Chapter 65: Tōkigan (Part 9)
“So that’s how the villagers on Mie Island see themselves…” Kana said, a note of disappointment in her voice. “And here I was, thinking they might have some special local product, like beautiful handmade dolls for sale.” She paused, a new thought occurring to her. “If they see themselves as the descendants of dolls, then selling dolls on the island must be… forbidden, right? A kind of taboo?”
“Well, the older generation is certainly more traditional and holds to the old ways,” Ōgami Yōsuke said, scratching his head. “Although I’ve never been to Mie Island myself, I have heard that in recent years, a small, doll-related industry has gradually started to develop there. No matter how ancient or mysterious a legend is, at the end of the day, it still has to serve the people who are living in the present. If you can’t make a living, then what’s the point of any legend, however sacred?”
“Eh? Yōsuke-kun, you’ve never been to Mie Island? Are you planning on going for summer vacation, then?” Junko, hearing this, suddenly couldn’t remain calm, her eyes lighting up with a sudden, intense excitement. “If they’re reopening the Mie Island case, your father will definitely have to go and stay there for the investigation, won’t he? What will you do then, Yōsuke-kun?”
“I’d like to go to Mie Island myself, of course,” Ōgami Yōsuke shrugged, a wistful look in his eyes. “If I could learn more details about the Tōkigan legend directly from the locals, from the keepers of the oral tradition, I might discover something new, something that’s not in the official records.” He sighed. “But my father might not take me with him. In any case, we’ll have to see what the situation is then.”
At this, Junko suddenly became very animated, her voice rising with excitement. “Hey, hey, isn’t this a perfect, absolutely amazing opportunity? It’s just like a plot from a classic detective novel! When you get to Mie Island, some bizarre new case will definitely happen, and then you and your dad can solve it together as a father-son detective team! Just thinking about it is so exciting!”
Ōgami Yōsuke vaguely remembered that Junko had suggested something similar before, saying that if his father was ever asked to help with another strange, mysterious case, he absolutely had to bring her along. He had thought she was joking at the time.
“If everyone is interested in Mie Island,” Yomikawa Tsuko suddenly said, cutting through their excited chatter, “we could all go there together for a trip during the summer vacation.” She had already, for her own reasons, planned not to stay at home for the summer. Now that she thought about it, Mie Island, a remote and isolated place, seemed like a rather… suitable… destination. “As for any ‘bizarre cases,’ I think we all know that’s highly unlikely to happen. But to go on a trip and, while we’re there, do a little… investigation… into the details of the Tōkigan legend… well, that could be interesting.”
“R-really?!” Takada Shōji’s face was a mask of pure, unadulterated joy. “Since it’s an island, there must be beaches and guest houses and things like that, right? To be honest, I’ve lived my whole life and I can count the number of times I’ve actually been to the beach on one hand.”
Being located so far inland, the only chance for the locals to experience the seaside was during vacations. This was true for Takada Shōji, and, in truth, for the others as well.
Kana scoffed, a look of profound disdain on her face. “Hey, hey, hey, Takada-senpai, you lecher, you pervert! Beaches, seaside… you just want to see Senpai in a swimsuit, don’t you? That’s all you’re thinking about!”
“N-n-n-n-no, I don’t!!!” Takada Shōji’s face instantly turned a deep, furious shade of beet red. He stammered, flustered, desperately trying to defend his honor. “I meant, while we’re investigating the Tōkigan legend, we could also… relax a bit… at the beach! As for… as for swimsuits and things like that, I absolutely, one hundred percent, wasn’t thinking about that!”
It was painfully, almost comically obvious that Takada Shōji was embarrassed. And from the guilty, flustered look on his face, it was equally clear that he had, just now, been vividly fantasizing about Yomikawa in a sexy and likely very revealing swimsuit.
As the object of his rather pathetic fantasy, Yomikawa Tsuko could roughly guess the content of his thoughts. In fact, in her previous existence, she had had similar, if more… anatomically focused… thoughts herself. And so, it was easy for her to imagine, with a swift, and deeply, uncomfortably accurate precision, the scene currently playing out in his simple mind.
“But Senpai has such a great figure, she’d definitely look beautiful in a swimsuit, right?”
“I’m so envious of Senpai! I’m definitely going on a crash diet for the next two weeks!”
Amidst Kana and Junko’s envious and increasingly detailed discussion, the topic of Yomikawa in a swimsuit suddenly became the main focus of the club’s conversation. Knowing that she was the subject of their collective, and in some cases, rather lurid fantasies, Yomikawa was caught completely off guard. She felt the blood rush to her face, a hot, prickling, and deeply humiliating sensation. For a moment, she felt as if she were sitting on pins and needles, her skin crawling.
No, no, no…
This feeling… this… embarrassment… I have to… I have to suppress it…
If it were the real Senpai, she would definitely be able to handle this with a cool, amused grace. I absolutely cannot show any weakness! Not now!
Damn it! Damn it!
Yomikawa clenched her jaw, her beautiful eyes narrowing slightly as she forced herself to calm down, to try and mentally separate her own consciousness from the identity of “Yomikawa.” But a faint, almost imperceptible, and to her, deeply infuriating blush still colored her fair cheeks. “Even a remote place like Mie Island has police,” she said, her voice sharp, a little too loud. “If you sexually harass someone, you will still be arrested.”
“S-Senpai is right…” Takada Shōji, remembering his earlier, humiliating encounter with Katayama and being caught in the act of plotting, felt a chill run down his spine. “If anyone dares to do anything… inappropriate… I’ll be the first to not forgive them!”
The atmosphere, however, still hadn’t changed much. Yomikawa Tsuko, desperate now, immediately changed the subject. “By the way, Ōgami-kun, does your father have any particular professional insights or opinions on the legend of Tōkigan?”
“Yeah, Yōsuke’s dad is a professional scholar, isn’t he? He must have a different perspective, right?” Junko said, glancing at Yomikawa Tsuko. It was unclear if she had noticed anything, but she followed up, her tone now more serious. “Our discussion has, up until now, included supernatural factors. What if we were to completely exclude the supernatural from our analysis?”
Ōgami Yōsuke scratched his head. “My father does have one… alternative hypothesis. One that completely excludes any supernatural factors. But, he admits, there are still many things that it can’t quite explain. So, we can’t say with any certainty that it’s correct.”
“What’s the hypothesis? Let’s hear it,” Yomikawa Tsuko said, quietly taking a deep, steadying breath, trying to calm the chaotic, emotional storm raging within her. Feeling the blood finally recede from her face, the burning heat dissipating, she felt a little more at ease.
“The hypothesis,” Ōgami Yōsuke said slowly, his voice dropping, taking on a new, grim seriousness, “is this: Tōkigan was not a doll maker at all. He was a black-market human trafficker.”
“And, by extension, Takehime was not necessarily Tōkigan’s wife. She was, more than likely, his accomplice.”
“And the so-called ‘dolls’… they were likely just a metaphor. A euphemism for the people being trafficked. And the so-called ‘process of making dolls’… that was actually the process of transporting the trafficked slaves from the mainland to the homes of their buyers on the island.”
“H-human trafficking?” Junko was slightly stunned. Just hearing the words, she could already begin to imagine the countless, unspoken tragedies contained within them.
“In that era, was there really such a thing as human trafficking?” Kana also asked, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and disbelief.
“When the buying and selling of human beings began in Japan is impossible to verify with any certainty. But if we reference the history of other countries, this kind of grim trade mostly began before the invention of a standardized written language, just as societies were entering the era of private ownership,” Ōgami Yōsuke explained. “In the Muromachi period, the great Noh actor Kan’ami wrote a Noh play called ‘Jinen Koji.’ This play was themed around the tragedy of human trafficking. By that time, the system of human trafficking in Japan was already fully mature, and had, it is said, penetrated every corner of society.”
“Therefore, for Tōkigan’s profession to be such a merchant, there is no inherent contradiction with the historical background. And if we interpret the legend of Tōkigan from this particular, and rather grim, angle, it becomes, perhaps, a story about a series of terrible tragedies and disasters that befell the villagers of Mie Island as a direct result of their participation in the slave trade.”
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