Dogra Magra (19/47)

by Hisashi Yumeno

To facilitate a detailed observation, I will now present the figures of ten madmen, one by one, in detail.

The first person I will introduce is a white-haired old man working diligently with his upper body bare, next to the brick wall on the west side. This old man holds a hoe in both hands and is tilling about two and a half furrows of a long field along the brick wall. However, looking at his body, his arms and shins are pale and slender, and there are no deep wrinkles characteristic of an elderly laborer. He doesn't seem accustomed to farming work. What is particularly pitiful is that, although it's hard to see clearly because he's gripping the hoe with his palms, there are scattered black stains on the handle of the hoe. Those are traces of blood that have seeped from wounds on his palms. Yet, the old man does not give up and continues to swing the hoe. Seeing this sight, one can somewhat understand how cruel and ruthless Dr. Masaki's psycho-hereditary experiments are.

Next, I will introduce a young man standing beside him, watching the old man's field work. He is wearing a dark cotton kimono with an old white cotton heko obi, and his hair is fluffy, which might make him look a bit older, but upon closer inspection, he is a young man in his early twenties. Perhaps because he has been exposed to sunlight after a long time, his skin is as white as a woman's, his cheeks are faintly flushed, and with a smile, he intently watches the hands of the white-haired old man swinging the hoe. Judging solely by his expression, he looks like an ordinary person, but if you look closely into his eyes, their gleam is pure, quietly clear as if he were a princess raised in a secluded chamber. This is a characteristic that certain mental patients display before returning to sanity or just before having an attack, and it is a gaze that is particularly difficult to distinguish even in Dr. Masaki's constant assessments of true madness and false madness.

Next, let's zoom in on the girl standing far behind the old man and the young man. She is as pale as a ghost, with a thin, freckled face. Her reddish-brown hair is down, and she stands at the edge of the field the old man made, planting various things with her delicate hands. She plants paulownia leaves, withered pine branches, bamboo fragments, broken roof tiles, and sometimes even green grass she found somewhere. However, since the other person's field is a ridge of smooth white sand, she diligently re-erects the bamboo sticks that are about to fall over. Some might think she should just stick them into the sand instead of going through such trouble, but that's a layman's thought. She believes the roof tiles and bamboo sticks are ordinary flower seedlings, so she never handles them roughly. The way she carefully covers their bases with sand shows her pure heart. However, when the bamboo sticks she painstakingly cared for fall over repeatedly, she throws a tantrum and tears them out like soft grass seedlings, discarding them. You might wonder how such terrifying strength comes from those slender arms, but in fact, any gentle woman possesses that much strength. It's just that humans are more refined and weaker than other animals, and women, in particular, have accumulated such suggestions over generations, resulting in their inability to exert their strength. However, when one's mind becomes abnormal or when faced with major events like a great earthquake or fire, those suggestions are temporarily broken, and one can regain their original strength. This girl is now demonstrating that very proof. I apologize for the digression, but I specifically added this as a practical example that inversely proves Dr. Masaki's "psychological heredity."

Next, we have a small man with a burr cut, wearing a torn morning coat, giving a speech towards the red brick wall on the east side, directly opposite the group of the old man, the young man, and the girl.

“...Bodhidharma faced the wall for nine years and was known as the Bear of Shaolin. Therefore, we will face the wall for nine years to hone our arguments, break down the corrupt political world, and make all inequalities equal... in the coming era of universal suffrage... that is, we...”

he shouted loudly, then, as if remembering, raised his right hand high and moved it from side to side.

Behind him, a strangely dressed woman passes by. She is truly vulgar, a middle-aged woman with a protruding jaw and thick makeup all over her face. With the hem of her kimono revealing bare feet, dragging a tattered maru-obi, she wears a crown-shaped object made of cardboard painted with red ink, created by who knows whom, on her disheveled hair. Tilting her head back to keep it from falling, she struts back and forth like a queen, glaring left and right, a truly peculiar sight.

Every time that woman crosses in front, the bearded giant prostrating himself at the base of the paulownia tree, repeatedly offering worship, is the principal of an elementary school in Nagasaki. The faith of generations of Christians reached its peak in this man, and when he was admitted to the hospital, he carved sacred images on fragments of bricks and roof tiles, making his fellow patients worship them. But now, he believes her to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, shedding tears of emotion.

Afterward, the girl bouncing around the prostrating bearded man was a second-year student at a girls' high school. She was originally shy and melancholic but possessed an extraordinary talent for art. However, one day she suddenly developed early-onset dementia. When Director Masaki asked her name upon her admission, she reportedly replied, "I am a dance maniac... Anna Pavlova," making her a particularly charming presence in the hospital. She always danced around while singing her self-composed songs.

“When I look at the blue sky,

White clouds are high,

Black clouds are low,

Lining up amicably,

They drift and float away.

Fura-ra fura-ra fu—ra-ra…

If I were to line up with them,

And drift and float along,

I’d bump into a red wall.

Fura-ra fura-ra fu—ra-ra…

Fura-ra fura-ra fu—ra-ra…”

Meanwhile, two craftsmen-like men in their forties, arm in arm in a friendly manner, were pacing back and forth at a right angle to the older woman from earlier. The man on the right seemed to represent sightseeing in Tokyo, and the man on the left, an expedition to the South Pole, and they were apparently in complete agreement, continuing their grand journey. It was truly a handful. And the plump old woman sitting near the entrance, judging by the elegant pattern of her kimono, could be presumed to be of considerable status, but she herself didn't seem to intend it that way, always dressed as if living in a slum, diligently picking and crushing non-existent lice and discarding them. Suddenly, she untied her obi, stripped naked, and began to loudly beat her kimono. Each time, the orator, the two craftsmen, and the schoolgirl would interrupt their fits of psychological heredity, point fingers, widen their eyes, and laugh holding their stomachs.

Now, among those who have observed the actions of these madmen, some may have been surprised. "What is this? They're just ordinary madmen. This isn't limited to this liberation treatment facility. You can see scenes like this in any mental hospital's walking area. I thought that a madman's liberation treatment facility would involve hundreds or thousands of madmen gathered in a large area, performing every conceivable kind of madness, but this is utterly disappointing. First of all, I don't understand at all where the 'psychological heredity' comes into play." There will surely be those who feel disappointment, discouragement, contempt, or derision. However, please wait patiently. To tell the truth, these individuals are sufficient for the psychological heredity experiments related to Dr. Masaki's research. If we can simply explain through film how the madness of two or three of these individuals is produced by psychological heredity, the causes of mental abnormalities worldwide will become clear. These ten psychiatric patients are representative individuals chosen from the countless madmen on earth, and they can be called global specimens who have appeared to personally demonstrate the principles of psychological heredity based on Dr. Masaki's research over the past twenty years.

The first person I would like to introduce is the white-haired old man tilling a field beside the red brick wall. This old man's name is Hachimaki Gisaku. His ancestor five generations back, that is, Gisaku's great-great-grandfather, was a renowned wealthy farmer who lived in Torikai Village, a castle town in Fukuoka, and his name was Giju, the same as his descendant. Giju was naturally left-handed, but he possessed extraordinary physical strength and vitality, and he built a large fortune with just a single hoe during his lifetime. He was a figure of rags-to-riches legend, said to have been granted the surname Hachimaki and the right to carry a sword by Lord Kuroda, the feudal lord.

Now, as for why he was given such a peculiar surname, this hachimaki was originally his nickname when he was young. It came from the fact that he always wore a hachimaki made of a hand towel above his eyebrows when working in the fields, as he begrudged the time it took to wipe away sweat. This shows how intensely he worked. He would only rest once between dawn and dusk. In the turret of Maizuru Castle in Fukuoka, when the noon drum boomed, he would immediately drop his hoe and go to a nearby embankment, the shade of a tree in a grassland, or under an eaves to eat his bento. During that time, for about half an hour, or about an hour, he would take a nap, and when he woke up, he would continue working until sunset. It was truly a magnificent feat. Perhaps this man also had a kind of obsessive personality. It is said that the white horizontal mark of the hachimaki left on his reddish-black forehead did not disappear even after he passed away. It was the same when he appeared before his lord; when a flustered attendant by his side said, "Here, here, take off your hachimaki," the lord was greatly amused and bestowed upon him this surname, making it an honorable hachimaki.

However, as time passed, and it came to this old man Gisaku, who was the fifth generation from Hachimaki Giemon, that honorable hachimaki, his left-handedness, and his great fortune were all lost somewhere, and he was reduced to a craftsman at a brush shop, a specialty of Hakata. Then, having reached old age and with his eyes blurred, he could no longer handle fine brush hairs, leading to unemployment. Distressed by this, he developed a mental illness and, about a week ago, was taken to the university, thus becoming a pitiful figure.

A strange thing happened. It was not long after Dr. Masaki entered the liberation therapy ward to investigate the reason for this old man's madness, that is, the content of his psychological heredity. When he found a hoe in a corner of the ward, which a janitor had left behind after killing a snake, he immediately began to imitate his ancestor. He did not wear a headband, but as you can see, he never wiped away sweat from the very beginning. Also, the hand holding the hoe was his left hand, the exact opposite of before his madness. At the same time as the noon gun fired at twelve o'clock, he threw down the hoe and returned to his room, quickly finished his meal, and lay down on the bed, looking as if he were the reincarnation of Giju, five generations ago. However, once he fell asleep, perhaps due to severe fatigue, he slept soundly until the next morning and ate nothing for dinner. He was probably dreaming that he was his great-great-grandfather Giju, building a great fortune.

...This is the first example of psychological heredity... If you have any questions, please feel free to raise your hand.

Next, I will introduce the small man in a tattered morning coat who is giving a speech facing a red brick wall. His right hand is waving in the air, and his left hand is in a posture as if supporting something. And the words he uses in his speech are a valuable reference.

"...This is a great barrier lying in the path of the Empire. If superficial ideologies run rampant as they do today, and politics of whitewashing and deception continue, the unity of us, the Japanese people, will, like a mud wall without straw, inevitably crumble before long due to the winds and rains of foreign ideologies..."

How about that? As you've heard from the beginning, in Professor Frock's speech about the chestnut burr, the word "wall" and words related to "wall" appear repeatedly. Actually, this short man's maternal grandfather was a master plasterer for the Kuroda domain... Don't laugh. This isn't a rakugo story... One day, while his grandfather was working on the keep tower of Fukuoka Castle, he accidentally slipped, fell, and died a tragic death. However, his grandfather was originally proud of his agility in everything he did, and when he was re-plastering the roof of the keep's base, the lord would watch his daring feats through a telescope. Furthermore, he had a habit of working with extremely simplified scaffolding, so while his work was completed quickly, he often misstepped or got caught midway, endangering his life, yet he always miraculously survived.

However, I wonder how old he was when he climbed to the very top of the castle tower's roof and, while working in the lord's telescope, carelessly turned his back to the lord. An official looking up from below, saying something unnecessary, shouted loudly, "Watch out! The main keep is watching you!" This probably made him freeze. Then, he slipped and tumbled down several jō of stone wall, shattering into a thousand pieces. Since then, the plasterer's trade in that family died out. However, when the blood of that grandfather was passed down through his daughter to this small man in the morning coat, something terrifying happened. Until his middle school days, this man occasionally had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night in a daze, shouting, "Help me!" Each time, his family would be surprised and ask, "What's wrong?" He would reportedly say, "I felt like I was falling headfirst from a high roof or a place like above the clouds." How strange! Even in what appears to be a mild episode of somnambulism to an ordinary person, the memory of the intense terror of the moments when an ancestor many generations ago repeatedly gasped "Hah!" is being reproduced. Is this not a wondrous example of psychological heredity? No, this is not limited to the man giving this speech. Generally, we sometimes feel as if we are falling from a high place during sleep and wake up with a start, but even this is not particularly strange when viewed in light of this example. No one can doubt that the memory of the painful idea in those moments of "Oh no!" or "I'm going to die," which our parents and grandparents, and indeed anyone, must have experienced once or twice, has been transmitted to us descendants as psychological heredity.

Are there any questions?

One day, an elderly woman wearing a cardboard crown walked through the town, pacing back and forth. She was the daughter of a townhouse family, and had once been sold as a geisha. Apparently, she had earned a considerable sum and was soon to marry a young banker. However, the banker's parents were old-fashioned and stubborn, and would not allow her to be accepted as a legitimate wife due to "differences in social status." She felt a deep sense of resentment about this.

At a banquet, she snapped at her first customer, "How dare you offer me a cup, you insolent man," and threw the cup at him. In the process, she broke a shamisen by stepping on it. She was then carried to a sickroom. This incident was part of her exhilarating romance.

However, times have changed, and new ideas are spreading in the world today. Especially for someone like her, who is engaged in a frivolous profession, it might seem a bit narrow-minded to be so upset by such a thing. However, considering the horror of "psychological heredity" deep within her heart, it is understandable that the words "differences in social status" dealt a deeper blow than merely hurting her pride. Her attitude after the onset of her illness clearly demonstrates this.

She appeared very elegant, with her hip movements, use of her eyes, and even her gait resembling those of a high-class woman. In fact, her family lineage was that of a failed impoverished noble family, the Nabatori Kuge of Kyoto, before the Meiji Restoration, and her mental abnormality served to prove this. Her registered family name, "Kiyohara," was also not typical of a commoner. In other words, before the onset of her illness, she probably behaved like a townhouse daughter, but once she developed a mental abnormality, she completely forgot recent townhouse customs and began to express the aristocratic spirit of her ancestors directly.

"Yes, do you have a question? Please."

"I see, you're absolutely right. So 'psychological heredity' is just that... and Dr. Masaki is risking his life for research of that caliber... is that what you mean?"

"My apologies. I anticipated that question would arise, so the film editor, being considerate, has arranged for Dr. Masaki, the discoverer of psychological heredity, to appear on screen next and give a lecture on your current question. When Dr. Masaki, more famous than Einstein or Steinach as the 'mad doctor' of Kyushu University, appears on screen, I hope you will greet him with applause. This is because he himself is very fond of applause and enjoyed having students applaud even during his lectures."

"What? You can't hear if you clap from inside the screen? That's true, but it's strange because you can hear it. Seeing is believing, you'll understand if you try clapping."

"Now, this is the renowned Professor of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Kyushu Imperial University, Dr. Keiji Masaki. The background is the auditorium of the main building of the Psychiatry Department at Kyushu Imperial University, and he is wearing a white medical coat, which is how he typically appears during lectures."

He was a small man, only about five feet one inch tall, with a dark complexion. His round, salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and large pince-nez spectacles gleamed on either side of his high nose. Beneath them were sharp eyes, and his mouth was set in a straight line. With a skeletal expression, he stood before the table, surveyed everyone, and then smiled, revealing his full dentures. His appearance was full of vigor, courage, and wisdom.

"Oh dear, I can't have you laughing like that. A question? Yes, what is it?"

"Are the Dr. Masaki on the screen and I the same person or different people?"

"Ahahaha, this is a mistake. I'll quickly withdraw and let the Dr. Masaki on the screen explain."

[Dr. Masaki on the projection screen speaks according to his gestures]

"Ahem... ahem... It is the honor of my life and my utmost satisfaction to meet all you new recruits across the land on this silver screen. You are people who live in a world of common sense, yet yearn for a world of the unconventional. Currently, with trains and steamships reaching every corner of the earth, and automobiles and airplanes flying everywhere, you must be tired of the common sense of modern society, such as social conventions, superstitions about science, imitation of foreign things, and dead moral concepts. And with a heart that seeks the truth of a varied and free life, that is, with overflowing curiosity, if you observe my research project, the experiment of 'psychological heredity,' you will immediately understand. You will be able to accept without any difficulty the fact of what power ordinary mental patients are controlled by and what they are doing."

"Furthermore, your curiosity was not satisfied with just that, and you asked a question that took another step forward: 'Is psychological heredity all there is?' Your minds possess a clarity equal to, or even greater than, my twenty years of research. Thank you. It's still too early for applause, but on this point, I particularly wish to express my deep respect and gratitude."