Dogra Magra (26/47)

by Hisashi Yumeno

None of Nijino-san's works remain in my possession. At that time, I didn't understand the value of such a luxury, so I thought it was a waste of effort. The only piece I ever exhibited was a small fukusa, about five sun square, which took me about two months to make for my school's exhibition. However, because I priced it at twenty yen, it remained unsold. Thinking about it now, it would have been a big deal if I still had it. I truly regret not having learned more.

Nijino-san not only had wonderful skill, but she also wrote Ono Gado-san's characters much more beautifully than the examples. She often wrote characters for my apprentices' embroidery, and she was also very good at drawing. Among the preliminary sketches I have, most of the good ones were copied by her. However, after coming for about half a year, she suddenly disappeared. If you ask if there were any signs of pregnancy at that time... no, she was petite, so it would have been immediately noticeable. I also heard a rumor that that playboy abandoned Nijino-san and ran away... is that really true?

Are you referring to the house I lived in back then? My memory is a bit vague about that... All the students from that time are now women close to forty. Ahaha. There are also rumors that that man supposedly killed Ms. Nijino... Oh, how scary! What a waste to lose such a beautiful person... Speaking of which, something comes to mind. This is something I shouldn't tell anyone, but Ms. Nijino was very fond of men, and apparently, two or three university students were dumped by her. Of course, this is just a rumor. We didn't know where Ms. Nijino's house was back then either; she would come from the east or the west, and her way home was always the same, so no one really knew her true home. At my cram school, we never allowed anyone with bad conduct, but she was diligent and good at her job, so we never particularly saw her as a problem. I don't have any photos, and it's a bit too old to talk about grudges from back then. Ahaha.

Are you saying that's Mr. Oh from that famous labyrinth incident? Oh dear. How did you know Ms. Nijino was Mr. Oh? Are you saying she confided in the proprietress of a bag shop in Tokyo? But she didn't know the man's name... Is that so? Please keep this confidential. Et cetera.

The gist of the incident report regarding Ichiro Kure's first seizure is entirely contained within the three aforementioned fragments, so I will omit the details. However, the third reference, "Ms. Matsumura's Fragment," falls completely outside the scope necessary for reference to what I call "Ichiro Kure's first seizure." Nevertheless, I include it here out of respect for Mr. W's assertion, who compiled this record, and as evidence that the judicial authorities' investigation policy concerning the incident and the articles in various newspapers at the time were implicitly influenced by Mr. W's opinion.

Summary of Mr. W's Opinion

When I first read about this incident in the newspaper, I thought it might be a good example of a very rare case of somnambulism, so I traveled there. This Chokuhō region was originally the center of the Chikuho coalfield and is known as the home of some of Japan's most notorious murder cases. As a result, the police's search policy was simple and crude, and the evidence at the scene was completely disturbed the day after the incident, making a thorough investigation impossible. However, even so, by synthesizing the situation at the scene, the aforementioned conversations, the memories of police officials, and local rumors, I was able to identify the following characteristics of this incident.

(A) Inside the women's cram school, the scene of the crime, there were traces related to Wu Yiláng's mother and child and the students. The bamboo support rod, approximately one inch in diameter and four feet one inch long, which was the only lock for the back door, had fallen off onto the dirt floor for an unknown reason. Other than that, no fingerprints or footprints of the culprit were found, and it is unknown whether they were wiped away. Furthermore, this support rod was in a position where it could be removed by inserting a finger if the sliding wooden door was pushed hard from the outside. The part of the sliding wooden door's edge that came into contact with the support rod had been newly covered with a zinc plate to prevent wear, but it is speculated that this, conversely, caused the support rod to fall off with minimal force.

(B) The victim, Chiyoko, was strangled from behind with a silk sash between 2 and 3 AM that night. She kicked away her bedding and rolled around on the tatami mat, showing signs of struggling. She died leaving severe traces of agony, and was then carried to the stairs, hung from the handrail with a thin sash, and positioned facing the bottom of the stairs to make it appear as if she had committed suicide by hanging. Moreover, the marks indicating strangulation were clearly observed to be double or triple at the time of the crime. Despite this, the means used to feign suicide, while seemingly a shallow concealment at first glance, is actually considered a very clever method to mislead the identification of the culprit by exploiting the illusion created by the contradictory actions when compared with the culprit's actions to erase other fingerprints and so on.

Furthermore, nothing was left in the victim's hands or elsewhere. It is also suspected that she may have been lightly anesthetized.

Moreover, the obi sash, which was recognized as the instrument of the crime at the time, subsequently passed through the hands of several police officers, making it impossible to discover any evidence related to the culprit.

(C) It can be inferred from the various post-procedural symptoms evident in his statements that Oh Il-rang was subjected to anesthesia.

(D) Approximately forty hours after death, the body was dissected by me in the backyard of the girls' school, in the presence of Medical Doctor Funaki. The results showed no recent signs of sexual intercourse, and only traces of a past pregnancy were confirmed in the uterus.

Based on the above facts, it is extremely difficult to make any inferences about the perpetrator or the motive for the crime. However, it is presumed that the perpetrator possesses considerable knowledge, is accustomed to using anesthetics, is thoughtful, lacks confidence in their physical strength, and did not wish for the crime to extend to Oh Il-rang. The subsequent investigation policy initially proceeded based on this presumption, leading to Oh Il-rang's release. However, this policy was eventually abandoned again, transitioning to a purely speculative search, which yielded nothing, leaving the case unresolved in a labyrinth.

Since this case was not directly investigated by Masaki, the author, there are some inconveniences in providing psychoscientific observations and explanations. However, observing the various characteristics of this case based on Mr. W's records, which he investigated from his unique forensic perspective, there is no doubt that the truth of the incident lies in a "psychological genetic seizure" that is utterly beyond judgment within the scope of modern scientific knowledge and common sense. It is the most prominent example of what the author calls a "crime without a culprit." Every single phenomenon can be pointed out and demonstrated to show that Mr. W's initial intuition was correct. The fact that Mr. W did not abandon his doubts on this point even after the incident and recorded valuable conversations demonstrates the thoroughness of his preparation, and one cannot help but express respect.

Here, through Mr. W's observations and three conversations, the observation points for investigating the truth of this incident are listed below.

【1】Wu Ichiro's Personality and Sexual Life

Wu Ichiro was a boy of 16 years and 4 months at the time. Raised in a home full of maternal love and having many opportunities to interact with young women, he was a gentle, intelligent, and well-developed boy. Even before the incident, he already possessed sufficient sexual maturity, but due to the purity of his maternal love and the clarity of his own mind, his character had been purified, so he did not have the psychological defect of physically expressing it. It is recognized that he maintained his innocent virginity. His shyness when listening to songs by the opposite sex indicates a characteristic of boys at that time. Furthermore, the lovely frankness seen in his conversations, and the fact that he did not feel fear regarding his own position even while understanding why he was being pointed out as the culprit, suggest that he led a pure and innocent virginal life. This estimation of his age and sexual life is a crucial foundation that will greatly influence the psychoscientific observations regarding this incident, and thus particular attention is drawn to it first.

【2】Suggestion that Induced the Somnambulistic State

Oh Ichiro's confession that he awoke around 1 AM on the night of the incident and, upon seeing his mother's sleeping face, felt an unusual beauty, corroborates the aforementioned observations and explains the nature of Oh Ichiro's psychogenetic seizure, or somnambulism, that night. Considering that nocturnal arousal is deeply connected to heightened sexual impulses, it is clear that Oh Ichiro's mental state at the time had reached the climax of some kind of crisis. This crisis must have been significantly alleviated when he went downstairs to relieve himself and then returned to the second floor. It is also easy to imagine that seeing his mother, Chiyoko, the object of his stimulation, with her back turned, caused no small amount of disillusionment, and he returned to his usual composure and went to sleep. However, these temporarily suppressed sexual impulses, once Oh Ichiro fell into a deep sleep, stimulated the formidable psychogenesis latent in his unconscious, inducing a state of somnambulism. And that this ultimately led to such a heinous act can be understood in light of the reasons stated in the following sections.

[3] The Relationship Between Oh Ichiro's First Awakening and Somnambulism

The fact that Go Ichiro woke up in the middle of the night that night was an unusual event he had rarely experienced before. This can be considered a sign indicating the existence of a later somnambulistic state. However, before clarifying this reason, there is something that must be considered. It is believed that the sound of the back door's support bar falling was the cause of Go Ichiro's first awakening. He himself believes this, but this is a misunderstanding that confuses sensory perception during sleep with perceptual action during wakefulness, and it must be considered a very hasty judgment. This is because even if one believes they woke up immediately after hearing some sound during sleep, in reality, several minutes or even one or two hours of sleep often pass in between. In particular, the case where one is called many times while oversleeping in the morning but falls back into a deep sleep again, and finally wakes up with a single call, is generally known. The error in the time elapsed between the sound felt during sleep and the awakening stimulated by it can be sufficiently proven by this example. Furthermore, there are many cases where one clearly perceives a sound in a dream and wakes up, only to find out through subsequent calm examination that there was nothing. From this, acknowledging a necessary causal relationship between the sound of the support bar falling and Go Ichiro's awakening is a very dangerous act in the progress of accurate reasoning, and it can be said that it is more natural to observe these two phenomena as completely unrelated. Moreover, it is no exaggeration to say that it is very adventurous and unreasonable to directly connect Go Ichiro's abnormal feelings after waking up with the short-sighted conclusion that someone from outside invaded and committed this heinous act while administering an anesthetic.

Regarding the sounds in dreams that were mistakenly identified as falling supports, there is important research material that should be presented separately. However, since this would require extensive examples and very detailed psychological explanations, I will only briefly touch upon it here, limiting myself to a few notable instances where "non-existent sounds are perceived in dreams" that are significant enough to disrupt sleep itself.

Events in a dream can suddenly plunge into an infinitely deep void. For example, the moment one steps off the edge of the world or falls into a dark valley.

Two psychological phenomena progressing in a dream can also suddenly intersect or collide. For instance, the moment one is discovered by the person they feared while secretly working, or the moment a ship or car, whose collision was feared, suddenly changes course and collides right before one's eyes.

Furthermore, events progressing in a dream can suddenly transform into a completely unexpected, opposite psychological object. For example, the moment one discovers that a close friend is a wicked person, or a companion suddenly transforms into a terrifying entity, or objects in a comfortable room or flowers in a pleasant garden change into the forms one fears most.

What these observations reveal is that the true nature of the unreal sounds perceived in dreams is none other than this: the sudden mental shifts of surprise, fear, or joy experienced during the progression of a dream are very similar to the sudden mental shifts experienced when unexpectedly struck by a loud sound during wakefulness. This similarity leads to an inverse illusion, where these shifts are perceived as a single sound.

When considering this case, it is also conceivable that Oh Il-rang's initial awakening was caused by a terrifying psychological state at the moment when the progression of a dream, depicted by the sexual impulses that had filled his mind just before, intersected with an illusion symbolizing conscientious impulses, leading to an auditory hallucination. If this hypothesis is accepted, the fact that Oh Il-rang, who awoke amidst a crisis of sexual impulses, felt an unusual beauty in his mother's sleeping face, is a very natural psychological outcome and can be seen as a pure and unadulterated confession regarding the secret mental experiences of a young virgin, especially during the spring season. Furthermore, the possibility that actions in a dream, triggered by the same impulses, occurred during his subsequent deep sleep would be even more strongly supported.

Moreover, the fact that the support pole fell could be a means of concealing an action unconsciously performed by the individual in a dream. It is not uncommon for somnambulists to commit crimes, and considering that such an act is a laughably shallow method, it becomes clear that the question is not unnatural. It is also possible that it was a coincidence: someone trying to enter from outside accidentally dropped the support pole, and then fled when Oh Il-rang came down while they were observing the situation. However, such questions should be held in abeyance due to insufficient investigation.

Considering that the motive for the atrocity, which should be the fundamental explanation for this incident, remains unknown to this day, and taking into account the investigation result stating that "no other facts were recognized within the Tsukushi Women's Academy apart from those concerning Wu Yichirō and his mother, and the female students," the simplest and most appropriate understanding of the truth of this incident is that Wu Yichirō experienced a somnambulistic seizure against his mother. This also explains why other theories about perpetrators are illusions resulting from forcibly attempting to assume a third party. That is, Wu Yichirō is presumed to have fallen into a deep sleep while harboring the aforementioned sexual impulses, and as a result of the psychological seizure triggered by this, he entered a somnambulistic state. Following the desires of the dream that appeared in his consciousness, he picked up the victim's obi, which was in front of him, and committed the atrocity against the woman who was, in fact, his mother. Subsequently, as will be described, after continuing academically rare somnambulistic behavior, he fell asleep again. This atrocity was something that his brain's functions, that is, conscious mental activity, performed by the reflexive interaction between all cells acting as a substitute for the brain, directly connected to the five senses, seeing, hearing, judging, and executing, while conscious mental activity was suspended due to deep sleep, leaving almost no trace of memory after awakening. Therefore, it was believed that all actions requiring judgment were performed only by conscious mental activity, leading to the aforementioned speculative error of assuming a hypothetical perpetrator. Even from the perspective of the current level of development in scientific knowledge, this can be said to be an unavoidable conclusion.

In the somnambulistic state of Wu Yi-lang, which should be studied in light of this incident, the only seizure directly related to the psychological content triggered by the second attack was this... hanging... and subsequent somnambulism can be said to be rather tangential. However, the true nature of the subsequent tangential somnambulism is truly rare in academic circles and holds extremely high research value in psychiatric science. Since no other comparable reference cases can be found, I reluctantly digress a little, but I particularly wish to describe it here to clarify that the truth of this incident is consistent with Wu Yi-lang's somnambulistic seizures.

Next, the second stage of somnambulism following the hanging... the manipulation of the corpse.

Despite clear signs of the victim struggling on the floor and strangulation marks, the attempt to make it look like a hanging seemed like a shallow attempt to conceal the crime. However, this was not actually the case. While it is reasonable to suspect that the intelligence of the hypothetical third party, presumed to be the culprit, is extraordinary, I believe that this is an unnatural observation that overthinks the situation too much.

This is because this phenomenon indicates that, by chance, the peculiar behavior characteristic of a somnambulistic state occurred in the same place that night. I find nothing unnatural in admitting that what the author refers to as "corpse manipulation" was performed by Ichiro Kure that night. Rather, the explanation for this phenomenon is concise and appropriate, leaving no room for doubt.

However, there are almost no clear records from ancient times regarding the phenomenon of corpse manipulation during somnambulism. The only records are those passed down among peoples deeply interested in such supernatural phenomena, and those scattered in the legends of superstitious Eastern peoples. Even these records are not based on actual eyewitness accounts, but are merely essays written by monks or doctors with unique minds who recorded what they heard from others. Furthermore, much of their content consists of misconceptions or miscommunications regarding using corpses to threaten people, attempting to move the dead by applying electricity, or committing evil deeds by impersonating the dead, making it difficult to grasp the truth.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the manipulation of corpses has existed since ancient times. Examining the content of strange tales in China, India, and Japan, such as those of "shishin" (corpse gods), "shiki" (corpse demons), and "kasha" (fire chariots), one can infer from the perspectives of natural science and mental science that these types of somnambulistic acts, namely corpse manipulation, are misinterpretations.

The details of this fact will be compiled and researched as a "Yokai Chapter" in the future, and the materials are currently being organized. To summarize a part of it, originally, these strange phenomena called shishin, shiki, and kasha tended to be believed to be the work of mysterious animals such as foxes, cats, crows, or owls. However, this is not actually the case. When considering the situation of corpse manipulation based on these legendary records, there is first a description of a corpse, which had been lying quietly in a coffin or on the floor, suddenly standing up and running through the void. Subsequently, the deceased, with closed eyes and hair and hands hanging limply, performs bizarre shapes and movements as if someone is manipulating them, such as standing on their head, doing somersaults, standing still at an angle, walking, rolling, being suspended in mid-air, being inverted, rotating, bending backward, falling like a Buddha, falling backward, jumping up, or falling down.

When calmly observing this depiction, one realizes that these shapes and movements closely resemble an innocent child toying with dolls or living creatures, enjoying performing all sorts of cruel postures and actions. The child almost forgets that they are manipulating things in this play, mistaking it as if the dolls are moving of their own will, and this psychology of satisfying cruelty can be seen in our daily lives. It is believed that this psychology of toying with living or pseudo-living creatures is a transformed version of the instinct to toy with prey that remains genetically among current carnivorous animals and insects, stemming from the heightened sense of satisfaction and victory our human ancestors felt when they captured or defeated prey or enemies in their savage and ignorant era.

Next, to explain the above consideration concretely by comparing it with facts, first, if someone who attended a dying patient until the end, or a person who handled a corpse, falls into a deep sleep, especially due to fatigue or a sense of relief from nursing, the profound suggestion received from that corpse can induce the aforementioned dream-walking psychology with cruelty, leading them to take out an unburied or already buried corpse and toy with it. It is natural that they hardly remember having laid hands on it, and even when they are semi-conscious in a dazed state, they do not think they are laying hands on it, just as a child toys with a doll. They mistake it as if the corpse itself is moving, and while believing it to be a kind of nightmare, they toy with the corpse, abandon it somewhere, or return it to its coffin before going back to bed. And the next morning, discovering the displacement or loss of the corpse, they are surprised and interpret it as the work of a phantom, which undoubtedly forms the origin of such legends.

Thus, the fact that most legends and oral traditions are transmitted with trivial misfortunes of those close to a corpse, or with a single corpse and one close attendant as their subject, makes it understandable that the protagonist of such supernatural phenomena is not the corpse itself or other beast-demons, but rather the somnambulism of the person sleeping nearby. The modern custom of holding wakes with many people is known through the experience of many people since ancient times to be very effective in preventing this kind of supernatural phenomenon, and it is believed to prove today what has been unconsciously confirmed. Furthermore, the custom of placing a bladed weapon by the head of the deceased is also thought to have originated because the light and shape of the blade visually stimulated and were effective in breaking the hallucinations of this type of somnambulist. In any case, the existence of this somnambulistic state of "corpse manipulation" is beyond doubt, and it is self-evident that a considerable number of such somnambulistic states were realized by those close to corpses, especially before the custom of wakes and the popularity of cremation.