Runaway Horses (53 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
The Chief Judge asked his name and age. Since his arrest, Isao had become accustomed to being addressed authoritatively from above, but this was his first experience of being summoned by a voice from such an eminence, a voice that seemed to embody the rationale of the entire nation and to fall like distant lightning from a sky filled with brilliant mist.
“Isao Iinuma, Your Honor. Twenty,” he answered.
37
THE SECOND SESSION
of the trial was held on July nineteenth. The weather was fair, but an occasional breeze through the courtroom fluttered the legal papers, and so the attendants shut the windows halfway. Again and again Isao had to resist the temptation to scratch a bedbug bite on his side, which was aggravating his sweaty discomfort.
As soon as the session began, the Chief Judge rejected one of the witnesses that the prosecutor had requested at the first session. Delighted, Honda rolled a red pencil quietly across the papers that covered his desk. This was an idiosyncracy that he had somehow acquired around the time he became a judge in 1929, and one he had been making an effort to suppress ever since. Now, four years later, it had reasserted itself. It was a bad habit for a judge, because of its disturbing effect upon defendants, but in his present position Honda could indulge it to his heart’s content.
The rejected witness was Lieutenant Hori. Here indeed was a witness that would have presented problems.
Honda noted the sudden look of disappointment that darkened the prosecutor’s face, as though a gust of wind had ruffled the surface of a pond. Hori’s name appeared any number of times in the minutes of the preliminary examinations and hearings, as well as in the hearings to which the deserters had been summoned to give information. Isao alone had never mentioned the name. To be sure, Hori’s function in the plan was extremely vague, and his name did not appear on the final list seized by the police. This was in the form of a chart upon which each of the names of the twelve major financiers was joined by a line to the name of one of the twelve defendants. The police had found it at the hideaway in Yotsuya. Still, there was nothing in it that clearly indicated assassination.
Most of the twelve defendants said that Lieutenant Hori had been an inspiration to them, but only one of the twelve testified that he had exercised any leadership. Among the deserters, many testified that they had never met Hori nor even heard his name mentioned. Essentially, then, aside from the confused testimony of the defendants, the prosecutor had no evidence whatsoever to back up his suspicion of a large-scale plot prior to the massive defections.
As to the leaflets falsely proclaiming that imperial authority had been granted to Prince Toin, the dangerous evidence that the Prosecutor’s Office had set eyes upon, darkness had swallowed them up. Once the prosecutor had seen the disproportion between the ambitious proclamation and the scanty resources of the would-be assassins, it was obvious how vital a witness the Lieutenant had become for him. Honda perceived Sawa’s hand at work in this turn of events which so irritated the prosecutor. Iinuma had hinted as much.
“That Sawa’s a good fellow,” Iinuma had said. “He wanted to join his fate with Isao’s, whatever the consequences. He was going to help Isao carry out his plan, without a word to me, and then follow him in suicide. So perhaps the one that was hurt the most by my informing was Sawa. But he’s a mature man, after all, and must have made careful preparations in case of failure. Since deserters are the greatest source of danger in this kind of activity, I’m sure he sprung into action as soon as they dropped out. He must have gone around to give each one a thorough talking-to. Maybe he said: ‘If this affair is nipped in the bud, you’re going to be called to give testimony. It takes hardly anything to change a witness like you into an accomplice. Just in case you don’t want this to happen, you’d better say that the military influenced you only in spirit. Otherwise this is going to turn into a big affair, you’ll all be implicated, and you’ll be sticking your neck into the noose.’
“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.
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