It was a dangerous sort of education. Still, when the Justice considered the greater danger of allowing a young man to form his character out of an assimilation from careless popular behavior, cheap entertainment and so on, from whatever might please or appeal to his immature taste, he felt confident of the advantages of this educational experiment. There was a good chance that it would at least make Shigekuni acutely aware of the stern and watchful eye of the law. He would see all the amorphous, steaming, filthy detritus of human passions processed right then and there according to the impersonal recipes of the law. Standing by in such a kitchen should teach Shigekuni a great deal about technique.
Honda hurried through the dark corridors of the courthouse on his way to the 8th District Criminal Court, a route lit only by the faint light that filtered through the rain soaking the ravaged grass of the quadrangle. The pervasive atmosphere of this building had absorbed the raw essence of the criminal spirit; the place struck him as being altogether too sinister for the palace of reason it was supposed to be.
His depression still clung to him after he and his companion had taken their seats in the courtroom. He glanced at the highly strung law student who had conducted him here with such anxious haste and was now engrossed in the case book he had brought with him, as though he had completely forgotten his master’s son. Then he turned the same listless gaze on the still empty judge’s bench, the public prosecutor’s desk, the witness stand, the defense attorney’s desk, and so on. Such universal emptiness struck him as being expressive of his own spiritual state on this damp, humid afternoon.
So young and so lethargic! As though he had been born to sit and stare like this. Ever since Kiyoaki had confided in him, Shigekuni, who would have been bright and confident, as befitted such an able young man, had undergone a change. Or rather, the friendship between him and Kiyoaki had undergone a strange reversal. For years, each of them had been extremely careful to intrude in no way on the personal life of the other. But now, just three days before, Kiyoaki had suddenly come to him and, like a newly cured patient transmitting his disease to someone else, had passed on to his friend the virus of introspection. It had taken hold so readily that Honda’s disposition now seemed a far better host to it than Kiyoaki’s. The first major symptom of the disease was a vague sense of apprehension.
What was Kiyoaki to do, he wondered. Was it right for himself, as Kiyoaki’s friend, to do nothing more than sit by idly and let things take their course?
While he waited for the court session to begin at one thirty, he sat engrossed in the reflections provoked by his anxiety, his mind far from the hearings that he had come to attend.
“If I were really to act as a true friend,” he thought, “wouldn’t it be best to persuade him to try and forget Miss Satoko? Up until now I thought it best as his friend to pretend not to notice even if he were in his death agonies, out of respect for that elegance of his. But now that he’s told me everything as he did the other day, shouldn’t I interfere, as I have the right to do in an ordinary friendship, and do my best to save him from the clear danger that’s threatening him? Moreover, I shouldn’t hold back even if it makes him so resentful that he breaks our friendship. In ten or twenty years, he’ll understand why I did it. And even if he never understands, it should make no difference to me.
“There’s no doubt that he’s heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty—like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window?
“I know what I have to do. From now on I’ve got to put aside all the niceties and behave like an insensitive and imperceptive friend. And whether he likes it or not, I’ve got to do something to pour cold water on that raging passion of his. I’ve got to use every ounce of my strength to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny.”
∗
This feverish rush of thoughts made Honda’s head ache with the effort they cost. He no longer felt able to sit there patiently and wait for the start of the hearings, in which he had lost all interest. He wanted to leave at once, rush to Kiyoaki’s house and pour out every argument at his command to persuade him to change his mind. And the frustration of realizing that this was impossible caused a new upsurge of anxiety that increased his discomfiture.
He glanced around and noticed that all the seats had been filled. Now he understood why the houseboy had brought him here so early. Among those present were young men who looked like law students, drab middle-aged men and women, and newspaper reporters with armbands who were coming and going with a great show of urgency. He watched as those who had been drawn by nothing more than base curiosity hid their interest behind masks of sober propriety, stroking their moustaches and passing the time with a genteel wave of a fan or using the long nails of their little fingers to dig sulfur-colored deposits out of their ears. It was an instructive sight, and one that, more than anything seen previously, opened his eyes to the moral ugliness of the belief that “Oh, I’m in no danger of ever committing a sin.” Whatever the future might hold, he was determined never to fall prey to that kind of attitude.
The windows were shut against the rain, and they admitted a dull, flat light that lay over all the spectators indifferently like a coat of gray dust; only the shiny black visors of the guards’ caps were exempt from it.
The entrance of the defendant set up a flurry of comment. Flanked by two guards and dressed in a blue prison uniform, she made her way to the dock. He tried to get a look at her as she passed, but there was so much jostling and neck-craning going on among the spectators that he could do little more than catch a glimpse of plump white cheeks with conspicuous dimples. Then after she had entered the dock, all he could see was that her hair was pulled back in the cylindrical bun worn by female prisoners. Although she hunched forward respectfully, he noticed that there was a little sign of nervous strain in the way her plump shoulders were set beneath her uniform.
The defense lawyer had already come in, and now everyone was waiting for the public prosecutor and the judge himself.
“Just take a look at her, young master. Would you think she’s a murderess?” said the young law student, whispering in his ear. “It’s true what they say about not being able to tell a book by its cover.”
∗
The court ritual began with the presiding judge putting the usual questions to the accused about name, address, age, and social status. The courtroom was so hushed that Honda imagined he could hear the busy swish of the recorder’s writing brush.
“Two-five, Nihonbashi Ward, Tokyo City. A commoner. Tomi Masuda,” the woman replied in a voice that was clear and steady but so low that the crowd of spectators pricked up their ears and leaned forward as one, afraid of missing something when the testimony reached matters that were crucial. The responses came smoothly enough until the accused came to her age, and there, whether intentionally or not, she hesitated. Then, after the urgings of her lawyer, she shook herself and said in a louder voice: “I’m thirty-one.”
At that moment, she turned her head toward her lawyer and Honda caught a glimpse of her profile, her eyes wide and clear and a few stray hairs brushing her cheek.
The spectators stared at this small woman in fascination, as if she might perhaps have the translucent body of a silkworm that had somehow excreted a thread of inconceivable complexity and evil. Her slightest movement made them imagine the sweatmarks on the armpits of her uniform, her nipples tight with fear, the line of her buttocks, rather too full, dull, and a little cold. This body had spun threads without number until they were finally wrapping her in a sinister cocoon. For the spectators, there had to be a peculiarly intimate correspondence between her body and her crime. They would be dissatisfied with anything less. For the average man, driven as he is by lurid fantasies, there is almost nothing more deliciously titillating than the contemplation, from a safe distance, of evil laid out in its cause and effect. Had the woman been thin, her very thinness would have embodied this for them. But since she was plump, her plumpness served just as well. And so, satisfied that she was nothing less than evil incarnate, they eagerly exercised their harmless powers of imagination, fastening with delight on every detail down to the very beads of sweat that they were sure covered her breasts.
Honda’s scruples would not let him follow the thoughts of the crowd, although these were quite clear to him, despite his youth; he focused his entire attention on the testimony of the defendant as she answered the judge’s questions. Her account was now getting to the matter at issue.
Her way of telling things was tedious and confused, but it was clear enough that the chain of events leading up to this crime of passion had unfolded relentlessly in a manner that must lead inevitably to tragedy.
“When did you start living with Matsukichi Hijikata?”
“I . . . it was last year, Your Honor. I remember it very well. June the fifth.”
Her retentive memory made the spectators laugh, but the guards quieted them at once.
Tomi Masuda was a waitress who had become enamored of a cook named Matsukichi Hijikata, who worked at the same restaurant. The man was a widower who had only recently lost his wife. Spurred by affection, she had begun to take care of him, and the previous year they had started to live together. Hijikata, however, gave no sign that he wanted to make the arrangement official, and in fact after they had set up housekeeping, he became more and more energetic in his pursuit of other women. Then toward the end of the previous year, he had taken up with a maid who worked at an inn called Kishimoto in the same Hama district. Though Hidé, the maid, was only twenty, there was little she did not know about men. As a result, Hijikata’s nights away from home became more and more frequent. Finally, this spring, Tomi had gone to confront Hidé and plead with her to leave her man alone. Hidé had treated her with contempt, and Tomi unable to control her rage, had killed her.
It was, in brief, a triangle that ended in violence, a common affair of the streets with no particularly distinguishing feature. Yet under the close scrutiny of the court hearing, many undoubtedly authentic and totally unpredictable elements came to light.
The woman had found herself with a fatherless child, now eight years old, who had been left in the care of relatives in her home village, but she had asked them to send him to Tokyo so that he would have the benefit of a better school system. But although she had hoped to use the boy as an inducement to Hijikata to settle down, Tomi, even as a mother, had already embarked on the course that would force her to become a murderess.
And now her testimony came to the events of that night.
“No, Your Honor. If only Hidé had not been there that night, everything would have been all right. I know that this whole thing just wouldn’t have happened. If only she had had a cold or something that night and had been in bed when I went to the Kishimoto to see her, everything would have been all right too.
“The knife I used was the one Matsukichi uses to cut
sashimi.
He’s a man who takes real pride in his work and he has all kinds of good knives. ‘To me these are like a samurai’s sword,’ he keeps saying, and he never lets any of the women at work touch them but always sharpens them carefully himself. But about the time I started to get jealous of Hidé, he hid them all away somewhere, thinking it was dangerous.
“When I realized the way his mind was working, it made me angry. After that I used to make jokes about it, pretending to threaten him. I’d say: ‘I don’t need any of your knives. There’re plenty of others around I can lay my hands on, you know.’ Then one day after Matsukichi hadn’t been home for a long time, I was cleaning out a closet, and all of a sudden I came across a package with all his knives in it in a place you’d never expect. And what surprised me most, Your Honor, was that almost all of them were covered with rust. When I saw that rust, I just knew how much he’d got himself involved with Hidé, and I started to shake with one of the knives right there in my hand. But just then my boy came home from school, and I gradually calmed down. Then I thought to myself that maybe if I took his favorite knife, the one he uses to cut
sashimi
, to be sharpened, Matsukichi would appreciate it—trying to make myself think I was a real wife. I wrapped it up in a cloth, and then when I was going out, my boy asked me where I was off to and I told him I had a little errand to run and I’d be right back and he should be a good boy and watch the house. And then he said: ‘I don’t care if you never come back. Then I can go back to my school back home.’ This gave me such a shock and when I stopped to ask him what he meant, I found out the children in the neighborhood were making fun of him and saying: ‘Your old man couldn’t stand your mother’s nagging, and he ran out on her.’ This is something the children probably picked up from hearing their parents gossiping about us. And so now here was my boy wanting to get away from a mother who’s been turned into a laughing stock and go back to his foster parents in the country. Suddenly I got so angry and before I knew it, I’d hit him across the face. As I rushed out of the house, I could hear him crying behind me.”
According to the testimony that followed, Tomi was not thinking about Hidé at this moment, but was hurrying through the streets with one thing only on her mind: to get the knife sharpened so that she would feel better. The knife sharpener had a great deal of other work to do, but she would not be turned away. After she had waited for over an hour, he finally sharpened it for her. When she left his shop, she had not felt at all like going back home, and finally had turned almost involuntarily in the direction of the Kishimoto Inn.