauntness, he possessed an indefinable dignity and bore an indefinable resemblance to Dr.Okano.

“Kasamatsu! Confess now!”
“Hurry!”

The Nishitani Young Man did so, roaring as he continued to press in on the old man.

“Mr. Nishitani!”
“There’s no need to worry...”

As he spoke, the old man even allowed a smile to form.

"There's no need to worry at all."
"Because I know everything..."

"If you know everything, then let's have your confession."

The judicial police inspector looked up at the old man’s face and solemnly urged.

“I will tell you everything.”

The old man, who had been made to stand before the judicial officer’s desk and stubbornly kept silent, suddenly adopted a compliant attitude upon seeing Nishitani Young Man’s face.

“So—is your name Kasamatsu?”

The Police Chief interjected from the side.

“It is said to be Kasamatsu.”
“Since we discovered Nishitani’s former address, we dispatched detectives thinking there might be some lead—but when they went, the detectives ended up bringing back this old man… They’ve only just arrived now, so…”

The judicial officer answered on behalf of the old man.

“So, are you a surgeon?”

“A surgeon? I’m not such an upstanding person.”
“I am a dollmaker.”
“It’s dollmaking, you see.”
“The reason I know Mr. Nishitani is because he was lodging on the second floor of my house…”

＝Blackout＝

Nishitani Young Man was serious and quiet—when he first moved into our second floor, it was hardly unusual for him to sit at his desk for eight or nine hours without so much as a heavy breath. Quiet and studious, he had been difficult to approach at first, but as he gradually opened up, he began coming down on his own to talk with me and my daughter, until we came to feel increasingly like a family. What had begun as a simple room rental arrangement gradually extended to sharing meals, and before I knew it, my daughter had even started washing Nishitani’s soiled laundry. Nishitani, instead of continuing to read books at his desk, more often seemed to be talking with the daughter. At times, he would come to my workshop and spend hours upon hours staring at my hands.

“Your hands move with such enviable dexterity, old man.”
“If only surgeons could move their fingers that deftly… How nice that would be.”
“Especially someone like me—my fingers are so clumsy…”

There were times when he would suddenly say such things.

“No matter how much surgical techniques advance, or how dexterous a doctor’s hands become, they could never imitate me.”

As I said such things, I attached the doll’s legs and neck.

“Well—they say the ultimate ideal of surgical technique is joining necks to torsos.”

“Of course, unless you reach that level—speaking of which—someone like me would make quite the proper doctor for dolls. You might even call me Dr. Kasamatsu...”
“You might even call me Dr. Kasamatsu...”

I said such things and laughed.
The fact that Nishitani and I were conversing so amiably seemed to bring my daughter immense joy, and she would always come to us with freshly steeped tea.
How profoundly my daughter cherished Nishitani, and how deeply Nishitani adored my daughter—this I understood with perfect clarity.
I had resolved that had Nishitani but voiced his feelings, I would have united them at any moment.
Yet Nishitani proved a man of timid disposition, incapable of uttering such declarations.
He remained confined to silently wrestling with these affections within the prison of his own heart.

When the green of the trees in the grove atop the cliff beyond my workshop window deepened day by day, and pale green shadows dappled and shifted across the workbench and even the dolls’ skin with the changing season, Nishitani grew profoundly despondent. He appeared to suffer from severe neurasthenia. At school, dissections seemed to have already begun, and it became commonplace for him to sit at his desk staring at a scalpel for half a day or linger late into the night at the affiliated hospital. Even when he came downstairs to my workshop, he would not utter a word, merely staring fixedly at my hands for hours on end.

“Ahhh!”
“If only my hands could move like that...”

And then, while suddenly saying such things in that manner, he abruptly stood up from his seat.

“Huh?!”

Not fully understanding what was happening, I would ask in such a manner.

"Why is it only my hands that were made so clumsy?"

He muttered those words as if to himself and headed upstairs—this was undoubtedly because he had been agonizing over his hands' inability to move as desired during dissections.
And then, Nishitani's neurasthenia grew increasingly severe, and shortly after the rainy season ended, he left to recuperate in some rural area.

When the rainy season ended, days of searing heat stretched endlessly until gloomy rains returned to fall in a relentless drizzle. In the city, acute typhus raged unchecked. My daughter fell victim to this terrible disease and perished within three days. I moved through a dreamlike haze, utterly lost. When she first fell ill, I considered informing Nishitani—then convalescing in the countryside—but its sudden virulence left no time for such gestures. Before cremation, I longed to let him see her face one last time, but this virulent contagion demanded immediate disposal—that too proved impossible. I wept like a child, overcome by grief. It wasn’t just depriving Nishitani of a final farewell; even for myself, consigning her body directly to flames felt unendurable. I needed to preserve my daughter somehow. So an hour before her coffin was due at the crematory—under cover of lingering darkness and absent pallbearers—I extracted her corpse from the casket and concealed it deep within my workshop cupboard. Into that coffin I crammed a life-sized effigy—its torso a taxidermied dog skeleton from my shopfront display, its head a wax mannequin’s—then sealed it tight with hammered nails.

The wax and tattered cloth parts had completely burned away, leaving fragments of wire and dog bones that were gathered as my daughter’s remains. Of course, no suspicions were raised, and the matter was settled then and there.

As my feelings settled somewhat, night after night once late hours fell, I stole away from prying eyes and set about crafting a life-sized doll in the exact likeness of my daughter as she was in life. I brought them to the doll—plucking from her corpse, which had begun decaying—the hair and eyebrows, and implanted them. For both eyebrows and hair, I shaped them to match my daughter’s face in life, studying every detail from the hairline’s curve to how each strand lay flat, until at last I completed a doll so lifelike that even I could mistake it for my living daughter.

The corpse of my daughter from which I had plucked the hair and eyebrows gradually began emitting a foul odor, so I had to find a way to dispose of it.
However, for me, no matter how much the foul odor intensified, I could not bring myself to discard the entire corpse as it was.
What was enshrined in my daughter’s funeral urn was not actually her bones but those of a dog, so I had to enshrine a part of her body in that urn anew and then bury it.
For that purpose—when selecting a part of her body—naturally I had to choose the head.
I sawed off that head, packed it into a large jar—along with naphthalene—that was big enough for the head to fit in easily, then placed it in a small white wooden coffin and buried it beside my wife’s grave.
As for the dog’s funeral urn, I smashed the urn and discarded it in a thicket; though the bones were all small fragments, I carried them out multiple times and threw them into a ditch.
And what remained last was my daughter’s corpse, which had already lost its head; however, as the stench gradually intensified, it had become dangerous to leave it as it was even for a single day.
However, as it was impossible to carry out in that state, late at night I sawed the torso into eight additional pieces.
I wrapped them in tattered cloth, then in oilpaper to make eight small bundles, packed them at the bottom of the cart’s box, and piled four dolls about three feet high on top to conceal them.
Even so, until I had completely disposed of everything, I was terribly anxious and could not easily calm myself, but I waited intently until afternoon, and then around three o'clock, I set out pulling that cart toward Mukojima.
And taking advantage of the surrounding darkness gradually enveloping me, I stealthily retrieved one bundle from the bottom of the box and discarded it, then retrieved another and cast it into the ditch.

Through my letter, Nishitani promptly came from the countryside.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“If you’d notified me the moment she fell ill, there would still have been time, wouldn’t there?”
“What use is telling me after she’s already dead?”

Nishitani would reproach me with those words the moment he saw my face.

“That may be so, but... well, don’t be angry.”
“She did die—but that’s where Dr.Kasamatsu’s genius comes through.”
“Go look upstairs!”
“She’s been properly revived just like before.”

“Upstairs?”
“In my room?”
“So even her death was a lie?”

“At any rate, go upstairs and see what Dr.Kasamatsu has achieved.”

With those words, I fled to the public bath.
Nishitani immediately ran upstairs.
And undoubtedly, the doll made to resemble the daughter during her lifetime greatly shocked Nishitani.
When I returned from the public bath, Nishitani was still on the second floor talking incessantly to the doll.

“I’ll stay by you forever… together with your father…”

Fragments of these words leaked out through his voice that mingled with choked sobs.
Nishitani seemed to cling to the doll with desperate longing, caressing it in wild abandon.

As days passed, Nishitani's caresses grew increasingly extreme. He spent nearly every waking hour on the second floor dwelling with the doll. There were stretches when he would fixate on staring at its waxen face, others when he carried on one-sided conversations, and still others when he seemed to sleep curled against its lifeless form. I refrained from all interference, never ascending while he kept vigil there—yet through some perverse clarity, I understood every detail of his deluded communion.

It was after about five or six days had passed in that manner.

Because Nishitani had casually gone out to the public bath with a hand towel, I went up to the second floor to see the daughter’s face which I hadn’t seen in about five or six days.
When I entered the second floor, a bed had been laid out and there the doll’s neck was broken.
And it was terribly soiled.
However, it wasn’t impossible to reattach it with glue or something as before.
I immediately carried that head and torso to the workshop downstairs.

I then placed that head on the workbench, gently laid the torso so that its lower half hung over the edge of the table and was melting glue in a small pot when Nishitani returned.

“Oh!
“What are you doing?
“What are you…?”
Nishitani cried out shrilly, his voice cracking with shock as he leaned over to scrutinize the workbench.

“Just watch what happens—Dr. Kasamatsu will splendidly reattach the head and torso.”
“Just watch closely how it turns out.”
I declared this with pride.

“To think such a thing could…”

“Hold the head for a moment.”

As I spoke these words and tried lifting the torso while having Nishitani hold the head to align the severed edges—Nishitani, who had been staring fixedly at its eyes—suddenly flung it down with a clatter, let out a shrill cry, and dashed out of the room.

“Hey! Wait! Hey!”

With those words, I immediately gave chase, but Nishitani's figure was already nowhere to be seen.

=Blackout=

“—So you see, I didn’t kill her with my own hands—it was as per the doctor’s death certificate—but I did commit quite cruel things: plucking her hair and eyebrows, then cutting her into eight pieces.”

“Now that I think about it, even I myself can’t help but feel sorry for my daughter.”

“Please punish this senile old man thoroughly.”

“That doll—I’d like to borrow it for the hospital.”
“Nishitani’s illness might be cured.”
“Through that doll.”

Dr.Okano said while stroking his silver beard.

“Please do make use of it.”
“It’s a doll I fashioned solely to bring Nishitani joy, you understand.”
“Though matters took an unfortunate turn, if you could restore Nishitani to his former self, I cannot convey how grateful I would be.”

“We fully acknowledge that you, old man, had no criminal intent. There are sufficient mitigating circumstances. However, as a corpse abandonment charge, we’ll send this to the Prosecutor’s Office for now… Then, Nishitani will go back under Dr. Okano’s care at the City Mental Hospital once more… old man! There’s absolutely no need for you to worry…”

The Police Chief spoke in a solemn tone, his eyes glistening moistly, yet with an almost embracing inflection.

(November 1932)