“Sawa was all for going through with the action, but, on the other hand, I’m sure he was prepared for any eventuality, and had taken prudent means to do away with evidence. This is the kind of wisdom that’s hard to find in young people.”
At the beginning of the session, when the Chief Judge, singularly expressionless, rejected Lieutenant Hori as a witness on the grounds that he had no direct connection with the case, Honda had immediately told himself: “Ah! This is thanks to the statement by that ‘highly placed military authority’ that came out in the paper.”
Ever since the May Fifteenth Incident, the military had been extremely sensitive to the public reaction stirred by this sort of event. And they would be especially nervous in this case because Lieutenant Hori was an officer marked indelibly in connection with the May Fifteenth Incident. Since he had been rushed over to Manchuria for this among other reasons, it would be most distressing if he should be called back, himself under suspicion, to testify before a civilian court. If he did appear, whatever the content of his testimony, the credibility of the “highly placed military authority” who issued that statement immediately after the arrests would henceforth be open to question, and, consequently, the dignity of the military itself would be injured.
Given this state of mind, the military was without doubt keeping a sharp eye on this trial. And so as soon as the motion had been made to summon Lieutenant Hori, they had quite evidently been disgruntled with the prosecutor and were counting upon the judge to give the motion that expressionless dismissal.
In any case, the Prosecutor’s Office had learned from the questioning conducted by the police that the students had met with the Lieutenant in the “Kitazaki” lodging house for military personnel, at the rear of the compound of the Azabu Third Regiment.
Thus Honda read beyond the irritation and impatience on the prosecutor’s features to deduce the sources of his frustration.
His conclusions were as follows: the prosecutor was not at all happy with the simple indictment for preparation to commit murder that came out of the preliminary hearings. What he wanted, however it could be attained, was to make the affair bigger, to make it become, if possible, an indictment for conspiracy to commit insurrection. Only by so doing, the prosecutor believed, could the evil root of this affair be torn out. This state of mind, however, seemed to have disturbed the logic of his procedure. By taking so many pains to prove that the defendants had curtailed an original plan that had been large-scale, the prosecutor had been remiss in gathering the essential elements for proving preparation to commit murder.
“To aim for this weak spot,” thought Honda, “and, with one thrust if possible, render even the murder preparation charge unproved—that’s what I must do. And so my greatest worry will be Isao’s purity and honesty. I have to confuse him. My witnesses will be directed both against our opponents and against our own side.”
Honda felt his heart calling out to Isao’s clear eyes, exceptionally beautiful and gallant, even among those of all his fellow defendants. When he had heard of the affair, Honda had thought that Isao’s furiously gazing eyes were most appropriate, but now, seeing them again, he felt that they were unsuited to these circumstances.
“Beautiful eyes!” Honda exclaimed to himself. “Clear and shining, forever disconcerting others. Peerless young eyes radiating a censure that seems from another world, as if one were suddenly plunged beneath the waters of Sanko Falls. Go ahead, express what you like. Confess to anything at all. Be deeply wounded. You’re at the age when you should be learning the means to defend yourself. By speaking out without restraint, you will at last learn that no one is willing to believe the truth, one of the most valuable lessons a man can learn about life. This is the only wisdom that I have to convey to eyes as beautiful as yours.”
Then Honda began to study the face of Judge Hisamatsu, who sat in the Chief Judge’s place upon the bench. The Chief Judge was somewhat past sixty, and faint splotches marked the dry, white skin of his handsome features. He wore goldrimmed glasses. Despite the clarity of his enunciation, now and then, as he spoke, one heard inorganic sounds like the elegant click of ivory chess pieces striking together. Though this lent his speech something of the chill dignity of the glittering chrysanthemum crest above the door of the Courthouse, it was apparently merely due to his false teeth.
Judge Hisamatsu’s character was in high repute, and Honda too admired his probity. But the reason why he was still a judge of the lower court at his age was that he could hardly be called brilliant. According to what lawyers had to say among themselves, though he looked as if reason reigned supreme in him, he was in fact easily moved, and his efforts to affect a cold exterior in order to combat his inner flames were given away by the sudden reddening of the old man’s dry, white cheeks when he felt violent anger or deep emotion.
Honda, however, knew something about what went on inside a judge. And how intense were a judge’s inner struggles! Emotion, sentiment, desire, personal concern, ambition, shame, fanaticism, and all sorts of other flotsam—the fragments of planks, the wastepaper, the oil slick, the orange peel, the fish, the seaweed filling the sea of human nature that was ever pushing against the lone seawall that kept it in check: legal justice. Such was the struggle.
Among the indirect evidence supporting the indictment was the defendants’ having sold their swords in exchange for daggers, a matter to which Judge Hisamatsu seemed to attach considerable importance. As soon as he had ruled that the Lieutenant could not be summoned, he began the examination of the evidence.
JUDGE HISAMATSU: I have some questions for Isao Iinuma. You sold your swords and bought daggers in exchange preparatory to acting. Was that because you had assassination in mind?
IINUMA: Yes, Your Honor. That was the purpose.
JUDGE: What day and what month was that?
IINUMA: It was November eighteenth, as I remember it.
JUDGE: You sold two swords on that day and purchased six daggers with the money. Is that correct?
IINUMA: Yes, Your Honor.
JUDGE: Did you yourself go to do the exchanging?
IINUMA: No, Your Honor. I asked two of my comrades to do so.
JUDGE: Who were they?
IINUMA: Izutsu and Inoué.
JUDGE: Why did you give each of them a sword to exchange like that?
IINUMA: I thought that if someone saw a young man bringing in two swords to sell, it might attract attention. I picked the two men who would have the most cheerful and well-behaved appearance, and I sent them to dealers who were some distance apart. If the sword buyer asked why they were selling, I told them to say that they had been practicing swordsmanship but had given it up, so they wanted to exchange their swords for some daggers with plain wooden sheaths for themselves and their brothers. If exchanging the two swords would bring six daggers, these and the six we already had would give us enough for the twelve of us.
JUDGE: Izutsu. Tell us what happened when you brought the sword in to exchange it.
IZUTSU: Yes, Your Honor. I went to a shop called Murakoshi’s Swords at Number Three Koji-machi. I tried to look as nonchalant as I could as I said I wanted to sell my sword. A little old lady holding a cat was behind the counter. And I thought to myself how uneasy that cat would be if this was a samisen shop.
JUDGE: That is not to the point.
IZUTSU: Yes, Your Honor. When I told the old lady what I wanted, she went to the back of the shop right away, and the dealer himself came out, a grumpy-looking fellow with a bad complexion. He unsheathed the blade and examined it. With a contemptuous expression on his face, he looked at it from all different angles, finally removing the hilt fasteners and examining the part of the blade that fitted inside. “Just as I thought,” he said. “The maker’s name was added later.” Without even asking why I wanted to sell it, he set a price and gave me three wooden-sheathed daggers in exchange. I took a good look at their blades and then walked out.
JUDGE: He didn’t ask your name or address?
IZUTSU: No, Your Honor. He didn’t ask me anything at all.
JUDGE: What do you say, Mr. Honda? Do you wish to ask Iinuma or Izutsu any questions?
HONDA: I’d like to question Izutsu, Your Honor.
JUDGE: Very well.
HONDA: When you went to sell the sword, had Iinuma told you that swords would be awkward for an assassination and that it was therefore necessary to exchange them for daggers?
IZUTSU: Well, no, sir, he didn’t say it in so many words as I remember.
HONDA: So he didn’t specify anything of the sort but merely told you to go and exchange the swords, and you went without knowing the purpose?
IZUTSU: Well . . . yes, sir. But I certainly had a good idea of it. It seemed obvious.
HONDA: Then it wasn’t a matter at that time of a sudden change in the nature of your resolution?
IZUTSU: No, sir. I don’t think that was it.
HONDA: The sword you brought to the dealer, was it your own?
IZUTSU: No, sir, it was not. It was Iinuma’s sword.
HONDA: What kind of weapon was in your own possession?
IZUTSU: I had a dagger right from the beginning.
HONDA: When did you obtain it?
IZUTSU: Well, sir . . . yes, it was last summer. It was after we had made our vows before the shrine on the campus. I felt that it would be unmanly of me not to have a dagger at least. So I went to my uncle who is a collector, and I got one from him.
HONDA: I see. And at that time, then, you had no clear and definite idea of the use to which you would put it?
IZUTSU: No, sir. I only felt that someday, somehow I would like to use it. . . .
HONDA: Very well. Now when was it that you came to a clear realization of the definite use to which it could be put?
IZUTSU: I think it was when I was given the mission of assassinating Mr. Shonosuké Yagi.
HONDA: What I’m asking is when the realization first came to you that, in order to commit an assassination, a dagger was indispensable.
IZUTSU: Well, sir . . . as for that, I don’t remember too well.
HONDA: Your Honor, I would like to ask Iinuma a few questions.
JUDGE: Very well.
HONDA: What kind of sword did you have?
IINUMA: The sword that I gave Izutsu to sell was signed by Tadayoshi of Bizen. When I reached the third rank in kendo the year before last, my father gave it to me as a present.
HONDA: Did you not exchange that valuable sword for daggers in order to use one of them to commit suicide?
IINUMA: Pardon, sir?
HONDA: You testified as to your fondness for the book The League of the Divine Wind and said how the suicides of the men of the League had aroused your admiration. And you further testified that you wished to die in that manner, and that you had praised such a death to your comrades. On the battlefield the men of the League fought with their swords, but, when it came to suicide, they used daggers. And so judging from this . . .
IINUMA: Yes, sir. Now I remember. At the meeting on the day of the arrest, someone said: “In case of emergency, each one should carry a second dagger hidden on his person.” Everyone agreed. This emergency dagger would be definitely for committing suicide, but we were arrested before we could buy more.
HONDA: In that case, up to that time you had not considered buying weapons for such emergency use?
IINUMA: No, sir.
HONDA: But before that you had been firmly resolved upon suicide?
IINUMA: Yes, sir.
HONDA: In that case, this exchanging swords for daggers, might one say that you had killing yourselves in mind as much as killing others—that is to say, a double purpose?
IINUMA: Yes, sir, you could say that.
HONDA: Your action, therefore, in exchanging your ordinary weapons for daggers had a twofold purpose: assassination and suicide. And at the time in question these deadly weapons were not exclusively bound up with the idea of assassination. Is that right?
IINUMA: Ah . . . yes, sir.
PROSECUTOR: Your Honor, I object. The defense’s line of questioning is obviously tendentious.
JUDGE: That should be enough questions from the defense. The matter of exchanging the swords has now been sufficiently covered. The prosecution may therefore call its witnesses.
Honda, as he sat behind his desk, was fairly content. By his questions he had somewhat confused the logic of linking the obtaining of the daggers to the intent to murder. Honda was concerned, however, about Judge Hisamatsu’s apparent lack of interest in the ideological aspects of the case. Right from the opening of the trial, the judge, by virtue of his authority, could have elicited from Isao any number of statements about his political beliefs, but he had made no attempt to do so.
The spectators looked over to the entrance of the courtroom, toward the uncertain tapping sound of a cane. An old man appeared. He was very tall but bent, shielding himself by clutching the front of his linen summer kimono, as though he were striving desperately to catch hold of something. The sunken eyes alone, beneath the white head of hair, were directed upwards. He made his way to the witness box, where he stood supporting himself on his cane.
The judge rose and read the written oath. The witness signed this with a trembling hand and put his seal upon it. A chair was provided for him before his testimony began.
In a voice so low the spectators could hardly hear him, the old man answered the judge’s questions: “My name is Reikichi Kitazaki. I am seventy-eight years old.”
JUDGE: The witness has been the proprietor of the place in question for some time, I understand.
KITAZAKI: Yes, Your Honor, I have. I opened my rooming house for military personnel at the time of the war with Russia, and I have continued to operate it up to the present time. Among my officer guests were many who went on to fame, becoming major generals and lieutenant generals. My establishment has a reputation for being a fortunate lodging house. It’s a rather shabby, dilapidated place, but I have been honored with the favor of military gentlemen, especially the officers of the Azabu Third Regiment. I have no wife, and, though it be frugal, I make my living without being a burden upon anyone.
JUDGE: Does the prosecution have any questions to ask?
PROSECUTOR: Yes, Your Honor. How long has First Lieutenant of Infantry Hori been a guest at your house?
KITAZAKI: Well, sir . . . let me see now. Three years . . . no, two years. . . . My memory is not what it used to be. Oh my . . . yes, it’s been about two years, I think. . . .
PROSECUTOR: Lieutenant Hori was promoted to first lieutenant three years ago. In March of 1930, that is. When he became a guest at your house, then, he was already a first lieutenant. Is that correct?
KITAZAKI: Yes, sir, of that I’m sure. The gentleman wore two stars from the very beginning. And I have no memory of there being a promotion celebration.
PROSECUTOR: In that case, it’s a matter of less than three years and more than one?
KITAZAKI: Yes, sir. That is correct.
PROSECUTOR: Did Lieutenant Hori have many visitors?
KITAZAKI: Yes, sir, very often indeed. Not once was there a woman guest, but young men, students, were forever coming and going. They liked to hear him talk. And the Lieutenant, for his part, was fond of them. If dinner time came, he would send out to the neighborhood shops for food. He treated them well and would empty out his pockets for them.
PROSECUTOR: How long has he shown such a predilection?
KITAZAKI: That, sir, was from the very beginning. Yes.
PROSECUTOR: Did the Lieutenant have much to say to you concerning his visitors?
KITAZAKI: Oh, no. In that regard he was not at all like Lieutenant Miura. He was not affable with me and hardly had a word to say. So there was no likelihood at all of his confiding in me about his guests. . . .
PROSECUTOR: One moment please. What about this Lieutenant Miura?
KITAZAKI: A gentleman who has been a long-time guest. His room is on the second floor—at the oppos
ite end of the corridor from Lieutenant Hori. He has a rough manner, but he is good-natured.
PROSECUTOR: Please tell us whether or not there is anything special that you remember about Lieutenant Hori’s visitors.