by Shiro Hamao
Michiko thought of her home as a cold prison and there were many who felt pity for her and wondered how she could stand it. But on the other hand her behaviour had a negative effect on her reputation. People began to criticise her for associating with young students. And there were even some who said quite openly that there was one among them to whom she was especially close. But Michiko acted as if she were completely unaware of what was being said about her. Her husband Seizō, for his part, was even less concerned than Michiko, or at least he appeared so.
The exact nature of Michiko’s misbehaviour was to be exposed unexpectedly as a result of the tragedy.
In this way the young ill-matched couple made their home in ‘K’ amidst a cloud of rumour and innuendo. Such was their life until the incident occurred.
It was on 16th August of last year, in the afternoon, that two men came to call at the Oda home in ‘K’. They had both known the Odas for two or three years at that point. One was a twenty-five year old student of ‘K’ University called Tomoda Takeshi. The other was Ōtera Ichirō, a student of another university who was twenty-four at the time. Tomoda had attended the same school as Oda Seizō and was himself the scion of an important family. He happened to be renting a villa on the outskirts of ‘K’ at the time. But he felt lonely there by himself and had come to the Odas’ that afternoon in search of company. Ōtera was a student at the university where Michiko’s late father had taught. But this Ōtera lived in circumstances very different from Tomoda. It would only come to light later, but it seems that (Ōtera’s father had benefited from the generosity of Michiko’s father. The former was stubborn by nature and had what might be called a mania for suing people. He was always getting himself involved in legal disputes and soon exhausted what small property he had and died while Ichirō was still in secondary school. His mother died soon thereafter leaving relatives to scramble to help him go to university at least. Eventually they appealed to Michiko’s family and arranged for him to go to Tokyo to study. At the time of the incident he was three years out of secondary school and, with the help of all kinds of people, was studying at a university in Tokyo and living in a boarding house in the suburbs. He was in the middle of his summer vacation on the day in question and, having been acquainted with the Odas for some time, had come to ‘K’ for the day to go swimming. I should mention here that both Tomoda and Ōtera happened to be quite close – perhaps too close it was said-to Michiko.
On that afternoon Tomoda and Ōtera had gone swimming in the ocean with Michiko but, as I mentioned earlier, the evening brought a violent storm. The sky began to look quite ominous and the two young men quickly heeded Michiko’s warning to get out of the water.
It seems that Seizō was having one of his rare good days. When the two guests returned from the ocean he said, ‘Since there are four of us why don’t we have a game of mahjong?’ Being regulars at the Oda home in ‘K’, the two guests were enthusiastic mahjong players and needed no persuading.
The game began after dinner – as all of those who were questioned later confirmed – at five-thirty in the evening and ended after about half an hour. Right after dinner the four gathered around the table and started clacking and banging away at the tiles. Meanwhile the weather was worsening outside into a proper storm.
I’m not too familiar with mahjong, but people say it takes some time to get through a game even for accomplished players. Apparently they started out agreeing that they would play two matches (comprising eight ‘rounds’) back to back. But when those two matches were over the weather wasn’t letting up and Michiko was winning. Seizō was dead last and uncharacteristically caught up in the game. He hated to lose and proposed another four rounds, which they played, bringing the total to twelve.
By the time all the rounds were over it was almost midnight. The wind had stopped but the rain was still falling and the husband and wife urged their guests to stay the night. Tomoda had a house in ‘K’ so begged off and went home by car. Ōtera, on the other hand, decided to take them up on their offer of hospitality since the trains had stopped running and the weather was so bad. According to the maids it was just after midnight when the master of the house said he was going to bed and told them to do likewise. So the two girls, whose names were Otane and Oharu, readily retired to their rooms. As I mentioned before, by that time it was raining cats and dogs.
Allow me to pause for a moment here to tell you how the Oda house is laid out. It is entirely in the Japanese style, with the master bedroom and a study on the first floor, beneath which there are two open tatami rooms. Ōtera was given the room just below the study on that night. A little way down the passageway outside this room stood the maids’ quarters and on the outside near the kitchen was another building where the houseboy slept, an ex-sailor named Jinbei.
Now the two sleepy maids had been rubbing their eyes for some time by then and having obtained their master’s permission, they went straight to their room, pulled out their futons and immediately fell into the type of sound sleep that is enjoyed by most people in service.
Before long Otane, the elder of the two, woke up. Feeling that she had been asleep for quite some time and also that she had woken up naturally she looked, as she always did, at the alarm clock next to her pillow which had been put there by her employer. It was still only one-thirty. The rain had not let up. Just as the relieved Otane was about to go back to sleep she heard what she thought was someone screaming. And then she heard what sounded like a sliding partition falling over on the first floor.
Otane almost let out a scream herself, but instead she pulled her nightgown tight around herself and huddled under the covers holding her breath. After a few moments she timidly raised her head and once again heard the sound of someone groaning. Overcome with fear, Otane began to pummel Oharu awake, who was sprawled out sleeping next to her. When Oharu heard what had happened she began to tremble and the two of them resolved to wake the houseboy.
In order to accomplish this, however, as you will have gathered from my explanation a moment ago, it was necessary to go outdoors and into the other building – far too daunting a feat for two girls to undertake at such a late hour and in the midst of such a frightful downpour. So they decided instead to go and wake the guest who was staying in the room just down the hall.
The two crept down the hall shivering with fright and stood outside the door to the room where they called out Ōtera’s name two or three times. But there was no answer. When they gathered up the courage to slide open the door where they believed Ōtera was sleeping, his bed was as empty as a cast-off snake skin. As they stood dumbfounded in the room they heard the sound of someone falling in the room directly overhead. Shrieking with fear they ran out of the room and went straight to wake the houseboy. A strapping ex-sailor in his forties, the houseboy grabbed a large walking stick, told the maids to sit tight, and stormed up the stairs.
It was then that the scene of the tragedy was witnessed for the first time by an outsider. As Jinbei came upstairs followed by the two frightened maids they were confronted with a horrifying scene.
The Odas’ bedroom was at the top of the stairs and the shōji screen was open in the middle – actually one whole screen had been ripped out – so that the room’s interior was clearly visible. A lamp on a rosewood table in one corner lit the room with a dim light of about five candlepower. The mosquito netting had been ripped off its hooks at two points and stuffed in a corner with the rest of it dangling loosely. Two futons were laid out with their pillows towards the desk. Michiko lay on the futon to the left. She was naked from chest up with a cord like a kimono lashed tightly around her breasts all the way up to her neck. With each groan, bright red blood spilled out from a gash in the vicinity of her full white breasts.
Seizō was half-way out of the other futon, face-down on the table. Michiko seemed almost dead already but Seizō was in the last agonising throes.
It has taken me some time to describe all of this but of course in reality it only took a
second for Jinbei and the maids to take all of it in. In fact very little time had passed since Otane first woke up. Seeing what had happened to his master, Jinbei ran to him and held him from behind. His kimono was covered in blood that came flowing out of his mouth and from a wound on his right breast. As Jinbei lifted him up Seizō looked him straight in the eye and said, with all the strength he had left in his body, ‘Ōtera… Ōtera…’
Michiko was in a grave condition but her husband’s scream seemed to revive her and suddenly she said a single word, ‘Ichirō…’
Jinbei and the two maids all heard this quite clearly. It caused them all to catch their breath at once.
As soon as Jinbei heard his master say ‘Ōtera’ his first thought was to find the man. He looked around him and there, in the adjoining study, he saw a man standing as rigid as a statue. Of course you will have guessed that this was Ōtera. We are told that his pyjamas were covered in blood and all dishevelled as if he had just been in a fight. He held something shiny in his right hand as he stood there silently in the dark, looking like a man deep in meditation.
The courageous Jinbei raised his cane and struck Ōtera repeatedly on the right hand. As soon as the ostensible murder weapon fell out of Ōtera’s hand Jinbei tackled him. The latter put up no resistance, almost as if he were expecting it, and in no time Jinbei had tied him up with an undersash. Jinbei ordered the frightened maids to call the police immediately. The investigation began from that point on and I suppose most of you know the rest since the newspapers covered it so extensively, but allow me briefly to remind you of a couple of important points.
III
I learned afterwards that the prosecutor who got wind of the murders immediately requested an arrest warrant from the examining judge who then took care of the autopsies, the inspection of the crime scene and the securing of the weapon. What I am telling you now is based partly on the results of those investigations and part of it was already known to the public at the time. So the order in which I came to know the facts is different from the order in which I am going to relate them to you now. But we won’t bother with such matters of legal procedure and I’ll just tell you what was going on at the time.
The cause of death of Oda Seizō and his wife Michiko was of course determined to be homicide. The weapon used was an extremely sharp blade. The pool of blood around Seizō was determined to have come from his lungs and the mortal wound to have been a blow to his right breast. He was stabbed through his pyjamas and there was also a bruise on his forehead but this latter was assumed to have been caused when he fell on the table. In other words, Seizō was only wounded in one place.
But Michiko, as I said a moment ago, died a horrible and cruel death. She was wounded in three places: stabbed on each of her breasts and cut across her cheek. The stab wound that killed her was the one on her left breast. The top of her nightgown had been torn off and her hands were tied behind her with her own sash. Her wrists were rubbed raw, presumably from having struggled to untie herself or to keep from being tied up, and the skin on her throat was slightly chafed as well from the cord wrapped around it. It was also established that man and wife had breathed their last within moments of each other.
The culprit was of course Ōtera Ichirō and he was apprehended at the scene of the crime. The object in Ōtera’s hand was a jackknife that Oda Seizō kept in his study and it proved to have been the weapon that inflicted the victims’ wounds.
Ōtera did not resist arrest but he refused to speak when he was brought to the police. I believe he spent two whole days without uttering a single word.
The prosecutor immediately brought charges against him for the murder of Mr and Mrs Oda.
I was engaged to work on this case by a certain aristocrat who was very close friends with Ōtera. Ōtera, it seems, had a very quiet and prepossessing character. He was also such a beautiful young man that one wished he were a woman. Given his humble circumstances he had a very impressive set of friends, including the aristocrat in question, a great supporter of his who was no doubt quite smitten with his looks and his character. When all of this happened the aristocrat came to me and asked me to do what I could for Ōtera. He said it was inconceivable that Ōtera Ichirō could possibly have committed murder and I resolved to put my services at the young man’s disposal.
By the time I took the case on, however, the prosecutor had already filed charges, Ōtera had broken his silence and confessed to the crime, and it was all over the newspapers. I have a copy of one of the newspaper accounts with me here that I would like to read to you.
Suspect Confesses to Murder of Wealthy Couple
A Crime of Passion Reveals the Dark Side of High Society
Ōtera Ichirō (24), who was captured at the scene of the murder of Mr and Mrs Oda Seizō of ‘K’, finally broke his silence last night and confessed to the crime under intense questioning by the police. The confession not only confirmed that this gentle and attractive youth is in fact a vile murderer but also exposed the utter depravity of domestic life in today’s high society.
It was passion that motivated the grisly murder. Passion in the form of a repugnant and adulterous love affair. It seems that the young and beautiful Oda Michiko had been intimately involved for a year with Ōtera. The two had known each other for two years and Michiko, whose husband felt no love for her and whose illness made him dependent on medication, fell in love with the attractive young man after just a few meetings. At first Ōtera took pity on Michiko for her unhappy home life, but then a few sweet words from her caused him to forget his status as a student and become drunk on the sweet wine of adultery. The two became increasingly close and planned frequent trysts, taking advantage of the husband’s disinclination to put any restraints on his wife. Their behaviour was disgraceful. On some occasions Michiko would visit Ōtera’s lodgings herself, and sometimes they would meet at Tokyo station for a trip to the suburbs. A search of Ichirō’s home after his confession turned up more than one hundred letters written to him from Michiko. But Michiko’s heart had recently begun to wander and the wanton woman had fallen in love with Ōtera’s friend Tomoda Takeshi (the man who had been at ‘K’ earlier on the evening of the murder). This was the motive behind the murder.
On the evening of the 16th the brazen-faced Michiko played mahjong with her two lovers and her husband, toying with the three men under the guise of the game. When Ōtera happened to overhear her setting a date for a rendezvous with Tomoda he became enraged and lay awake later waiting for an opportunity to confront her and ask her true intentions. When Michiko came downstairs to use the toilet,Ōtera embraced her and pleaded with her to continue the illicit relation. But Michiko, whose fickle heart had already moved on, rebuffed him summarily. It was this treatment that resolved Ōtera to murder the young couple. That night he sneeked into their room, delivering a serious blow to Seizō while he abstained from administering mortal blows to the hateful Michiko so that he could torture her to death…
This article is quite tame compared to most of the press coverage at the time, which tended to represent the events of that evening in an even more sensational manner including descriptions of the love affair of Michiko and Ichirō, all the better to fan the flames of the readers’ curiosity.
But all of the newspapers saw Michiko’s tragic death as just deserts for her shameful conduct and made no bones about expressing sympathy for Seizō, who had lost not only his wife, but his life as well. There were even a couple of newspapers that took the trouble of visiting Michiko’s family, the Kawakamis, in order to claim that however reprehensible the daughter’s conduct had been, the widowed mother who had sacrificed her daughter for money was no less to blame.
As I mentioned earlier I became involved in this matter after the prosecutor had brought the indictment and the case had advanced to the preliminary hearing. As you are all aware at this point, it was not possible to have any contact with the defendant and neither the prosecutor nor the judge was sharing any information with me, so
I had no other option but to find what information I could on the outside. For this reason, at this stage, all of my knowledge about the case came solely from the newspapers. Of course I did all that I could on my own. I was able, for example, to meet with Tomoda, but all I could find out from him was that the Odas’ daily life was as frosty and strained as the rumours said. As for Michiko, Tomoda categorically denied any special relationship with her. He also claimed that the story about him having had some sort of secret communication with her on the night of the murder was entirely a fabrication of the newspapers. He did tell me that he had received a number of letters from Michiko some of which were quite upsetting. Once she complained of her husband’s cruelty and solicited his sympathy upon showing him fresh bruises on both of her arms. He claimed that this was the extent of their interactions and he seemed not to know much about Michiko’s relations with (Ōtera. He did say, however, that he believed that Ōtera was very much in love with Michiko.
IV
Of course, the minute they catch a likely suspect the newspapers waste no time in making out that he’s the real culprit and their readers have the bad habit of believing them. If he turns out to be innocent, people are just as quick to attack the police and kick up a ruckus about trampling on people’s human rights or torture or what have you. The problem starts when people assume that the suspect is the perpetrator. As far as we lawyers are concerned the suspect is not guilty even after the prosecution has indicted him. All the indictment means is that the prosecutor believes the suspect is guilty. Of course the prosecutor needs quite a bit of evidence to make him think so, but we cannot in any circumstances assume guilt until it has been proven in the court of law. Even when the newspapers have pronounced someone guilty there is still plenty of room for doubt and in many instances they have in fact been proven wrong.
