Togakushi Legend Murders (Tuttle Classics)

by Yasuo Uchida

  The Togakushi

  Legend Murders

  Yasuo Uchida was born in Tokyo in 1934. As a boy, he spent time in Togakushi, Nagano Prefecture, where he and his Tokyo classmates were sent to escape American bombers during World War II. Later, while working as an advertising executive, he revealed his writing talent with the publication of his first mystery in 1980. He now writes full-time, specializing in mystery novels.

  David J. Selis holds a Ph.D. in Chinese from Indiana University, where he also studied Japanese. He teaches English as a second language and translates Japanese mystery novels as a hobby. Since 1978, he has lived on a farm on the outskirts of Kobe, Japan, with his wife, who was his first editor.

  The Togakushi

  Legend Murders

  BY YASUO UCHIDA

  Translated by DAVID J. SELIS

  TUTTLE PUBLISHING

  Boston • Rutland, Vermont • Tokyo

  Published by Tuttle Publishing,

  an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.,

  with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759 U.S.A.

  © 1994 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.

  All rights reserved

  LCC Card No. 93061515

  ISBN: 978-1-4629-0335-1 (ebook)

  First edition, 1994

  Second printing, 2004

  Printed in Singapore

  Distributed by:

  Japan

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  North America, Latin America & Europe

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  Email: inquiries@periplus.com.sg

  page 7 • Prologue

  31 • Poison Plain

  79 • Maple-Viewing Girl

  113 • Arrowstand

  151 • The Curse of the Demoness

  179 • Transmigration

  209 • The Hall of Heavenly Wisdom

  247 • Death of the General

  307 • Epilogue

  The bolt came loose with a noise so loud it frightened him. Apparently, though, it was lost in the wind, because he heard no sign of any movement in the house. Since sundown, the wind had been strong enough to sway the larger branches of the trees. The whole mountainside had come astir, and an occasional gust of wind roared like a howling beast past the eaves. It was a south wind, out of season for the end of November. The old people of the village said such a wind could bode no good. But for him, it came at just the right time.

  Slowly, very slowly, he opened the heavy sliding door, then crept up the step into the hallway, his face so close to the ground that he might as well have been sniffing for scents. Lying on the floor, he closed the door. Making sure there was still no noise in the house, he finally stood up and headed for the room he wanted.

  He was a little lame in the right leg. During military training the year before last, the gun of a new recruit had gone off accidentally, sending a bullet through his right thigh. At the time, he could have killed the man, but when he realized that the injury had gotten him out of further military service, he could have thanked him. Actually, it didn't hurt much any more, and although he couldn't run, at least he didn't have much trouble walking. In the presence of others, however, he was very careful to exaggerate his limp, and at every change of season, he complained to everyone he met of the pain, and cursed his ill fortune. Whenever he met families of soldiers at the front, of course, he always told them that he couldn't wait to get into battle himself. If only his leg would heal, he would add, chewing his lip.

  Nearly all the young men of the village had been drafted. Even those with families, as long as they were young and healthy, were receiving their red slips one after another. The only ones yet left were those who were extremely lucky, or those like him, who were physically unsound. And no matter how lucky a man might be, the red slip was sure to come sooner or later. But he had made his own luck, and as long as he kept on acting, he would be safe.

  As the tide of war turned against the country, the sad notifications of those killed in battle were pouring in. Some families had already lost all their breadwinners. He had been going around visiting such families, consoling the widows, and helping out with any work requiring strength. Men's hands had become scarce in the village, and in spite of his disability, his services had become invaluable everywhere. He had always been a careful and diligent worker anyway, and his somewhat guilty conscience had pushed him to work even harder.

  Needless to say, no matter how good the intentions of a young man, it was not really desirable for him to enter the home of a young widow or a daughter come of age. In the present state of things, however, society could not afford the luxury of such gossip, so it was tacitly understood that everyone would look the other way. Actually, he couldn't say what his intentions had been. Maybe it was just what happened when a man and woman were thrown together like that. It had happened to him with not just one widow, but three. And he—not particularly attractive to women until then—had gone into such ecstasy as to believe that any village woman worthy of the name could be his for the asking. Why, then, had he been forever wearing himself out for others? More and more, he had felt a compulsion to take a girl of marriageable age for himself, a compulsion so strong that he had actually tried to do it, thereby getting himself into very serious trouble. The girl's father had nearly killed him, and he had escaped only by making an abject apology.

  With the spread of rumors of that encounter, even the widows who had been giving him their favors became wary of their reputations and would no longer let him come near them. And now, having thus tasted sex and being unbearably hungry for more, the only way he could see to get it was to steal into a house under cover of night and make a woman his. Such a custom had long since disappeared from the village, but he knew that it had once existed, and he had resolved to follow it.

  Stealing through the hallway, he did worry that he was setting his sights terribly high, but he had persuaded himself that if he was going to do it at all, he might as well do it big. Taki had always been like a goddess to him. A marriage to her was something worth risking his life for. Besides, the only other people in the house were an old servant couple, Keijiro and his wife, so even if something did go wrong, he would not be likely to encounter such an ugly scene as had occurred last time.

  * * *

  Descendants of a long line of old-time diviners, the Tendoh family held a special position among the hereditary families of Shinto priests who tended the Togakushi Shrines. Taki was the Tendohs' only daughter, a girl of extraordinary beauty even in early childhood, whose fame had spread to places as far distant as Tokyo through visitors to the shrine and students of Shintoism. As a little girl dancing in her shrine-maiden's outfit, she had always enthralled her audiences.

  As she grew up, her looks had ceased to be the only thing extraordinary about her. Time and again, she had seemed possessed, in words and conduct. Science could not explain her behavior, leaving it to individual opinion whether she was merely insane, or whether she was truly possessed by spirits. But belief in spiritual possession was in the n
ature of the Togakushi region, and she quickly became known among the villagers and Shintoists as a girl of very special powers.

  Fearing what those powers might become when they matured, however, Taki's parents had not welcomed their daughter's singular predisposition, so when she graduated from grade school in the spring of her fourteenth year, they had sent her to Tokyo—on the pretext that she was going there to learn manners—to be entrusted to the care of the family of a viscount, who was their close friend and an enthusiastic worshipper at the Togakushi shrines.

  She had returned to Togakushi three years later, along with the viscount's son, who was being sent to stay with the Tendohs in hopes of effecting a cure for his tuberculosis through a change of climate. It had been given out that Taki was to act as his nurse, but those close to the Tendohs could see that the two young people were strongly attached.

  That had been in the summer of the year before last, and since then, the Tendoh household had been visited by misfortune. At the end of last year, Taki's parents had both died within a short time of each other of malignant influenza compounded by pneumonia, there being no way to get the proper medicines to fight the diseases. Then, at the end of the summer of this year, with the war situation worsening and even students rapidly being drafted, the viscount's son had finally been called back to Tokyo, leaving the stately Tendoh home inhabited only by Taki, about to turn nineteen, and the elderly servant couple, both over sixty.

  * * *

  The intruder had thus persuaded himself that there was nothing to fear—except perhaps Taki herself. He was not sure that he would not lose his nerve when he came face to face with her, whom he had always considered totally out of his reach. The respected Tendoh family, with its long line of Shinto priests, had a history dating back to the Muromachi period, and what was he but the son of miserable peasants? To be sure, he had been born with a good head on his shoulders and had attracted a fair amount of attention to himself in school, serving as class leader and all that, but graduation had left him still just the son of peasants. By no stretch of the imagination was he a suitable match for a girl of her class. In a peaceful world with a stable society, he would never have been trying such a preposterous trick. But times were different now, maybe so different that he might even succeed. If he did, he would be taking the heiress of the Tendoh family for his bride. Carnal desire and greed were making him bold as well as desperate.

  Having helped out at the end of every year with the traditional housecleaning, he was thoroughly familiar with the rooms Taki used. The first double sliding door past the turn of the hallway was the entrance to her bedroom, but just before he got to the turn, he heard her coming out. Hastily, he took cover behind a large cabinet. The sliding door opened and a dim light threw her snadow across the floor. Holding a candlestick, she stepped out into the hall. He almost said something at the sight of her in her shrine-maiden's dancing costume of white tunic and crimson pantaloons, red lips vibrant in a pale face illuminated by the flickering candle. When she closed the door behind her, her face looked even more a vision in the candlelight, and though he wondered what she could be up to at this time of night, he was overcome by her otherworldly beauty.

  Quietly, she opened the big sliding closet door across the hallway. The closet appeared to be stuffed with instruments of Shinto rituals. Taking hold of a big cross-tied box on the far right, she lifted it without seeming effort, which surprised him, because it looked quite heavy. Setting it down in the hallway, she stepped into the closet. He couldn't imagine what she was doing, and he was even more surprised when she closed the door behind her, leaving the hallway dark again, except for a dim light visible under the door. Soon, even that disappeared.

  For a while he just stood there, expecting her to come out again any second. But she didn't. He stood motionless for five or ten minutes. Then he thought he heard voices, hushed whispers that seemed to come from far away, but he could tell they were young, much too young to be those of Keijiro and his wife.

  Pretty soon, he recognized one of the voices as Taki's, but he still could not identify the other. He found enough courage to go over to the closet door, press his ear against it, and listen hard. Now he clearly heard laughter, hers and someone else's, fainter. He opened the door and entered the closet. Taki was not there, but the voices became much clearer. Then he heard her, in a passionate voice, say the name "Tomohiro."

  It was that fellow! Tomohiro was the name of the viscount's son—Tomohiro Tachibana. The intruder felt the blood rush to his head. While helping in the garden, he had often seen Tachibana pass by on the veranda. He could see the pale oval face, the face of a boy with an elite upbringing. Taki was always following close behind, with no concern for the eyes of a mere hired hand like himself. He had hardly existed for either of them, but the effeminate boy from Tokyo was robbing him of his goddess, and he could not bear the humiliation and jealousy.

  As he cursed to himself about the viscount's son enjoying Taki's favors, probably in a secret room behind the closet, he suddenly remembered that Tachibana shouldn't be there at all. He had received his draft notice and was supposed to have returned to Tokyo! But who else could it be? The intruder groped frantically along the wall. There had to be a device somewhere for moving it! Finally, by mere chance, he touched something and felt a slight motion, seemingly of the entire wall in front of him sliding to the left a bit. With great caution, he pushed it further, until suddenly he was blinded by a bright light shining through the opening. When his eyes adjusted, what he saw made him dizzy.

  The area of the room was only about three mats, but still, having worked in that house practically every day, he didn't see how he could have failed to notice it, small as it was. He could not imagine how the space had been designed to hide such a discrepancy.

  Against the opposite wall, a girl and boy were locked in an embrace. On a thick silk pallet, the boy was lying on his back and the girl was face down on top of him, her crimson pantaloons discarded near her feet. Her white tunic mostly covered them, but he could tell from the protruding hands and feet and a glimpse of the girl's back that they were naked.

  There was no mistake. The girl was Taki and the boy was indeed the viscount's son. The intruder saw her sit up astride him and cry out for joy, upon which the boy raised himself and embraced her madly. The tunic fell from their shoulders, revealing practically their whole bodies under the light of an electric bulb.

  * * *

  The south wind had stopped blowing, and the day passed pleasantly with no wind at all. Keijiro and his wife spent all day in the garden cleaning up dry leaves and twigs.

  "Can I help with anything?" offered Tachibana.

  "Don't be ridiculous!" replied Keijiro, glaring at him. "You're taking a chance just coming out onto the veranda. You'd better get back inside."

  "Oh, it's all right. Nobody will see me," laughed Tachibana. Confident he was safe, he didn't mind having a little fun with the old man. He had been hiding here for three months, and all the tranquillity was beginning to bore him. He could no longer believe the eyes of the authorities might find him all the way out in this lonely village deep in the mountains. Just once, several men from the Nagano City Police had come and searched every corner of the house, but they had completely missed the secret room. It had already been two months since that search, and Tachibana was sure that the army and the military police must have forgotten all about him.

  "Tomohiro! You shouldn't be here!" exclaimed Taki in a shrill voice behind him.

  "Oh! You scared me!" He made a show of jumping. When he turned around, however, her look really frightened him, though it did not express anger, but rather fear.

  "Okay, okay," said Tachibana, making a joke of it as he withdrew into the room. Taki quickly slid the door shut and came up to face him.

  "Why can't you understand how worried we are about you?" she said, crying. Taki was subject to sharp and violent swings of emotion.

  "There's nothing to worry about. I know what I'm
doing."

  "Then will you please stop going out onto the veranda? It frightens me terribly."

  "Okay, since you feel that strongly about it. But you sure are a worrier, you know," Tachibana laughed.

  Taki didn't even smile. She just stood there looking at him for a moment, then suddenly fell to her knees and began to topple over forward.

  "You'll hurt yourself!" he cried, dropping to the floor and catching her in his lap, where he put his arm around her. She clung to his neck, her face close to his, crying wordlessly. She would not tell him what was wrong. She had done many strange things, but he had never seen her like this before. He spoke to her as he would to a small child. "Now why don't you just tell me what's making you so sad? If you won't tell me, how can I do anything about it?"

  "When you go, it will be all over for me," she managed in fragments, beginning to sob convulsively.

  "Me? Go? Where? Where is it you think I'm going?" he asked gently, rocking her in his lap.

  She began to shake her head in time to the rocking. He knew this was her way of saying that she didn't know. The fear that had overcome her was a vague one. With hardly bearable pity, he held her close. "I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I'm always going to be with you."

  But Taki's fear was beyond the reach of Tachibana's protestations of everlasting affection. Apparently frightened by some sort of premonition, she seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into melancholy. Tachibana had been seeing that melancholy ever since he received word from his father in Tokyo that the red draft slip had come for him.

  At the time, unable to believe the authorities would have sent a red slip to him, the eldest son and heir of a viscount, a college student, and one presently taking a cure for tuberculosis besides, he had thought there must be some mistake. Although he told Taki cheerfully that he would be back in no time, she had warned him emphatically not to go and had given him a lot of trouble. Tearing himself away from her and going to Tokyo, he had found a hard reality awaiting him. His draft deferment had been canceled, and his father the viscount, apparently on extremely bad terms with the military, had apologized to him with a look of fear that Tachibana had never seen before, and which frightened him to the core. He was sure that if he were ever sent to the battlefield, he would die before an enemy bullet ever hit him.