Chapter 115 - Name and Reality 38 {66 Solo} (152-153 Isaka Masamitsu's Monologue 3)
"In other words, in your life up to that point, you continued to suffer inwardly in the gap between your conscience and reality, but ultimately, no matter how much you tried to deny it, you chose the evil reality of succeeding the Isaka Group, which is inseparable from yourself and covered in vanity... Is that it?"
Nishida asked, having inferred Masamitsu's inner thoughts before the conclusion of the story was reached.
"I'd heard that a detective's job involves probing the opponent's psychology, and you seem to be quite excellent at that... You're mostly right. I decided to take on my father's evil, which was in the background of my life... and which was inseparable no matter how much I denied it. I could say I was made to realize that this was my destiny, that I couldn't run away. And that... included not just the social evils like bid-rigging and bribery that I already knew about, but also absolute evil like murder. In the end, I reached that conclusion in the New Year of the following year ('96). My family seemed to know to some extent that I would return to Kitami someday, so they didn't particularly object, but they probably didn't understand my inner conflict and resolve..."
After obtaining that answer,
"As for the feelings with which you returned to Kitami..."
Nishida said this and was about to continue with "I understand well," but he swallowed the words before he could. It wasn't that he intended to sympathize with Masamitsu, nor did he intend to go along with a kind of justification, but based on what he had heard so far, he felt somewhat hesitant to casually say he understood the other's feelings well.
And with this statement from Masamitsu, Nishida felt he had caught a glimpse of the resolve—close to 'resignation' in a sense—of a man who, while harboring complex emotions toward his father, succeeded his father's company, followed in his father's misdeeds, and even inherited his father's dying wishes to manage the gold dust.
However, the ultimate goal of this interrogation was not to hear the reason for storing the gold dust or why Masamitsu succeeded the company. Nishida sought to correct the flow.
"That aside. I believe you heard why you were being blackmailed by Sada Minoru, and what the 'past' was. Tell me specifically what that was about."
Of course, Nishida intended to have inferred that story to some extent, and Yoshimura likely had as well, but since it was necessary to have Masamitsu say it firmly, he dared to ask.
"What the old man told me on the phone at that time was only that he had killed Sada and that he was being blackmailed. For the time being, I told him to pay the money as the blackmailer said, but since being in Tokyo wouldn't get us anywhere and I wanted to talk properly about how to deal with the blackmailer, I returned to Kitami once... I think it was the end of October. He placed the deed, the gold dust, and the four bundles of cash with paper bands in front of me as if to be formal, and revealed his entire life from before the war up to that time to me, his son... Actually, until then, I had known almost nothing about what kind of life the old man had led, especially before I was old enough to remember... The old man didn't talk about it, and my mother knew he hated being asked, so there were parts she didn't know well either, and I never heard it from her. So by that time, I remember my desire to hear the story properly was stronger than my desire to blame him for what he had done."
Masamitsu had told this much, but he looked exhausted, so from the interrogation room,
"Hey! Someone bring some tea!"
Nishida called out toward the outside. Then he had Masamitsu drink the tea brought by a young detective and take a break.
A few minutes passed, and once he had finished his breather,
"Now, please continue,"
Nishida prompted, and Masamitsu, nodding to this, said only,
"Thanks for the consideration,"
and began to speak quietly.
"I only knew that the old man was born in Taisho 9 (1920) and was from the Matsumae area in southern Hokkaido. However, I'd never been to his family home, so even as a child I understood that the relationship was somehow bad... According to the old man, he finished elementary school, but since it was a poor household, he was sent to an apprenticeship at a shipyard in Hakodate—well, even if you call it a shipyard, it was more like a large-scale shipwright's workshop. But he didn't get along with the master shipwright and was kicked out after a few years, and he began to wander through various hanba (T/N: A hanba is a lodging facility in Japan for workers engaged in mining, civil engineering, or construction sites. They are located almost adjacent to the site. The tako-beya of tako-beya labor is also a type of hanba) across the prefecture, working as a laborer. While doing that, he drifted along and ended up working under an old man named Senzaki, who was a yamashi—or rather, a gold panner—in Ikutahara. I think it was after the 10th year of Showa (1935)... That old man was a very compassionate person, unlike the people who managed the hanba and sites until then, and he was kind to his employees, so it was rare for the old man to stay in a job for long, and he apparently worked with him for several years. He was also surrounded by relatively friendly people—Kuwano, Hojo, and Mende, who were written on that deed—and it seems he spent peaceful days for the first time in his life. The old man didn't say it explicitly, but it seemed he had tasted considerable hardship during his laborer days. I think that's the reason his half-life hadn't been told and remained a mystery until then."
Hearing this much, Nishida recalled the poor labor environments before the war, such as tako-beya labor.
"In particular, the older one named Kuwano was very smart and had a wonderful personality, so even though he joined later, he was in a position to lead everyone as a leader, so to speak. The old man said at the time that he had never met anyone who surpassed him. The old man was the type who didn't usually praise people much, so I was a bit surprised then. In fact, he said he had graduated from the old-system junior high school and although he dropped out, he had even gone to an old-system high school, so it's certain he had a considerable academic background for the pre-war era. His only flaw or problem was that his Iwate accent was strong, but the story was that it wasn't an atmosphere where you could possibly make fun of him... Oh, that's right, there was one more thing... I think the thumbs on both his hands were missing. Well, he felt like he didn't want to talk about the details, so the old man didn't pry into the reason he lost his fingers. And as for Hojo, he was one year younger than the old man and from the same prefecture; he had some stupid parts, but he was apparently an interesting person. And Mende was the son of a pioneer farmer who came out from Hiroshima and was the youngest, but he was loved by everyone. He was quite handsome and used to brag about being popular with women, but he ruined himself because of that and was eventually disowned, and he too had been wandering the prefecture. At that time, he seemed to be working quite seriously, but his personality was like a 'charmer' in a good way—cheeky but impossible to hate, like a cute younger brother figure. In any case, it seems they were all young men with a drifter-like temperament, except for the man named Kuwano."
Nishida was surprised that Daikichi had explained in detail to his son Masamitsu about the comrades he had worked with under Senba, but he speculated that Daikichi might have considered it his final duty in his weakened state to speak honestly about everything to the son who would succeed him. He interpreted it as the various misdeeds up to that point attacking him all at once after he had weakened mentally and physically, making him unable to keep acting tough. However, Takamura, whom he had killed, had not been mentioned so far. He must have found it difficult to say.
"However, the employer Senzaki suddenly died of illness. And from there, the old man's life suddenly began to move again. Sada Toru, an acquaintance of Senzaki who had occasionally come to visit before, was called by Kuwano to think about how to handle the aftermath, and they talked about what to do next. However, since gold dust was still being collected, they decided to bury the body, continue digging for gold in the mountains for a while, and think about the rest after that. Sada Toru also accepted burying Senzaki as is, since it was a death from illness. But the problem started here. After that, while Kuwano, the old man, and Hojo went into town to buy supplies, there was another coworker named Takamura, but before he could run away from the shack where everyone lived, he tried to commit a theft, and apparently killed Mende, who probably tried to stop him, and fled. The old man and Hojo were so enraged that Mende, whom they had doted on, had been killed, that they chased Takamura through the mountains with Kuwano. And they finally caught him, returned to the shack, and after making him confess to the murder, the old man and Hojo, in a fit of rage, beat him to death with wooden swords they had brought for self-defense."
Here, Takamura's name came up for the first time. Nishida had wondered if Daikichi would go to the end without mentioning Takamura, but it seemed he had at least told Masamitsu about the killing. Was it because it would have been difficult to explain the subsequent blackmail from Sada Minoru without touching on this as well?
"Naturally, Kuwano tried to stop them, but since two men were running wild with wooden swords, he apparently couldn't stop them. Afterward, the three of them were stunned for a long time by what they had done, but Sada came to the shack again. When they explained the situation, he reluctantly accepted not contacting the police. On top of that, Sada told them that Senzaki had actually left behind hidden gold dust as an inheritance for everyone. Now, the conversation turned to what to do next, but even if one was a death from illness, with three people missing, it was inevitable that the landlord who was leasing the place would eventually notice and things would get bad in various ways, so they decided it would be better to bury Mende and Takamura just like Senzaki and leave the place before it was discovered. It also seemed they weren't sure how long it would take to dig out the gold dust. In addition, since it was inevitable that there would be a bit of a stir because all the gold panners had disappeared, they decided it would be better to wait until things settled down and some time had passed, so the actual digging was postponed. However, they decided to make a certification of the distribution in advance, and that's how that deed was created. I saw it for the first time then, and I could tell there were blood seals on it, and from the old man's serious manner, I believed this story immediately."
"Didn't you have any thoughts about your father committing murder since during the war?"
When Yoshimura asked, he said,
"Compared to what I'd heard before that... Since there was a certain reason this time, I wasn't too shocked... If you say I was desensitized, that might be true, but wasn't it also because I had already made my resolve?"
Indeed, for someone who had resolved to lead the Isaka Group by swallowing all sorts of evil, the retaliation against Takamura, while 'vigilante justice,' had its own 'justification' and might have been better in Masamitsu's eyes, and there would have been no reason for Daikichi to lie about the reason for that murder now. However, in Sada Toru's letter, there was a description that "Daikichi took the lead" in the killing, and Daikichi might not have told Masamitsu that much. And the story continued.
"Even if there was no need to leave anything for Takamura, the problem was Mende. He was certainly dead, but he was in a position where he should have received it. And more than anything, it seems there was a desire among everyone to do something about Mende's share."
"Is that the matter of Mende's child?"
Nishida inadvertently blurted out the answer first.
"That's right. It was also left in the deed, but although Mende wasn't married, he apparently had a son. I say 'apparently' because Mende said he had never actually held the child. According to what Mende told them, the mother was a beautiful Ainu girl, but it seems the girl's father was against the two of them, and since Mende was a playboy at the time, he didn't face it head-on and drifted through the prefecture, abandoning the girl even though he knew she was pregnant. However, he was curious, and a year later, he went back once while staying hidden to check on things, and the story was that the girl was holding a baby. He judged it was a boy from the kimono, but he couldn't bring himself to face them and left the place. However, since there was no doubt it was his own child, Mende changed his ways from then on, started working properly, and said he wanted to be able to meet the child someday. Besides, they thought he hadn't run away because he'd come to dislike the girl, and that he probably still had plenty of feelings for her. In fact, he seemed to hint that the mother and child were in a place not so far from Ikutahara, and the old man, Kuwano, and Hojo speculated that Mende wanted to be as close as possible. So, taking Mende's feelings while he was alive into account, they got Sada's approval to divide the gold dust among four people: Kuwano, the old man, Hojo, and Mende's son—whose location they hadn't heard clearly. After creating the deed with blood seals, they left Ikutahara as if fleeing. However, the old man himself seems to have thought at the time that it was doubtful or even less than that whether they could actually hand the gold dust to Mende's son, whose whereabouts weren't clearly known and whose name they hadn't heard."
Masamitsu spoke this much in one breath and checked the reaction of the two detectives.
Nishida and Yoshimura were convinced that Daikichi had told his son almost the entire truth, seeing as the story so far almost perfectly matched the contents of the letter left by Sada Toru. However, they were tired from listening intently, so they decided to take a break and smoke cigarettes for a few minutes. During that time, there was no conversation at all between the three of them. However, the reason for that was likely because they all—Masamitsu, of course, but also Nishida and Yoshimura—thought the story would be long from here on out and were gathering their strength for it.
*
And as if judging the timing was right, Masamitsu asked the two detectives a question in return.
"By the way, you two are incredibly detailed even about things from so long ago. How far have you investigated?"
He said this while carefully puffing on the cigarette he'd been given, likely his first in a long time.
"To take down you and Ooshima, do you have any idea how much trouble we've gone through since '95... Starting with the arrest of your Managing Director Kitagawa, we went to investigate in Iwate, Tokyo, and Osaka, and on top of that, we thought hard, and finally we are where we are now. Finally..."
When Yoshimura spoke with deep emotion, Masamitsu exhaled a large cloud of smoke and said,
"That's quite some persistence..."
"I almost gave up once, though..."
Nishida said this and lowered his gaze once.