Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

"Oh dear, what a waste I've gone and done."

It had been an involuntary muttering, but Inspector Iriguchi, taking issue with it, turned around,

“What’s this? What do you mean by ‘a waste’?”

At this, Detective Hiramatsu’s face flushed bright red as he took on an expression of profound dismay,

“No... well... the goldfish.”
“These three are all quite high-quality ranchu.”
“Because they’re dead, I thought it was such a waste.”

Because he answered this way, both the investigators and forensics team nearly burst out laughing with a pfft.

Before them lay a human corpse.

In the earthen soil of the garden, a large Seto ware goldfish bowl was embedded up to its rim. Beside this bowl, the corpse of a man clad in a silk crepe kimono, with a single garden geta slipped onto one foot, lay sprawled facedown on the ground.

It was later discovered that the cause of death had been poisoning by potassium cyanide.
The corpse’s hands were stretched out, reaching toward the bowl’s rim as if to grab it.
Likely, the victim—writhing in agony—had crawled to the goldfish bowl and attempted either to rinse his mouth or drink from it.
At that moment, it was thought that residual poison in his mouth had dripped into the water, killing the goldfish as well.
Yet the true enigma lay with this poisoned corpse.
The goldfish were no mere collateral victims.
But because he had first lamented the dead fish rather than the human body, the whole scene took on an air of absurdity.

The incident was discovered on the morning of May 6th.

The location was M Town near the outskirts of Okayama City. The victim was an elderly man named Kariya Otokichi, who until about four years prior had run a pawnshop while also working as a loan shark on the side, but was currently unemployed and living entirely alone.

The discoverer was Shimamoto Mamoru, a physician who lived right next door to the old man’s house and had opened his practice around last year. Dr. Shimamoto, upon reporting the incident to the police, outlined the circumstances surrounding it in roughly the following terms.

“I had an emergency patient visit this morning and went out on a house call. However, both when I left and returned, the gate to the old man’s house was left open about five sun—six inches—so I found it peculiar. As everyone in the neighborhood knows, the old man was quite an eccentric character. He remained excessively cautious even during daytime, keeping the gate locked from the inside—it wouldn’t open unless someone pressed the doorbell on the gatepost. This concerned me. Since we were neighbors, we occasionally exchanged words—in fact, just the day before yesterday, I brought over a pot of peonies I’d painstakingly cultivated now that they’d bloomed, and we stood chatting briefly in his garden. That was the last time I saw him, yet I couldn’t stop worrying. So about thirty minutes after returning home, I went to check on his house, but…”

Being a doctor, he had apparently recognized it as a poisoning death almost immediately.

By then, there was no body heat left.

Both Dr. Shimamoto's evaluation and the subsequent opinion of the city police physician concurred that death had likely occurred between the previous evening and around nine o'clock.
A peony pot bearing large blooms had been placed atop a garden stone near the goldfish bowl.
The flower, arranged as though laughing down at the old man's corpse sprawled face-first, emanated an uncanny aura that gave observers an involuntary shudder.

Inside the house, despite it being daytime, the electric lights were on—no doubt left burning since the time of the incident.
At the veranda edge facing the garden—about six shaku away from the goldfish bowl—sat a square whiskey bottle and two cups resembling Kutani ware.
From one cup, clear fingerprints of the victim were detected, but on the other—which appeared to have been wiped with something—no fingerprints remained at all.
However, with this, a general hypothesis had been formed.

In other words, the old man had likely been sitting at the veranda edge wearing garden geta, drinking whiskey with someone.

Upon investigation, the whiskey remaining about halfway in the bottle had been mixed with potassium cyanide.
Therefore, the old man must have taken a sip or two at most, become distressed, crawled to the goldfish bowl, and died there.
The killer had been sharing the whiskey but, of course, did not drink any himself and only made the old man drink.
Then, after confirming the old man’s death, he returned the whiskey from his own cup to the bottle, wiped away his fingerprints, and left the scene either calmly… or in haste.

The officials began devoting themselves fully to the investigation.

The interior showed no signs of disturbance, nor any indication that the culprit had searched for something, leading them to surmise it was not a burglar’s work. Consequently, they formed the presumption that the murder motive stemmed from resentment or romantic jealousy—yet at the crime scene itself, there were no particularly noteworthy discoveries.

At this time, what was also amusing was that the ever-present Detective Hiramatsu remained preoccupied with the goldfish. He must have been a true goldfish enthusiast. He repeatedly told his colleagues that the three dead goldfish must have cost ¥10,000 and that with his meager salary, he could never afford such things—even saying the same to Dr. Shimamoto, the discoverer of the incident.

“I think goldfish are more beautiful than women,” he said. “You mentioned having a standing conversation with the old man in the garden, didn’t you? What state were the goldfish in at that time?”

“Well… I didn’t pay particularly close attention, you see.”
“But I did think they were beautiful goldfish.”
“Fluttering about as they swam.”

“That’s how it must have been, I suppose.”
“I truly wish I could’ve seen that myself.”

The detective let out a sigh that seemed genuinely regretful.

II

The elderly Kariya Otokichi—a former loan shark and cantankerous man so cautious that even during daylight hours he kept his gate locked, refusing entry unless someone pressed the doorbell—had lived entirely alone with neither wife nor children nor even a live-in servant. Given these characteristics, investigative leads proved paradoxically easy to establish.

The authorities were able to identify three suspects before long.

All three shared the fact that they occasionally visited the old man’s house. From there, focusing their attention and advancing their covert investigation to a certain extent, they summoned each suspect individually to the police station under the form of voluntary appearances, and Inspector Iriguchi personally conducted their interrogations.

The first suspect was the proprietress of a fairly large restaurant called Seiryūtei—a woman named Shindō Tomiko.
Her true age was nearing fifty, yet her polished beauty made her appear barely past thirty.

The interrogation proceeded roughly as follows.

“Where were you from evening until around midnight on the night of May 5th?”

“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“I was properly at the cashier’s counter in my own establishment—Seiryūtei—you know.”

“That’s not quite right, is it?”
“We’ve investigated everyone from the maids to the chefs.”
“You went out in the evening and returned by taxi around twelve o’clock—we’ve confirmed this.”

“My, you’re quite well-informed, aren’t you? Well then, I’ll tell you. I’ve been managing Seiryūtei all by myself as a woman—there are hardships I can’t speak of to others. To put it plainly, I have a patron. That… I was at my patron’s place.”

“Isn’t your patron the murdered Kariya Otokichi?”
“We have thoroughly confirmed that you visit that old man’s place once or twice a month at night.”

“Please don’t say such vulgar things.”
“Mr. Kariya knows.”
“We’ve known each other for a long time.”
“But why on earth would I ever need help from a miserly bastard and stubborn old coot like him?”

“So then—you went to old man Kariya’s place once or twice a month—what was the purpose of that?”

“As for the purpose… I cannot say that.”
“I absolutely will not say it under any circumstances.”

When she refused to make a statement, even the police lacked authority to force disclosure.
The interrogation made little further progress.

The second suspect was Nakauchi Tadashi—an engineer and executive at a metal plating factory holding an engineering degree—who had borrowed high-interest loans from old man Kariya and had presumably been severely burdened by them.
When questioned, he unexpectedly described the old man as a strict and obstinate debt collector yet someone with intriguing qualities, while denying any resentment over the loans. In reality, however—like the Seiryūtei madam—he customarily visited the old man at night, with neighborhood testimony existing about one occasion when they were seen having a vehement argument at the gate.
He was by nature a mild-mannered gentleman at the height of his discernment.
His hobbies were reportedly golf and reading.

And between Inspector Iriguchi and him, the following conversation took place.

“What types of plating does your factory perform?”

“We do everything—whether small or large.”

“I hear your technical capabilities are particularly outstanding. Naturally, you handle electroplating too, I presume?”

“We perform it.”

“What chemicals do you use for plating?”

“We use various types. Gold and silver, compounds such as nickel and cobalt, along with acids and alkalis.”

“You handle brass plating too, I presume?”

“Yes, of course…”

“What specific chemicals do you use for brass and silver plating?”

At that moment, Inspector Iriguchi had swiftly noticed the faint flicker of unease that crossed Engineer Nakauchi’s face.
In those electroplating processes, a potassium cyanide solution is used.
Having that prior knowledge and deliberately posing the question, it was only natural that close attention was now being paid to this executive’s demeanor.

The engineer gulped and swallowed his saliva.

And he lit a cigarette and slowly,
“Now, now, Inspector.
“You’re trying to make me say that the potassium cyanide used to poison the old man is also present in our factory, aren’t you?
“Ha ha ha, we do have it.
“We use it constantly.
“However, it’s strictly kept within the premises—we take utmost care in handling it, I assure you.
“Even I can’t just casually remove it—the system’s designed that way.”

he answered, his composure regained.

They proceeded to question him about his alibi for the night of May 5th.

When questioned about his whereabouts that night, he claimed to have gone to see a movie, but when asked for the film’s title, he couldn’t answer immediately. He merely said it was a Western, but when questioned about whether it was in Technicolor, he answered smoothly—

“It was Technicolor.”
“It was extraordinarily beautiful.”
“The plot was rather ordinary and commonplace, but…”

he answered.

The police made telephone inquiries to all movie theaters in the city.

According to their responses, on the night of May 5th, there was not a single theater—whether showing color films or black-and-white—that had been screening a Western.

“Put a tail on that engineer!”

Inspector Iriguchi sharply commanded subordinates.

III

It would be reasonable to view both Shindō Tomiko, proprietress of Seiryūtei, and Engineer Nakauchi Tadashi as having substantial suspicion as perpetrators in the poisoning murder of Kariya Otokichi.

However, according to the authorities’ view, there still wasn’t sufficient decisive evidence.

They were permitted to return home under surveillance for the time being.

Eventually, Inspector Iriguchi summoned the third suspect—but ironically, it was the goldfish dealer who had brought those dead ranchu to old man Kariya’s house.
He was forty-five years old, and his name was Sasayama Daisaku.
The basis for suspicion in his case resembled Engineer Nakauchi’s—stemming from the fact that there had been a lender-borrower relationship between the goldfish dealer and the old man, one that had even escalated to litigation.
The goldfish dealer had his house and land taken as collateral by the old man and was being repeatedly pressured to vacate.
The authorities had concluded that there must be lingering resentment.

The goldfish dealer, a man who seemed quite upstanding in appearance, made the following statement.

“You know old man Kariya was killed, right?”

“I know. Serves him right.”

“Well, that’s harsh. Seems you really hated him, huh?”

“Well, I’ve been through hell because of him—that old man was the most stubborn, stingy, heartless bastard you’ll ever find. He quit his public moneylending business because of the taxes, but he kept on working as an underground loan shark. He probably saved up one or two hundred million yen, but he didn’t deposit it in banks or convert it into stocks—he must’ve hidden it somewhere. After he was killed, they found a mountain of cash bundles inside the house, didn’t they?”

“That’s not it. Nothing turned up.”
“Honestly, even I’m puzzled about that part.”
“Don’t you know anything about it?”

“Well, how he went about disposing his assets—that’s something I don’t know either.”
“But he was one hell of an old man.”
“The other day, he came by out of nowhere.”
“The interest on my loan’s been piling up.”
“He kept demanding I bring top-grade goldfish as partial payment—what a pain.”
“Out of spite, I took three ranchu worth maybe five thousand yen total and brought ’em over priced at thirty thousand, but…”

“Was the old man fond of goldfish, I wonder?”

“Hard to say. He probably didn’t like them all that much. However, when I went there, I found a Seto ware bowl about forty-five centimeters wide embedded in the garden soil. Though empty, it had water in it and was neatly surrounded by white sand—clear signs he intended to care for goldfish with considerable dedication. He said something like, ‘I’ve never kept a single living creature before—these goldfish will be the first ones I ever care for.’ I can’t let this go on like this. I made sure rainwater wouldn’t get in, built a sunshade, and even advised putting up wire netting to guard against cats—took all those precautions for him. So how are they doing? Are those goldfish still alive?”

“They’re not alive.”
“They died along with the old man.”
“They died from the potassium cyanide the old man vomited from his mouth.”

“Well I’ll be—that’s one hell of a thing you’ve done.”
“So in that case, those goldfish ended up dying within less than a full day after I brought them over.”

“A full day... Then that would mean when exactly did you bring the goldfish?”

“It was during the morning of May 5th. He came demanding the goldfish the evening before that. For some reason, he kept urgently insisting I bring them over right away. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough goldfish at my place to cover the interest payments. I told him I’d have to go to another dealer in our trade to get them, so I asked him to wait about two days—but he wouldn’t hear any of it, kept pressing me to bring them immediately. May 5th being the seasonal festival of Children’s Day—a day with decent business prospects—I’d planned to head to the park for sales. But there was no helping it—ended up taking those ranchu over to the old man’s place in the opposite direction instead.”

The old man had been killed on the night of the fifth, so despite the difference between morning and night, the fact that the goldfish dealer had gone to meet him on the same day somehow seemed pregnant with significance.

He inquired about the alibi.

When asked, the goldfish dealer claimed he had been at a pachinko parlor around that time. Inspector Iriguchi thus ordered Detective Hiramatsu to verify its veracity.
He found it somewhat amusing to have that goldfish enthusiast investigate the goldfish dealer—nothing more than a passing thought.

Detective Hiramatsu had been out conducting inquiries in other areas, so upon returning to the station, he was immediately summoned before Inspector Iriguchi.

“How did it go? Did you find anything?”

“Well… it’s just a minor lead…”

“Hmm, what sort of lead?”

"I hear Kariya Otokichi's been buying up substantial amounts of gold bullion lately."
"They say there are even old koban coins among it—this comes from bullion dealers we questioned."

"Is that right?"
"That's news to me."
"Right."
"Dig deeper into that angle."
"Then I want you to check out both the goldfish dealer and pachinko parlor."

What the Inspector was discussing was the goldfish dealer Sasayama Daisaku’s statement.
Until midway, Detective Hiramatsu listened silently.
And the moment he realized that the ranchu had been delivered to the old man’s house on the morning of the seasonal festival—

“What?! What do you mean about the ranchu…?” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling.

IV

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?”
“Did something happen to the ranchu?”
“They’re dead ranchu.”

Even Inspector Iriguchi looked surprised as he retorted, but Detective Hiramatsu—

“Huh? Yes.”
“They were dead.”
“But before they died, they had been alive!”

His eyes took on a focused look as he tried to organize his thoughts.

“You fool.”
“Of course they were alive before they died.”

“Well... yes.”
“That’s certainly obvious… but he did say that when they were alive, they were fluttering about energetically…”

“Hold it! What are you saying? They’re goldfish, aren’t they? If they were alive, of course they’d be fluttering about. Or maybe those Ranchu don’t swim and just stand at attention or something?”

“Ah! Right, that’s… that was it. Ranchu, perhaps because their heads are heavy, often end up standing upright even while swimming. Hmm… but that’s strange, isn’t it?”

“What a troublesome man. What on earth is going on here?”

“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I should’ve explained the reasoning clearly.”
“Actually, the person who discovered this incident was a young doctor named Dr. Shimamoto Mamoru.”

“That’s right.”
“Exactly.”

“However, Dr. Shimamoto told me the goldfish were fluttering beautifully—no, phrasing it that way isn’t clear.”
This concerned the incident at the crime scene.
“I was only focused on the goldfish.”
“Then I asked Dr. Shimamoto what they’d been like when alive.”
“Since he claimed he’d brought a peony pot to the old man’s place and chatted with him in the garden then, I assumed he must’ve seen them at that time.”
“Sure enough, he said he’d seen them—though not paid close attention.”
“And that they’d been fluttering beautifully.”

“I get it,” said Inspector Iriguchi. “I get it, but what’s your point?”

“According to Dr. Shimamoto’s testimony,” Detective Hiramatsu pressed on, “didn’t he claim to have brought the peony pot on the day of the incident’s discovery—May 6th—making it two days prior? He must have stated he hadn’t met the old man since then either. Yet we established that the goldfish were placed into that soil-embedded bowl on May 5th, Children’s Day morning. Counting back from the sixth as ‘two days prior’ brings us to May 4th.” His voice tightened with conviction. “Wouldn’t those goldfish have been absent from the bowl at that time?”

“Why did Dr. Shimamoto see goldfish that weren’t there?”
“No—he definitely couldn’t have seen them.”
“And yet he told me they were fluttering about…”

Though his explanation had been roundabout, for the first time, even Inspector Iriguchi had come to grasp the grave significance of this matter.

Dr. Shimamoto was lying.

Having seen the dead goldfish, he likely assumed they had been kept there all along.
He had described seeing goldfish that had not yet been placed into the bowl.

“Ah, I see now~.”
“Well, this is odd.”

Even the Inspector tilted his head.

“Wouldn’t you agree? There’s also the possibility of a misunderstanding.”
“However, claiming he saw something that wasn’t there at all…”

“Shouldn’t we urgently investigate that doctor?”
“We’ll find something.”
“He lives right next door.”
“And he’s a doctor.”
“He must have knowledge of poisons and could obtain potassium cyanide... Right!”
“Let’s move!”
“The pachinko parlor can wait!”

And so the two of them rose from their chairs in unison.

Having ordered nearly all their subordinates into action, they initially placed only surveillance on Dr. Shimamoto Mamoru while investigating the goldfish bowl at the crime scene.

Once they noticed this detail, new perspectives began opening up one after another.

The fact that this hard-hearted old miser—who had never kept so much as a single bird—had taken it into his head to raise goldfish was not without raising questions of its own.

When they investigated, there it was—sure enough.

The goldfish bowl was encircled by a layer of white sand.
When they brushed away the sand, they realized the bowl—made to appear buried—could be easily pulled from the soil.
And beneath lay a hollow space the size of a mandarin orange crate—a compartment created under the bowl for hiding things.

Unfortunately, the hollow space was exactly that—a hollow space containing nothing. However, when they cross-referenced the goldfish dealer’s claims about the old man’s assets during his testimony with the information Detective Hiramatsu had gathered from the metal dealer, something struck a chord in everyone’s mind. They were the purchased gold bullion and old koban coins. It was simply that what had been hidden there before was now gone.

From the goldfish bowl’s position—though partially obscured by the garden’s maple leaves—the white wall of Shimamoto Clinic could be seen; had there been a hole in that wall, one could have looked down upon this spot. The old man must have frequently come to peer beneath the goldfish bowl. Realizing that having only water in the bowl would arouse suspicion in case of emergency, he hastily decided to put goldfish in it; however, from Shimamoto Clinic, they had long found this strange and had been observing the old man’s behavior. With this, the mystery was as good as solved for the most part.

“We’ve got this.”
“Let’s get him!”
Inspector Iriguchi shouted with fervor.

Five

Dr. Shimamoto Mamoru initially stubbornly denied committing the crime.

However, when a house search uncovered gold bullion, platinum, and other ingots worth approximately ¥100 million in market value beneath the floorboards of his living quarters, he ultimately could no longer contain himself and confessed to the full details of Kariya Otokichi’s poisoning murder.

The contents of the confession were nearly identical to what the authorities had already anticipated.

However, among these, what was found particularly intriguing was his account concerning the goldfish bowl.

“As a doctor, I’d treated the old man’s neuralgia—that’s how we first started talking. Once I noticed something hidden in the garden’s goldfish bowl, I made a point of being extra kind to him—this neighbor-shunned miser—while trying to find out what he concealed. There came a moment when he let slip talk about gold trading being legalized—that’s when I knew for certain it must be bullion.—As for the whiskey, I’d often seen him alone on the veranda, sipping away contentedly. When bringing over the peony pot, I deliberately took his half-finished bottle along, insisting it had exceptional flavor. True enough, we did chat standing in the garden then—when I properly inspected the bowl, I realized no goldfish had been added yet; only water filled it. But truthfully, I’d always made myself avoid looking directly at that bowl—if he’d noticed me eyeing it, he might’ve grown suspicious. Naturally, being a goldfish bowl, I assumed from the start it must contain fish—so I figured even those dead ones must’ve been fluttering about when I brought the peony pot. That’s why I gave that evasive answer to the detective’s questions. Later, reflecting as the case’s discoverer, I felt certain I’d made no mistakes whatsoever. I was absolutely sure suspicion would never touch me—yet such a trivial slip led to doubt… Frankly, it’s deeply regrettable—and has made me truly realize wrongdoing simply can’t be sustained…”

With this, it would be safe to say the case was completely resolved.

There had been three other suspects, but of course, now that matters had reached this stage, there remained nothing to question.

The results of investigations into those individuals were ultimately never made public, but after the case had been resolved, Shindō Tomiko—proprietress of Seiryūtei—adopted a drunken, indignant tone as she turned to a female friend who was likewise the proprietress of a certain traditional restaurant and...

“They’re making a fool of me, I tell you.”
“The truth is, I borrowed money from that loan shark long ago and went through hell.”
“I was thinking of getting back at him.”
“As revenge, I thought I’d use my feminine wiles to seduce him and make him cough up a ton of money—that was the plan.”
“But he was such a miserly old bastard—completely impossible to handle.”
“On top of that, I was even suspected, you know.”
“When they questioned me at the police station, I couldn’t exactly bring up my seduction scheme—and I just got sick of it all…”

Shindō Tomiko had spoken thus, and Engineer Nakauchi of the electroplating factory, at his home, addressed his wife,

“No, I’ll absolutely never do it again."
“I can’t possibly tell people I went fishing for carp at Kōrakuen—it’s too embarrassing.”
“So I ended up claiming I’d been watching a movie, but anyway, I’ve learned my lesson.”
“If only I’d listened when you told me to stop from the beginning.”
“This is my mistake.”
“I am deeply sorry.”
“I apologize.”

He adopted a slightly comical expression and pressed his palms against the tatami in apology, while elsewhere, Detective Hiramatsu—foremost contributor to the criminal’s arrest—one day received an unexpected visit from goldfish dealer Sasayama Daisaku.

“Later on I came t’ understand it well enough—but even I was surprised.”

“Hmm? ’Bout what?”

“You didn’t go suspectin’ even me now, didja?”
“That’s downright outrageous.”
“Hated that old bastard—hated ’im.”
“But if I was gonna kill someone—wouldn’t use soft stuff like potassium cyanide.”
“Gotta beat ’em t’ death with a carryin’ pole or somethin’—else I couldn’t settle th’ fire in my belly—”
“Well—serves ’im right gettin’ killed like that.”
“Damn grateful for it.”
“Wanted t’ thank you too—Boss.”

“That’s no joke! Then it sounds like I’m the one who killed Kariya, doesn’t it?”

“Ah, right. This was my slip of the tongue. Well, anyway—as a token of gratitude—I’ve brought something nice. Boss, I hear you like goldfish. Got some Ranchu fry here—raise this little guy right and he’ll turn into something grand. Don’t you worry about the price. I’m giving him to you. For feed, stick to egg yolks for now. Just steer clear of potassium cyanide, got it?”

Even adding algae along with them, he kindly brought several fry.

Detective Hiramatsu—who had been more concerned about the goldfish’s death than the human corpse—became ecstatically delighted and left the station early that day.

At his home—though there was no gold bullion—he kept various types of goldfish: Telescope Eyes, Ryukins, Shubunkins.
After placing the Ranchu in a wooden bowl and gazing at them for a long time, he began whistling cheerfully.

(End)