Rubicons, p.6
Strange Buildings, page 6
AUTHOR: Murder without the risk…
HAYASAKA: And then, just by coincidence, the trap was sprung when I came to stay over.
AUTHOR: I see.
HAYASAKA: Well, anyway, that’s what I used to think.
AUTHOR: What?
Hayasaka takes her lighter from the table, then stands and looks out over the city from the window again.
HAYASAKA: Lately I’ve been wondering if that’s really how it was.
Isn’t it all just a bit too much? The day I just happened to be staying there I just happened to meet her grandmother in the hallway just before she happened to fall down the stairs and die? There are far too many coincidences.
AUTHOR: But if those weren’t just coincidences?
HAYASAKA: Then someone must have triggered the trap intentionally.
AUTHOR: And… Who…?
HAYASAKA: There’s only one person it could have been. Mitsuko.
Her face is dead, devoid of expression when she says this. For some reason, it sends a chill down my spine.
HAYASAKA: So, do you think any of it was true?
AUTHOR: Any of what?
HAYASAKA: Do you think Mitsuko was really a fan of Clever Pepper Girl?
Whenever we talked about manga, it was always just me talking. Mitsuko only listened. I thought she was just being kind and letting me talk my heart out, but… Maybe she’d never even read it.
So, a few months later after all that, I just happened to overhear something. Mitsuko was talking to another girl in class, and she said, ‘As if I would ever read manga! That’s for poor people, isn’t it?’
Something clatters as it falls to the floor. The gold lighter.
HAYASAKA: I… I think I was being used for something. It’s all just so odd. Mitsuko invited me to come and stay. That’s like a princess inviting a beggar to her palace. No matter how many times I might invite her to my house, it would never balance out. She must have had some ulterior motive.
That day, the bookcase was unlocked. But, at night, it was locked. When did she lock it? We were together all that evening and into the night. I remember we even went to the toilet together. So, the only time she could have locked it was later, between when I fell asleep and when I woke up.
So, after she was sure I was asleep, she got out of bed and locked the bookcase.
AUTHOR: Why would she do that?
HAYASAKA: Maybe she hid something in there. Like, say, a walking stick.
AUTHOR: Oh!
A walking stick! Why didn’t I think of it myself? If Mitsuko’s grandmother did have problems walking, then you would expect her to use a stick, wouldn’t you?
Mitsuko sneaked into her grandmother’s room in the middle of the night, took the old lady’s walking stick and hid it in the bookcase. The next morning, when her grandmother woke up to go to the toilet, she looked for her stick but couldn’t find it.
So, what did she do? The toilet was close, so perhaps she thought she could make it.
Maybe she wasn’t aware of how dangerous that space was, since she normally walked it with a stick. So, thinking that the distance was nothing to worry about, she tried and…
AUTHOR: Mitsuko removed the bar holding back the mousetrap spring…
HAYASAKA: That’s what I think happened.
AUTHOR: But she was just a middle school girl. Twelve or thirteen years old. She was too young to be involved in company business, surely?
HAYASAKA: I’m just speculating, but surely her father put her up to it.
Maybe he told her that if she hid the stick, he’d buy her whatever she wanted or something.
Since she was so young, she might have given in to temptation and just done what she was told without much thought about it at all.
HAYASAKA: And if that’s the case, then I think I know why I was invited. To serve as her alibi. I think maybe the plan was for me to be able to say, ‘Mitsuko and I were playing cards in her room when the accident happened.’ That’s why she woke me up so early.
When I went out into the hallway and saw her grandmother, it ended up being a happy accident. Me actually being a witness would make for an even better alibi.
And why me? It must have been because I was poor. She probably considered me disposable because I was in the bottom caste. It’s pathetic. Truly.
Hayasaka starts pushing the fallen lighter around with the tip of one high-heeled shoe.
The pure gold glitters.
HAYASAKA: This lighter’s pretty flashy, right? Like I’m carrying a sign saying, ‘new money’.
I got tired of the view from this window in three days. The expensive clothes, the imported perfume, the brand bag, it’s all ridiculous. Why is everything money buys you so ridiculous? But I have to have it all. I have to wear the symbols.
Because I want to show Mitsuko and everyone like her. I want her to know. I want to tell her, ‘I don’t live like a princess on my parents’ money. I did this all myself.’
END OF FILE 4: THE MOUSETRAP HOUSE
FILE 5
The House Where It Happened
AUGUST 2022
Record of research and interview with Kenji Hirauchi
The summer of the year after I first published Strange Houses, a man came to consult me about his new house.
Kenji Hirauchi, an office worker in his mid-thirties, had just moved to Shimojo in Nagano Prefecture. He told me he’d bought a somewhat old house in the mountain village a few months ago.
The house was on the outskirts, about an hour by bus from his office in the centre.
His commute was long, but there were supermarkets and other shops within a short walk of the house, so all in all the location was not too inconvenient. The house was near some woods, which were criss-crossed by hiking trails with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside, which fitted well with his interests in walking and photography. But he was most attracted by the relatively low property prices compared to the city.
When the estate agent had told him that the house was twenty-six years old, he had imagined something quite run down, given that most houses in Japan don’t make it past thirty years, but when he went to see the property, it seemed barely lived in. He decided to buy it on the spot.
But not long after he moved in, Hirauchi discovered something strange.
One evening, lazing around in bed, he started looking up maps of ‘Incident Properties’ on his phone. These maps show places where bad things have happened: murders, fatal accidents and the like. They’re usually on unofficial sites maintained by users. The most famous in Japan is called Oshimaland, but there are several others with a similar setup.
He was using a special app called Dark Spots Japan. He’d just learnt about it that day when chatting with a co-worker at lunch, so he installed it after work just to have something to talk to his colleague about.
When he opened it up, he was presented with a map of Japan. Locations with ‘dark histories’ were marked with stars. Tapping them would open up a window with details.
The first thing he looked up was the student flat where he’d lived in Tokyo. He zoomed in on Tokyo, then the Kinshi district and found his old flat on the north side of Kinshicho Station. Three houses down from his flat, there was a star.
He tapped it.
LOCATION: Kinshicho, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
DATE: 26th May 2009
PROPERTY: Two-storey detached home
DETAILS: This house was the site of a family murder-suicide. There are rumours that shadowy figures can be seen through the windows at night.
Hirauchi was impressed by the accuracy.
He had known about the murder-suicide in that house and remembered all the commotion in the neighbourhood at the time, with police, media and gawkers filling the streets. He’d even heard the rumours—true or not—that neighbours were spreading about shadows moving in the windows of the empty house after that.
Clearly, someone who had lived, or was still living, nearby had posted the information.
After that, he searched out a few more dark spots that he already knew.
The old, abandoned hospital he and his friends would dare each other to venture into during the summer holidays.
The suicide spot on the island of Shikoku that one of his favourite streamers had talked about.
The highway tunnel near his house where five people had died in a car crash.
They all had stars. His curiosity even drove him to check Honno-ji temple in Kyoto, and, sure enough, there it was: ‘21st June 1582. Oda Nobunaga was killed in a plot to overthrow his rule.’
He was totally convinced of the app’s accuracy.
He played around with the map for a while until he noticed that it was already past midnight. He had to work the next morning, so he knew he should go to sleep, but, before he did, there was one more spot he wanted to check.
He scrolled to Nagano Prefecture.
He wanted to see if there was a star somewhere near his own house. He wasn’t so much curious to find out as anxious to set his mind at ease.
As he zoomed in on the area around his new house, he spotted a single star.
He zoomed in further to see exactly where the star was. As he did, the map became clearer, until he was able to make out individual houses. He was overtaken by a peculiar feeling. He knew this road. He knew those houses.
He gasped. The star was over his own house.
· · ·
‘Here, let me show you,’ Hirauchi said and tapped at his phone.
When I first read his email, I had fully intended to make the trip to Shimojo.
But he told me he had a sudden work trip to Tokyo coming up, so I asked him to drop by my Japanese publisher’s offices to discuss his situation.
I sat across the table from Hirauchi in the visitor’s conference room, with my editor Sugiyama beside me. He held up his phone, and we examined the screen.
From the map, the area looked like a lonely one. It was more than seventy per cent forest, with just a handful of houses dotting the green. And among them was a single bright-yellow star. It seemed oddly out of place.
Hirauchi touched the star, and a detail window popped up.
LOCATION: Oaza, Shimojo, Nagano Prefecture
DATE: 23rd August 1938
PROPERTY: Privately owned house
DETAILS: Woman’s corpse found
1938. Almost ninety years ago.
Hirauchi’s house was only twenty-six years old, so the incident happened long before it was built. So, did that mean the woman’s body was discovered in a house that had previously stood on the same spot?
HIRAUCHI: I know it might be faked. Anyone can post anything on these kinds of apps, so someone could have made it up as a joke or something. But, I don’t know, it feels too realistic, somehow. I just don’t think it’s a prank.
AUTHOR: I agree. I think if someone were going to make up something as a prank, they’d go further than that. It’d say, ‘This house was the site of a mass murder’ or ‘A headless ghost has been seen here at night.’
HIRAUCHI: Exactly. It doesn’t seem like they were trying to make it scary. It’s just a simple statement of fact. That’s what makes it feel real.
AUTHOR: So, has anything strange happened in the house since you moved in?
HIRAUCHI: No, not at all. I’m not one to ‘sense the spirits’ or see ghosts or anything, to be honest. But still, I must say it feels creepy now. Just the thought that someone died there, even so long ago, you know, I can’t help imagining things at night after I turn off the lights.
AUTHOR: Hmm…
Sugiyama had been sitting there, listening silently, but chose that moment to speak.
SUGIYAMA: If you just want to know if something actually happened there, we should be able to confirm the facts, at least.
He pointed at the detail window still visible on Hirauchi’s phone.
LOCATION: Oaza, Shimojo, Nagano Prefecture
DATE: 23rd August 1938
PROPERTY: Private house
DETAILS: Woman’s corpse found
SUGIYAMA: The first questions that come to mind are: who posted this and how did they know about it? Generally, you get two groups of people posting on these kinds of apps.
The first are people who live nearby and have first-hand knowledge of whatever happened. I imagine whoever posted about the murder-suicide in Kinshicho was in that category.
The second group are those who learn about the incident from books or the internet. Obviously, that’s the case with the person who posted about the Nobunaga incident at Honno-ji.
We can assume that whoever posted this incident is in the latter group too. If it were someone who had first-hand knowledge of the incident, they’d have to be nearly a hundred years old. It’s certainly not impossible for someone that old to have gone to all the trouble of installing the app and posting the information, but I find it highly unlikely.
AUTHOR: That means that there must be information about it out there somewhere.
I tried searching for ‘Shimojo Nagano Prefecture woman’s corpse 23rd August 1938’ on my own phone.
I got no hits.
AUTHOR: There’s nothing online, at least.
SUGIYAMA: Well, even the net has its limits.
AUTHOR: Meaning?
SUGIYAMA: At the last publisher I worked for, I was assigned to a rural history magazine. An older worker told me, ‘If you really want to learn about the countryside, forget the internet.’
He insisted that all the rural organizations holding the historical information we were interested in are made up of older people, and they just don’t put their information online. They aren’t interested in digitalization or any of that stuff. So it’s no use looking on the net to find out about something that happened out in the countryside.
Honestly, my experience totally confirmed what he said. There were things that I spent hours searching for online to no avail, but when I went on-site I was shocked how much I learnt with barely any effort. It happened all the time.
AUTHOR: So, what you’re saying is, it’s time for some foot-slogging.
· · ·
The next day, I went with Hirauchi to Nagano.
It was a four-hour trip by Shinkansen and then a local line to the station nearest Shimojo. After we arrived, our first stop was the library, a twenty-minute walk from the station.
The information signs said they had a newspaper archive on the first floor.
AUTHOR: I think newspapers are the best place to start. They would surely have carried some mention of a body discovered in the local area.
HIRAUCHI: Do you think they’ll still have papers from that long ago?
AUTHOR: Certainly not the original papers themselves, but there’s a chance they have some kind of copies.
We were in luck. The library had reproductions of local newspapers going back one hundred years. We started our search from the August 1938 editions, sharing the work as we went through different papers.
After about two hours of searching, we still hadn’t come across any mention of a woman’s body being discovered. However, Hirauchi did find something interesting.
18TH OCTOBER 1938
HEAD OF AZUMA FAMILY, KIYOCHIKA AZUMA, DIES
Kiyochika Azuma, head of the influential local family, passed away in his room at the Azuma manor. The cause of death was reportedly hanging. Kiyochika has no direct heirs, so authorities are still unsure who will inherit the Azuma family estate.
AUTHOR: The 18th of October 1938. That’s about two months after the woman’s body was supposedly found. But who was this Kiyochika Azuma, anyway?
HIRAUCHI: Actually, just the other day I went out on a walk taking photographs, and I found a stone marker reading ‘Site of the former Azuma Estate’.
AUTHOR: So, the manor house was nearby… I don’t know if it’s connected, but it might not hurt to look into the Azuma family. What do you say?
We started to search the library for any books that might contain information about the family.
Before long, Hirauchi found a section of the library dedicated to local history. There were dozens of books there, all on one shelf. We browsed through and found one titled History of the Great Houses of Nanshin.
AUTHOR: Nanshin?
HIRAUCHI: It must mean southern Shin Province. It’s the old name for Nagano Prefecture.
AUTHOR: Then it will cover Shimojo, too. From that article’s mention of an ‘estate’, it certainly seems possible that the Azuma family could have been a ‘great house’ of the area. Let’s take a look.
There were only a few pages with any mention of the Azumas, but we learnt the following:
The area where Hirauchi lived was once completely covered in forest. There was a small village at the eastern edge of the forest, while the Azuma manor stood on the western edge.
The Azuma family had been the rulers of the area in feudal times. After the feudal system was abolished, they remained a powerful local family, as one of the ‘great houses’.
However, in 1938, the head of the family, Kiyochika, committed suicide and plunged the family into disorder. It never recovered, and, in the chaos of the Second World War and the post-war period, it lost all its money and influence completely. Finally, the manor itself was torn down in the early 1980s, the woods it had controlled began to be cleared, and private homes appeared on the family’s former holdings. One of those houses was Hirauchi’s.
HIRAUCHI: So, when the woman’s body was discovered in 1938, the place where my house stands was still unsettled forest.
AUTHOR: So it would seem. I doubt there were any houses in the woods at that point. So the entry must be at least partly wrong.
LOCATION: Oaza, Shimojo, Nagano Prefecture
