by Otsuichi
Anyway. As I read both light novels and mysteries in college for some reason, I joined the sci-fi club. There I made my first friends in five years. When we talked about books, I discovered that they all read nothing but light novels. I was somewhat horrified to discover that even though they were remarkably intelligent, well educated, articulate, and confident of their passion for books, they only read light novels. But they were a future I might have been part of. There must be plenty of people in Japan who are surrounded by people like them, who read only light novels and never realize there are many other kinds of books in the store.
Right! I would write a mystery light novel! Then people who had read only light novels would be exposed to the joys of mysteries and break out of their reading niche! With that in mind, I began writing GOTH.
†
Then, that fateful day …
“A phone call arrived at the editorial desk informing us that you have won the Honkaku Mystery Award … Does that ring a bell?” asked my editor, A-san. Her voice, emerging from my cell phone, sounded rather perplexed. Of course. She had gone to work like always and was doing her job as usual, when suddenly the phone rang and she’d been informed that a book she’d edited had won an award; most people would assume it was a practical joke.
At the time, I was in Shibuya Station. “Oh … now that you mention it, I did get a letter about that.”
“They appear to be looking for you. Come to Kadokawa Shoten at once.”
As I later learned, what I did that day was rather an unusual course of action for a prize candidate to take on the day the winner was announced. Most people apparently sit around with their editors, swallowing nervously and jumping every time the phone rings, thinking, “The results are in!” only to have it be a wrong number and find themselves asked to deliver tendon and soba.
I went to Kadokawa Shoten, up to the floor that housed the anime and manga division, which oversees Sneaker Bunko, and all the editors bowed to me, congratulating me on my award. Award? Uh … huh? While I was still reeling, I was thrown into a taxi and driven away.
We got out of the taxi in front of a strange building and rode the elevator up, and a huge crowd of people turned toward me at once. I wanted to run away. I was led along helplessly to a sort of conference room packed with people and TV cameras, and I was forced to stand in front of them. A microphone was placed before me, and someone asked me how I felt.
Award? Uh … huh? My head was still spinning, but I was convinced that if Tokyo people knew they had me rattled, I would be forced to put my stamp on a number of dubious documents, be introduced to dubious friends, and be promised profits that were unlikely to materialize, so I pretended to be calm and answered. There were loads of people with cameras pointed at me, with flashes going off like strobe lights, and I felt like a criminal being dragged out of a patrol car. I wanted to bow my head, tears in my eyes, apologize, and promise not to do it again. Nevertheless, I managed to survive the post-award interview and was able to calm down enough to look around me—but the more I looked, the more famous mystery novelists I saw in the crowd. Yikes! Time to go! But before I could run, people started handing me business cards, and I had to make polite conversations. One of the cards handed to me said Hideo Uyama, which terrified me.
“Th-this is the Uyama-san … !”
I stared in awe at the man who’d handed me the card, but before I managed to recover enough to speak, I was swallowed up by the crowd again. Eventually I escaped, went home, and lay in bed trembling, still in a state of shock.
And that is basically all I have to say about the day GOTH won the Honkaku Mystery Award; however, I think Uyama-san deserves a little more explanation. Uyama-san is the famous Kodansha editor who created the Shin Honkaku Mystery boom, and without him, there would have been far fewer Honkaku mysteries, I never would have read any mysteries of quality, and GOTH never would have been written. There are few opportunities in life to meet with people who have changed history, which is why I was so terrified when he gave me his card.
†
Several years have passed since that chaotic day. During that time, I’ve been rewriting a half-written novel, throwing it all away and rethinking it from the beginning—and in between, writing the occasional short story. I’ve also been to Turkey, played Dragon Quest 8, made a movie, gone to Okinawa with a few other writers, had stories turned into movies, written a new short story called “My Intelligent Underwear,” been given hand cream as a present because my hands were in poor condition, spilled beer and been handed a pen that removes stains, and all kinds of other things.
Probably the biggest change has been the money I now have due to the success of GOTH. Because of that, I’m able to work less and spend more time enjoying myself.
I spent my teenage years writing stories and attending class, and I almost never did anything for fun. I’ve almost never been able to do things simply because I wanted to. And what I want to do involves making movies and games. I became a novelist despite wanting to do those things instead.
So I went and bought a video camera, and I’ve begun making movies. I’d helped with a friend’s film in college, but I thought it was time I directed my own. I’ve made two films now, but the results were much too horrible to show anyone else. I have a newfound respect for people who are good at this. I’ve been asked to write several screenplays. If asked which I like better, novels or movies, the answer is clearly movies, so of course I accepted immediately with all the passion of a drooling dog. I would be perfectly happy to change careers and focus entirely on movies, but I don’t know if that’s possible.
When I tell people I’m making movies, people often seem to think I would be able to get funding from somewhere. Good heavens, no. Certainly I’ve heard offers, but “funding” essentially means borrowing money from people to make a movie, and that is far too much responsibility. The movies I make cost only a few hundred thousand yen, so I can readily afford them without wasting anyone else’s money. They usually involve me, the camera, and the two actors, with no lighting or sound, and are absolutely unprofessional.
So, at the moment, I’m learning how to direct and continuing to write. If I were to spend ten or twenty years to make twenty-odd movies, would I be able to make something satisfactory? This is not the sort of luxurious challenge most of us are afforded. Everyone I know who’s over thirty and calls himself a director is always working horrible day jobs while filming and dreaming of someday working for a major studio. I have no need to work a horrible day job. And that is because of my publishers and readers. And I owe a debt of gratitude to GOTH for allowing me to begin making my own movies. Thank you very much. I began writing stories during the summer when I was sixteen. This year I am twenty-six, so we have been together ten years.
—Otsuichi
June 2005
0
The prohibition of graven images in the Old Testament is more accurately a prohibition against the worship of idols. To avoid this criticism, those who champion the use of icons draw a line between “worship” and “veneration.”
Icon venerators declare that icons are not used with the intent to worship the image itself, but rather to call to mind that which the image expresses. The thinking is this: Though the image is to be treated with respect, this respect does not make it the object of worship. In discussion, proponents frequently liken the icon to the image of a loved one. A drawing or a photo of a loved one is not the actual loved one, but the person enduring a separation from their beloved cherishes the image. The assertion is that the sacred icon similarly causes the bearer to recall the existence of God or the saint—or the vestiges thereof—through the image.
1
When I look at photographs for work, I analyze the various bits of information shown in them. I think about composition, shadows, the lens, the way in which these elements are combined, the chemical reaction that occurs, and the deeper impression the photo makes on the viewer. I can’t help but be conscious of the idea of the
“symbol.”
The act of taking a photo is one of positioning a symbol into a square frame or one of finding it there. The person with the camera may press the shutter with some vague intention, but in most cases, what they capture is nothing more than a scene of high entropy. Given all the information scattered about in the image, viewers don’t know where to rest their eyes. Thus, the photographer makes sure to control the many disparate elements. They make the illumination brighter or the shadows darker, or they fiddle with the lens and the aperture to blur the background, in line with their own style. Cutting out and framing a piece of the natural world in this way creates all sorts of symbols, symbols which helpfully and clearly tell the viewer what kind of photo they are looking at.
I imagine that words are symbols. As long as a person is alive, they have no choice but to use words to infer the intentions of others. And when a person is producing some kind of work, they have no choice but to rely on these same words.
There is something that must not be forgotten: the fact that the symbol itself has no intrinsic meaning. It is not the circle or the square that moves people. These objects are only symbols and have no greater meaning in and of themselves. To have faith in the object is the same as worshipping the image.
In many religions, the worship of images is forbidden. People likely learned this from years of experience. God cannot be drawn or sculpted. The moment it is drawn, it is no longer God; the moment it is sculpted, God becomes a fake. The moment it is expressed, its divinity peels away and recedes from its true nature. Which is why all personages drawn in pictures are a compromise between God and human, like Christ or Mary—you rarely see God, the father of Christ himself, depicted in icons. The sole reason for this is that the expressive possibility for Christ and Mary is as symbols indicating that they themselves are in the presence of God.
A symbol is a fixed concept. However, its true weight is in the context hidden in the gap between symbol and object, the world on the other side of the symbol. Emotion, the ability to move someone, is not a part of the symbol itself. Which is why when I take photos, I do everything I can to eliminate symbolic elements. But there are limits to what I can control, and nothing ever goes the way I expect. What troubles me most is the subject of the photo.
On December 6, I killed a girl.
Hark, the glad sound! the Savior comes,
the Savior promised long;
let every heart prepare a throne,
and every voice a song.
He comes the prisoners to release,
in Satan’s bondage held;
the gates of brass before him burst,
the iron fetters yield.
A hymn, the saintly voices of boys and girls, was playing in the convenience store. Today’s background music appeared to be Christmas songs. I bought some hot coffee and a bottle of water and went back to the car. After starting the engine, I looked out the windshield. Rows of apartment buildings stood in a line, separated by small patches of green. Although it was the middle of the day, there wasn’t a soul around. The steam of the coffee and the breath coming out of my own mouth clouded the glass.
I pulled out of the parking lot. The houses dotting the sides of the road grew gradually sparser as I drove out toward the suburbs. When I crossed the river, the outline of the mountains in the distance ahead of me snapped into focus. I turned onto the mountain path, and the road narrowed and began to snake. Weeds tangled themselves around rust-covered guardrails. The car shuddered, and I heard the clatter of the camera, tripod, and other things I had packed into the trunk. Any time I traveled any distance, I made sure to bring all the equipment I needed to take photos, just in case. I also had photographic chemicals in the glove box.
I had been on a break recently. I was struggling with whether I should keep going the way I had been or if it was time for me to stop for good. I would look at the photos I had taken and try to remember how fresh and genuine it had all felt at the time, but a whole day would go by without the urge arising in me. What point was there in continuing with it? I could have a richer, perfectly tranquil life if I wanted it. But I had unfinished business. Which was why I was on my way to the suburbs today.
Along the way, the road intersected with some railway tracks. Lately, whenever I looked up the name of this place online, I got a lot of hits for ghost stories. At some point, this mountain road had become haunted.
People believed it. They believed these stories about the ghost of a female high school student murdered seven years ago. They wrote firsthand accounts about their experiences with ghosts on online forums, and the town hall got call after call from people looking for information about the incident. The neighborhood elementary school had a staff meeting about how these stories were scaring the children.
All this had nothing to do with me.
No, it didn’t have quite nothing to do with me.
It was 2:30 p.m. Before I knew it, I was very near the pass. There was also a bus stop up here, although I couldn’t imagine what a person would have to have in mind to get off in a place like this.
I stopped the car in a clearing. I got out of the driver’s seat, pulling my head in at the chill of the wind. The area was mostly deciduous forest. At a certain point in winter, the trees scattered their leaves and revealed their twisted, almost entangled, branches. The fallen dry leaves covered the ground, where they would eventually turn to mulch.
A space of about a meter interrupted the thick growth of dead trees along the road, a path that went deeper into the deciduous forest. Given that the ground there was left to nature, the path was impossible to traverse by car. A nostalgic fondness welled up inside me. One point, however, was different from the vision of the place in my memory. Barbed wire had been strung across the entrance to the path, with a sign that read PLANNED SITE FOR WASTE DISPOSAL FACILITY dangling from it.
But the barbed wire was only strung across the entrance, so it was simply ornamental. From the road, I slipped through the dead trees to make my way onto the path. I walked deeper into the forest. If it had been warmer, the area would have made for a perfect hike. But in the cold, it felt savage. The thin branches, which threatened to snap with the lightest of touches, overlapped like the brushstrokes in the shadows of a pen-and-ink drawing, covering the area above my head on all sides.
Finally, I came out into a clearing about as large as the playing field at an elementary school. Dead grass covered the field. There was nothing special here. It was simply a wasteland, soon to be home to waste disposal. This was my destination.
But I had no plans to meet anyone here.
I stopped, wary. A human form stood in the midst of the sea of dry grass. I might have to run. It depended on who it was. Anyone who would come here on this particular day was probably with the police. Or a relative of the girl who had died seven years ago.
Sensing my presence, the figure turned. Long hair, school uniform, coat over that, everything black. A bag hung from her right hand, while the left was shoved into the pocket of her coat. The outline of the person standing there held a physical pressure, carving itself into my brain.
Our eyes met. And locked for what felt like hours, despite the fact that it could only have been a moment at most. I became flustered. The girl approached me; there was no fear in her posture. She pulled her left hand out of her coat pocket, clutching a small digital camera.
“Would you take a picture for me?”
This request would have made all the sense in the world if this place had, for instance, been a tourist destination and if she had had a smile on her face. But this was a dreary empty clearing with nothing in particular to recommend it.
“A picture?”
The girl stopped a few steps away from me. “I’m taking some photos as souvenirs.”
Now that she was quite close to me, any sense of her reality grew even more distant. She had that kind of look.
“Photos? Here?”
She nodded silently.
“Do you k
now what this place is?”
She nodded again and turned her back to me. This place, surrounded by a deciduous forest, held only dead trees and dry grass; nothing lived here. White breath expelled from the gap in the girl’s lips and melted into the air. I was surprised. She knew. She knew that this was the spot where the corpse had been left.
The body of a high school girl had been discovered here seven years earlier in December. A middle-aged couple came to illegally dump their own garbage and found her. If they hadn’t, it likely would have been spring by the time anyone else did. The girl was identified from her belongings. She had gone missing the night of December 6, a week before the body was discovered.
An autopsy found that it was not suicide, but murder. The cause of death was heart failure due to an injection of highly concentrated potassium chloride. She was found in her school uniform; there were no signs of a struggle, or violation, found. She had apparently just been lying in the shade of a tree, as though she were simply resting. A fact that drew further attention was that marks—a group of three indentations in the ground—were found next to her body, as if a tripod had been set up there. Fortunately, this cluster of depressions was found in several other places as well. From the depth of and the distance between the three points, they were judged to indeed have been made by a camera tripod, and the assumption was that the murderer had photographed the girl’s body.
“Umm, you …”
“Morino,” the girl said, and held out the camera. Still bewildered, I took it from her.
“Why would you want a commemorative photo here?”
Without replying, Morino started walking toward the lone tree in the empty clearing to stand beside it. “Right around here, please,” she said, in a melancholic tone that brought to mind returning home from a wake. She was standing right next to the place where the girl’s body had lain seven years earlier. She had apparently done her homework.