Cult X

by Fuminori Nakamura

  But my teacher began growing absent-minded. I thought he was just getting old, but it seemed that wasn’t all.

  “In this world, because of our brains—in other words, because of those collections of countless particles we call brains—there exist countless consciousnesses,” my teacher once told me. “Of those countless consciousnesses that exist in this world, as many as possible should feel happy. I do not mean that only in a humanist way, but also scientifically. As a universe-wide chemical response. Don’t you think so?”

  I think I nodded when he asked. But he looked at me with a troubled expression.

  “But what if increasing the number of happy consciousnesses increases the number of sad ones as well? What if that is the nature of the chemical arrangement of our total consciousnesses formed by particles? Isn’t that terrifying? It is, isn’t it? All we’d be doing is moving happiness from one place to another. To save some people, we produce sad consciousnesses somewhere far away. What if that is the nature of the circulation of particles in this world and we simply can’t grasp it? That’s the way society is, isn’t it? If there are more rich people, there are more poor. It’s not quite that simple, but one can generally see it that way. Society is produced through the grouping of these beings called humans. Humans are made of particles. Wouldn’t that mean that society is the expression of the nature of particles? Then wouldn’t the particle world also be that way? If happiness increases, sadness must as well. This is probably not mathematically accurate, but generally speaking . . . What would it mean if the evils of this world were not caused by man, but were rather some chemical phenomenon caused by particles? Since men are made of particles, the true origin of evil must be particles, right? These particles are filled with the potential to create all types of evil. To put it more accurately, the humans particles create are filled with the possibility of creating what they perceive as evil. That would mean that evil is not created by humans, but from the moment of the birth of this universe, its existence was desired . . . But then what would the world be? And what would evil be?”

  At that time, in the sixties, students were protesting vehemently. They were fighting against the Joint Security treaty between Japan and the United States. In other words, they were protesting against America. I thought I was uninvolved, living deep in the mountains, but when the authorities learned of our leader’s economic activities, we started getting these absurd threats. You’re harboring suspected revolutionaries! You’re giving them money! Our group, which had been very open, began to close itself off. Personally, I was angry. The war had ended and we had taken due responsibility, but because of the Americans we were being dragged to the front line again. Anyone interested, try searching the term “Reverse Course” online. America was so threatened by the Soviets and the communist sphere that they tried to return Japan to a rightist country. They were attempting to use the island nation of Japan as a breakwater for communism. But I didn’t care about that. The lives of those who stood up against that great flow of history were precious. But weren’t those who tried to save the weak from becoming sacrifices also precious? For example, there were men who had children, and they would say they believed in this or that and run off, abandoning their women and children, to protest. Were they right to do that? I can’t say. But all we did was try to take care of those abandoned children.

  My teacher began using the word sacrifice.

  “In our constantly changing history, the world may demand regular sacrifices. There are chosen ones in this world . . . And thanks to that fact, we may be able to produce much good.”

  I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Somehow I understood the words, but I didn’t know what he based them on. If we’d had some holy book, that would have been different, but we didn’t have anything like that. Don’t you think it’s scary? All religions’ scriptures are trusted just because they were written long ago. They are thought to be unchangeable just because they were written long ago. Even if those scriptures were truly produced by gods, I’m certain those gods must have been speaking based on the conditions of the world they saw then. Yet humans insist on being governed by the past. We will continue to live in the distortions between past and present. That is the situation humanity lives in now.

  My group gradually became more of a formal religion. That was the natural result of closing ourselves off. At the time there were tons of new religions. Amid all that, it was only natural for members to get jealous of other groups, and for some reason, my teacher also actively tried to make things flow that way.

  I’m sorry to digress, but if I were asked why there were so many new religions at that time, I’d say it’s because it was a period of rapid economic growth. Many of the new religions promised to help you obtain the treasures of this world. In other words, the people who joined simply wanted the pleasures of everyday life. And in periods of rapid growth, people’s lives naturally become more comfortable. Thus it’s easy for religions to proclaim that they’ll help you acquire the treasures of this world, and it’s easy for those who have grown wealthy from the changing times to think it was thanks to religion. In Japan now there aren’t many new religions being born. In this long period of economic stagnation, it’s hard for religions to claim that you’ll find happiness if you join their faith. Thus the religious leaders become fortune-tellers. They approach rich individuals and promise them happiness. Maintaining a group requires a lot of money, so by approaching just one person at a time they can cut costs. It’s also easier to brainwash an individual. It’s highly effective.

  Anyway, the student protests grew more and more violent. The longer the revolutionary activities and riots went on, the harder they became to suppress, and the more violent they grew. It was like a chemical reaction.

  One day my teacher called for me late at night. He was as old as I am now. I entered one of the rooms in the small hotel where my group—and by this time they were clearly a religious organization—lived. There was one other man there at the time. I believe some of you here know him as well. His name is Sawatari. I didn’t know much about him, except that he was young, and a talented doctor. He had been sent somewhere on an errand by my teacher and had only returned the day before.

  “. . . In the Edo period, farmers had a custom.”

  My teacher spoke haltingly. He seemed to be scared.

  “When it didn’t rain and there were famines, they would damage and dirty the statues of Jizo. It wasn’t to anger the gods. They believed that if one of the servants of the gods was dirtied, the gods would send rain to make them clean. They used the gods’ servants as if they were hostages here on earth. It’s a quite interesting bit of folklore . . . I must also be dirtied.”

  At that time, my teacher had stopped using the name Suzuki and had started calling himself Ilaya. Because I was only going to visit my teacher on the weekends, I didn’t fully grasp how drastically he and the group had changed. I pretended not to notice. The members and our teacher were all of one mind, so the change happened very quickly in that isolated space. The time for me to face reality had already passed.

  “If I make myself horribly filthy, surely god will show himself . . . We need a sacrifice. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t understand. My teacher told me over and over that I must not tell anyone what I heard in that room. As I was leaving, a young woman entered through the door in the back of the room. She went up to my teacher.

  “Did you see that?” Sawatari asked me as we were leaving the hotel. I nodded. Sawatari continued, “Even though he can’t get it up, he’s got women like that around him . . . This is just too much. Don’t you think?” Sawatari said, laughing.

  I scrunched my eyebrows and said, “That’s rude. Take it back,” even though I didn’t really mean it.

  “All right, I’ll take it back. But I wonder what he’s planning . . . I’m kind of excited to see what it is.”

  He might have been a doctor, a
nd he might have been talented, but why was this man part of our group? I thought it was strange, but I didn’t ask.

  The next time my teacher summoned me and Sawatari, he told us strange stories. Finally, he got to the main point.

  “I have a list here.” He handed us a thick envelope. “Next Wednesday at one. Take this list to Tokyo Station.”

  His voice had changed. It seemed cloudy.

  “You must not look inside . . . They haven’t specified a particular place. Walk around outside the station. They’ll find you.”

  I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Sawatari lowered his head respectfully and left the room with the envelope. He was also carrying a heavy looking bag. I followed him.

  “Let’s hide out for a while,” Sawatari said suddenly when we were about ten meters from the hotel. “That would be best. We shouldn’t see each other until next week.”

  I couldn’t follow what was happening. “Why?” I asked. “What’s in this envelope? Do you know something?”

  Sawatari smiled. “You had better take your wife with you. I’ll get you a hotel room. Please, just do as I say.”

  Why did I listen to him then? Even though I had no idea what was going on, I didn’t trust him, but deep in my heart I trusted my teacher even less. I gave in to this man, Sawatari. I felt something terrifying inside him, though he was still young.

  I took Yo-chan and went to the hotel, just as he told me to. He came to our room and threw a bundle of papers on the table. It was the contents of the envelope.

  “Just as I thought. It’s a list. A list of all the former students involved in leftist activities. The ones who belong to dangerous groups.”

  “What? Why does our teacher have that?”

  Sawatari ignored my question. “Do I need to say anything else? Our teacher will probably try to kill us soon, to get this back.”

  I was confused. Why would our teacher come to get something he had handed over to us? But, as some of you may know, Sawatari’s voice has a certain hypnotic power. Even though I didn’t understand what was happening, I was somehow convinced he was right. His voice goes right past the part of your brain in charge of rational judgment and reaches deep inside. But I didn’t just believe everything he said. I asked many questions, but he wouldn’t answer them. I had already decided not to take that list the next Wednesday as my teacher had commanded. I couldn’t do something I didn’t understand the reasons behind. I told Sawatari we should take the list back, but Sawatari wouldn’t give it to me. I’d become involved in this strange incident and knew nothing about what was going on. But surprisingly, Yo-chan sneaked behind Sawatari while I stood there. And you won’t believe this, but she brought a kitchen knife up to his throat.

  “Explain what’s going on,” she said calmly. Yo-chan is small and nimble, but I never expected her to threaten someone with a knife! Everyone, never think you know everything about your wife! But she did that for me.

  “Right now, Shotaro is in trouble. Explain what’s happening, or I’ll cut you.”

  But Sawatari didn’t show the slightest concern. Yo-chan with her knife, and me watching, we were already panicked. Sawatari narrowed his eyes and looked at me, then smiled faintly.

  “Gnosticism.”

  “What?”

  “You know about Gnosticism, right?” Sawatari spoke as if there was no knife to his throat. “I think you know that in 1945, ancient documents related to this faith were discovered in Egypt. Those documents were deemed apocryphal by Christianity and excluded from the Bible. What they found was just a small portion of the Apocrypha, but it was a tremendous find . . . Now in Europe and America research on Gnosticism is booming. Recently, even the teacher’s been thinking of nothing else.”

  I may need to explain a bit here. It is said Jesus Christ was born on this earth in 4 BC, performed many miracles, and saved lots of people. However, he was betrayed by one of his disciples, Judas. Because of Judas, Jesus was captured by the authorities, was crucified, and died. In Christianity, Judas is synonymous with backstabber.

  The Bible was not written by Christ. Those touched by Christ’s teachings recorded his words after his death. The church long ago selected some of those writings and compiled them into the Bible. And, of course, there were writings that did not conform with the teachings of the church. Those writings were deemed heretical and dismissed as Apocrypha. But some of them survived, and were later discovered. It’s only natural that this caused an uproar. Gnosticism was one form of heretical thought that was prohibited by the church.

  We still didn’t know it existed at the time, but in 1978 the Gospel of Judas was also found in Egypt. Christ is portrayed as he was seen by Judas. This book was first published in the 21st century, but people have been arguing about this heretical Gnosticism for a very long time.

  The definition of Gnosticism is quite broad, and I won’t discuss everything here, but I would like to mention one thing.

  Gnostics stopped worshiping the god who created this world where they suffered from plagues and starvation. They believed that the god who created this imperfect world could not have been good or omnipotent. They thought that the god who created our world must have been a very low-level deity. It would be strange if that weren’t the case. Therefore, there must be other true gods. The Gnostics thought they should worship those true gods who have nothing to do with life on this world. Thus they came to curse the god who created this world, the one who appears in the Bible.

  This line of thought gave rise to lots of explanations pertaining to the backstabber, Judas. Some say that Jesus and Judas had actually made a secret pact. Jesus thought that by sacrificing himself he would become a legend, and Christianity would spread and gain strength, so he made Judas betray him. In other words, only Judas knew Jesus’s true intentions.

  And even if we move away from Gnosticism, there’s no one as tragic as Judas. Even in the orthodox books of the Bible, Jesus knew that Judas would betray him. Either way, Judas was being used. It is written both that Judas later hanged himself and that he ripped open his stomach. But what if what ripped open his stomach was actually demons leaving his body? In the orthodox Bible it says that Satan entered Judas’s body before he betrayed Jesus. If that’s true, then Judas was possessed. And as such, he did not betray Jesus of his own will, but while being controlled. That would be tragic. It wasn’t Judas’s fault. And of course god also knew that if his son died nailed to a cross, Christianity would spread explosively. Judas was an important piece in making that happen. They needed a traitor, so they set the devil upon Judas, and even though he loved Jesus, he was manipulated into betraying him. This would mean that the true sacrifice that allowed Christianity to spread as a charitable faith was Judas. Yet in the end he died a violent death. He was used by god, and then squashed like a bug.

  Sawatari told me that our teacher was growing obsessed with this sort of Gnostic thought. He also said, “Our teacher was one of the officers of the army’s 357th regiment.”

  I was shocked. That had been my regiment.

  “I don’t know what he did in that war, but I guess some pretty awful things must have happened.”

  “Quit talking nonsense,” I told him.

  “Didn’t you ever think that the good he does could be to make up for the bad in his past? Do you think all good people were good all their lives? Are you that simple?”

  I shut up.

  “I’m sure he was put on trial. Not as a Class A war criminal, but for some lighter crime. But why was he released? I think the Americans were behind that. To use him in the future for something. That time has come. Japan’s student protests are a nuisance to America. They’re not a real threat, but they’re certainly a nuisance. A few years ago, an officer with the Public Security Bureau approached our teacher. It was after that that our teacher started behaving strangely. He must have been told to put together a powerful revolutionary
group with his money. And once he got them together, to hand over everything he knew about them. That way the authorities could arrest tons of radicals all at once. Once they’d been betrayed by the person who funded them, they’d begin to grow suspicious of each other as well. The groups would crumble from the inside.”

  He went on. “But that useless do-gooder, he couldn’t do anything like that, right? That’s why he’s trying to justify his actions. His aging brain has started to develop split personalities. I’m a doctor. I know. He is clearly showing signs of multiple personality disorder. In other words, his brain is gradually trying to produce one personality that will betray the students, and another that knows nothing about it.”

  “What nonsense,” I said.

  “You think it’s nonsense? You’ve been watching him quietly fall apart, too. There are some people who develop more than a dozen personalities. His consciousness, or rather his unconscious, is trying to act out the Gnostic faith. Although really, it’s not Gnosticism anymore.”

  By the way, multiple personality disorder has come to be called dissociative identity disorder. Anyway, Sawatari kept talking.

  “Our teacher thinks that god wasn’t involved in what happened between Jesus and Judas. In other words, he thinks it was a symptom of Jesus’s multiple personalities. He thinks Jesus was split into one personality that wanted to be betrayed and die as a bringer of justice and make himself into a legend, and another that wanted to serve the people for as long as possible. When he was under the control of the first personality, he told Judas to betray him. However, once he was on the cross, he returned to his normal self, was stupefied, and yelled those famous words: ‘Oh god, oh god, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Shall I go on? What if the voice of god Jesus heard was just an auditory hallucination caused by a psychological condition? How tragic! He could hallucinate the voice of god in his mind. His personalities divided, and his fate was handed down to him from a hallucination. He told Judas to betray him, and headed for the cross. And once there, he came back to his senses. He couldn’t hear god. Cruelly, his condition was cured by the shock of being on the verge of death. Jesus probably saw Judas from the cross. He had already forgotten that he had told Judas to betray him. All that remained were vague memories of Judas actually betraying him. He would look at Judas with eyes full of hate. What sadness Judas must have felt seeing those eyes! Our teacher’s unconscious is trying to convince him to reenact that historic tragedy. There is no helping it, for this has nothing to do with individual indecency; it is a historical, mythical phenomenon. That’s what his unconscious mind is trying to make him think. You must have noticed. What he’s trying to do now, it’s got completely different implications from what Christ did. One tried to become a bringer of justice; the other is simply being used by the Public Security Bureau. But tragically, he’s trying to make himself think that his situation looks like Christ’s even though it’s completely different. He may be destroying his own personality. For someone as incompetent as he is to survive such a difficult situation, his only option is to go mad!”