I wonder what Kisaragi is up to these days. Please tell me if you know how to get a hold of her. Honey, you should try to cheer her up too.”
I was starting to feel queasy at that point. I got a grip on myself and read Kisaragi’s essay.
We are now terrorized in two ways. First, as you know, we live in terror that someone will suddenly kill us. The other is the terror that someday we ourselves might kill another person, that we might want to kill, or that we might inadvertently cause the death of another. I cannot say for certain that I will never end up in the killer’s shoes.
The reason is that I don’t want to be killed. However, I am not confident I can prevent that from happening. Since I don’t believe I can prevent it, I’m always preparing for the eventuality of an attack, and I’m thinking ahead to anticipate every possible scenario twenty-four hours a day. And no matter what I prepare as a countermeasure or exit strategy, I give up in the end, thinking that when someone wants to kill me, I’m going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s as if I’m already dead in a way. It’s not just me though. Isn’t it the same for all of us? And I’m not talking about the natural course of things or how every human being dies someday.
Is there any difference between your own murder and the murder of another if your death is set in stone? “I don’t care if I die” becomes “I don’t care if I’m killed,” and “I don’t care if I’m killed” becomes “I don’t care if I kill,” so “I want to die” equals “I want to be killed” equals “I want to kill.” They are all just variations on the same theme. My reality is that death is not taboo, negative, evil, or dark regardless of if I’m killed or I kill myself. Rather, death is as usual an occurrence as breathing or going to the bathroom, and no matter how important a person might be, no one has the authority to stop or challenge that. It all depends on how you see it.
It seems like even though we really do not want to die, we are making a mad dash straight at death anyway.
How has this happened?
I don’t have the answer. A lot of people are saying different things, but none of it rings true. Or at least that is how I feel. We have to find the brakes to stop this breakneck speed race, because the stakes are life and death.
As I said at the outset, I cannot say for certain that I will not end up a killer. I am scared of myself, and I do not trust myself. And I definitely do not trust other people either. I recently broke up with my boyfriend. I was crazy about him and trusted him. But it takes an incredible amount of energy and work, not to mention patience and creativity, in order not to die together, but to live together with another person. I am too tired to muster up the will to try anymore. I doubt I’ll ever want to try building a life with another person again. It’s like I may as well die, and that’s okay. You could easily call this a cop-out, and surely there are plenty of people who can criticize me.
In this depleted state, I am too tired to try not to be killed.
This is reality as I see it. I want you all to take a cold, hard look at this reality and resist the urge to look away. I don’t want all our energy to be invested in not being killed. That’s why I wrote this.
I had a hunch that Kisaragi wrote this piece to coincide with the anniversary of Miko and Inoue’s deaths. I quickly called her cell phone, but the number was no longer in service. And when I sent her an email message, it bounced back to me.
Then I tried calling Udzuki, who sounded really angry.
“She was alive at least up til she wrote that crap.”
“She was really that close to dying?”
“Fuck if I know. All of a sudden I had no clue what was going on inside her. Well, she was full of shit I didn’t understand before, but even what I did understand disintegrated until I couldn’t even recognize it anymore.”
“Was it always that way after you came down from the mountain?”
“What’s with the fucking inquisition? What’s done is done.”
“I’m sorry. But I really need to find Kisaragi.”
“We broke up at the beginning of the year. She said she wanted to be by herself since she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t end up in a love suicide with me. I tried to say that was okay and that we could work together to make sure that never happened, but she was like, no, it’s useless for me to try and live with someone else until I fix what’s wrong with myself. Or something like that. Then she left. And that’s why I don’t know where the hell she is, okay? Even if I did, I have nothing to say to her. You wanna tell me how I’m supposed to communicate with someone who closes herself off and shuts me out like that?”
“Are you living by yourself in the same house?”
“No. I have a part-time job and lodging at an inn in Bôsô.”
“If that’s the case, why don’t you come back here?”
“I’ll think about it after I save up some cash.”
I couldn’t say he didn’t need any money. Mokuren’s policy was that everyone who stayed here had to pay the pro-rated amount for one month’s actual upkeep costs for the lodge plus board. Udzuki used to be able to contribute his share in work though, and he could stay on for a while without any significant savings, so that really couldn’t have been the problem for him.
Next I showed the clipping to Mokuren and asked whether she thought we should contact the newspaper. Her initial response was, “That’s not like her to send a letter to the editor.” After she thought about it for a while, she simply said “leave it to me” and took the clipping.
Rather than thinking through a plan with me, Mokuren preferred to go it alone, in keeping with her self-righteous personality. As much as she got around in high school, I still couldn’t stop trusting her. Even now I still trust her for all the reasons I’ve described before.
I was unnerved by what Mokuren correctly pointed out as Kisaragi’s uncharacteristic behavior in sending that piece to the newspaper. Even more than the actual contents, the act itself seemed to have meaning, but when I tried to analyze that meaning, I felt sick, as if my body was infected and putrefying. Starting with Inoue’s document, there have been online diaries or manifestos, claims of responsibility for crimes sent to the media, and all sorts of other unilateral bombardments of personal beliefs on the public. None of this is followed by an interest in audience responses or critiques, but instead by straightaway actions to match the words, which makes the unidirectional feeling even stronger. Kisaragi sent her opinion to a national newspaper, so you can’t help but wonder what she wanted to achieve. Maybe Mokuren had a firm handle on that and was thinking of ways to respond. If so, what more could I do than leave things to her? With that in mind, I tried my best not to worry.
But my bad feelings were dead-on. In mid-April, around one week after Kisaragi’s essay appeared, a homicide that was not part of a love suicide occurred. In a Nagoya college neighborhood, a student saw his friend walking up ahead and ran to catch up with him. When he made it, he patted his friend on the shoulder, at which point his friend turned around and stabbed him to death.
There were signs before that something like that might happen. People were overreacting if someone just brushed up against their shoulder or arm on the train. They would shove or even brandish a weapon at whoever had inadvertently done the touching, and the number of such cases resulting in bloody brawls had increased. And sometimes simply walking in the same direction as another person even in a residential neighborhood would end in trouble. The upshot of all this was a widespread aversion to other people and rampant paranoid hostility in crowded places.
In court, the student who stabbed his friend claimed he was acting in self-defense.
“Of course, I am beside myself with grief over having killed my friend with my own hands. The reality of that is more than I can bear. The profound regret and sadness I feel will never go away, nor will the voice that reminds me that I am to blame for all of this. No matter how sad I am though, I am nothing more than a traitor.
The reason why I am entering a ple
a of justifiable self-defense even while acknowledging all that is because this incident isn’t merely about me or my personal situation. I was at the mercy of powers greater than myself, the circumstances that have made it possible to kill one’s own friend. I speak to you as a traitor so that we can face the bitter contradiction and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
Frankly, I cannot say whether or not my friend had it in for me. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. Given the way things are today, how could anyone know for sure? He once let slip that he sometimes wanted to disappear. Perhaps anyone who has ever been depressed, including myself, has had such thoughts, but I can’t say that didn’t raise my suspicions.
If someone like that suddenly runs up on your from behind, there’s no way to judge whether or not they are going to kill you. The present social conditions make things hard enough, and it’s only natural to want to protect oneself and stay alert to avoid harm. At the same time, if you don’t want to die, wouldn’t you also want to avoid any actions that might be misinterpreted? Trying not to appear suspicious is one means we have of protecting ourselves after all. At a time when everyone’s nerves are rattled, making others nervous is asking for trouble.
The need for us to protect our own bodies from harm is greater now more than ever. The times demand that we expand the range of what we consider justifiable self-defense. I wasn’t killed, but is it really so crazy to think that later on someone else might have been? And then wouldn’t that other person have been killed instead of me? And were that the case, could I really feel relieved that I was spared and go on with my life? Wouldn’t I look back with a different kind of regret from the one I feel today? In that sense, don’t the times call for a broader understanding of collective self-defense?”
That passage comes from the diary he kept while in detention, which was later released as a book.
A heated debate erupted in response to his argument, because you can’t draw the line when it comes to matters of bodily danger. However, an incident that occurred during the course of his trial affected the outcome. In that case, an unarmed person was called from behind and then stabbed to death as he turned around. The court took this into consideration along with the man’s statement and handed down a not guilty verdict. That took place during an almost rainless mid-June. From sentencing to verdict was only a month and a half.
Qualifying his response to this decision as a personal opinion and not a government perspective, the Prime Minister said that in circumstances where anyone could be a possible terrorist and there were limits to the police’s ability to prevent such crimes, it was incumbent upon the people to prepare to defend themselves. He further suggested there might be concrete means of supporting such preparedness through official agencies and, at the same time, a need for amending justifiable self-defense law to include the prevention of murder.
Surprisingly, the prosecution didn’t appeal the not guilty verdict. And that’s not all. Barely a month after that case concluded, The Value of Survival, the memoirs of this same student (although by that point he’d dropped out and was an ex-student), was released by a major publishing house and became an instant bestseller. He became a household name and an over-exposed darling of the media.
Even more astounding was the fact I read his book, which my mom sent me, knowing that, once again, the writing would be completely unidirectional and the contents would have me seething.
Assuming readers would relate, he wrote the following “Preface: Dedicated to my Buddy.”
I grieve over having driven my buddy to an early death, but that grief itself is proof I am alive. The pain I carry with me connects the extreme terror of that moment when my buddy ran up on me and placed his hand on my shoulder to the awful moment when he met my blade. Without a doubt, my life was in peril then. Not in terms of whether or not my buddy might have been trying to kill me, but because I had to choose whether to live or surrender my body to the danger. It was possible I could be lucky if I risked physical danger. But it was equally possible I would die a horrible death. I stood at the edge of that cliff for a brief instant. Then I broke away from fate or chance and made up my mind to defend myself with my own hands.
My sense of being alive is stronger now because I survived that brush with fate. My newfound power and vitality make my former life seem empty. My existence is enhanced, and I feel grateful to be alive each and every day.
Surviving extreme danger might be the ultimate experience of life’s essence for human beings. The world that is truly alive is the one in which life matters. Survivors survive because we have the strength and ability it takes to survive. To put it simply, we merit being alive.
All of us are now being tested to see if we are worthy of life. Perhaps it is arrogant to think a long-neglected natural order has returned and is selecting us. I could very well die the very next minute. But all the same, I embrace life, and that is how I am able to feel the value of my own existence.
This is the meaning of having driven my buddy to his death. You might even say my buddy laid down his life to show this society crippled by fear how to live and be courageous. He wagered his body so that we could dare to stand down our fears. Of course, I know this is a self-serving explanation. My buddy’s death was senseless. And yet, I yield from it the optimism that our society might strive to be valuable, so his death will not have been in vain.
If Inoue’s document was deemed illegal, surely this text would spell legal trouble and be banned, or so I thought. But it was not seen as inciting murder in the least. Could people really not see how even if they eliminated Inoue’s document, the curse was still being passed down steadily and surely? This ex-student’s appeal for a competition for survival went beyond Inoue’s “demise of the fittest.” I can’t help feeling that this world is already turning into the other world.
Aside from deciding to increase the number of police officers a little bit and provide tax relief for self-defense, all the government did was beef up the round-the-clock police escorts for members of the executive and judicial branches, cabinet ministers, and legislators. You had to have advance clearance and still carry a picture ID to enter government offices or Parliament. The slogan “your body is yours to protect” was, in effect, a proclamation that “public institutions won’t protect you,” and the sense that “no one will protect you” only grew worse. There was a colossal self-defense boom.
The so-called petit bourgeoisie, who believed they were socially weak, broken, and losers in the struggle for survival and were being jettisoned out by the oligarchs, joined with old-guard liberal activists in angry protest against the government. The government’s blatant disregard for the protests sparked more violent forms of direct action. Lawmakers’ hometown relatives were assaulted, and police stations were burned down. The Prime Minister quickly retaliated by directing the concerned government parties to consider what was authorized under the scope of legitimate self-defense. However, it would be three years before indiscriminate love suicide and its counterpoint, random justifiable self-defense, were bundled together in the legal codes.
The rainy season came and went with several overcast days, and by early July, summer was in full swing. The heat wave that brought several days of nearly 100-degree temperatures might have played a part, but after what critics called “random justifiable self-defense” had been decriminalized, those incidents began to occur at the same rate as the indiscriminate love suicides. People avoided going out and interacting with others because, while it wasn’t necessarily on a frequent basis, whenever the occasional indiscriminate love suicide did occur, a random justifiable self-defense followed almost in retaliation. It was like a ghetto turf war complete with the drive-bys.
Unlike the first case, the trials of subsequent justifiable self-defense killers were long and drawn-out. If they were found not guilty, the “turf war” was bound to escalate, and if they were found guilty, then we’d be left to rely on an incompetent government that couldn’t control the indiscr
iminate love suicides. There was nothing anyone could do about what was, in effect, a state of lawlessness. Most people understood that and anticipated the coming of whatever future catastrophes they imagined, but no one talked about it. Rather, they remained shut in and shut up.
I was exhausted. Things weren’t easy as it was with all the shopping day worries and stresses of my work for the mountain retreat, but on top of all that, I had to wear a new hat, a farmer’s. In early spring, Mokuren cleared some land near the lodge and the stream that had good sunlight and soil, and she planted some vegetables there. I was responsible for tending the fields. Vegetable gardening on the reservation didn’t spark any passion for “self reliance” in me. But Mokuren didn’t care and said, “We have to do whatever we can on our own, because the reality is that it will only get harder and harder to buy stuff in town.”
“Iroha, how much longer are you going to dwell on the world below? You have too much time on your hands. You have all that free time, and so you check the news, obsess over everything, and that’s why you’re always jittery, right? Well, farming is the perfect solution. You’ll be too tired and won’t have time to surf the net anymore.”
Sure enough, I was exhausted.
But I still have found the time for my daily visits to the spring without missing a day since April 1. The time of day isn’t always the same. When I take my walk there in the morning, stepping into the woods alone is enough for me to feel enveloped by the water. Aside from the birdsongs and cicada cries, it’s completely still. Not even the wind blows. The surface of the water is placid, like a stationary sheet of obsidian, as it wakes up refreshed and full of life. By afternoon, the water is transparent and infused with green from the algae below and the tree leaves reflected on the surface. In the evening, the air and light dissolve into a kind of thickness. That thickness mixes with the water and makes it look gray. At dusk, the trees fall under a purple shadow, and the wind calls up thin trails of waves on the water. Striped mosquitoes flit about the restless spring. And in the lapis sky, scattered clouds flow like red lava from a blazing sun, making the spring below a shiny copper.
Lonely Hearts Killer Page 16
