Chapter 66: Tōkigan (Part 10)
Next, Ōgami Yōsuke began to lay out the results of his father’s chillingly rational interpretation of the story.
“The shipwreck,” he began, his voice low and serious, “was likely a fabrication, a cover story. My father’s hypothesis is that Tōkigan and Takehime were members of the same human trafficking organization. They arrived on Mie Island under the guise of desperate castaways, and, after being taken in by the kind-hearted villagers, they established a base of operations to begin their grim trade.”
“After some time, a young woman was sold into Tōkigan’s possession. A girl described as being graceful, beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous. She was given the lovely and likely entirely false name of Aoi-jō.”
“To showcase the quality of his ‘product,’ Tōkigan would often take Aoi-jō out into the village, a walking, breathing advertisement for his human trafficking business. His sales pitch would have been simple and brutally direct: ‘A beautiful, capable woman like Aoi-jō can be yours, for just a small price.’”
“The poor villagers, of course, would have found it difficult to decide whether to engage in such a transaction with Tōkigan. And they would have been right to be skeptical about whether the ‘dolls’ they purchased would be as exceptional as the one-of-a-kind Aoi-jō.”
“However, the wealthy landlord of the village had no such hesitation. He approached Tōkigan, and demanded to purchase a young woman as similar to Aoi-jō as possible.”
“Ten days later, Tōkigan delivered the slave girl the landlord had ordered. The landlord was extremely satisfied, and thereafter spent his days and nights enjoying the company of the young woman in his mansion.”
“Word of this gradually spread, and soon, a second, and then a third customer came to Tōkigan to make a deal. Some needed to purchase male slaves as cheap, disposable laborers. Others needed female slaves as… tools for bearing children.”
“For a time, the entire island buzzed with the grim and profitable business of human trafficking.”
At this point, Takada Shōji, who had been listening with a focused intensity, suddenly asked, “Okay, interpreting it this way… it does sound very logical, very much like something a professional scholar, an expert, would come up with. But then how do you explain the three sacred taboos of doll making? How do they fit into this new, non-supernatural theory?”
Ōgami Yōsuke nodded. “I was just about to get to that.”
“The first taboo: because the total number of lives in the world is constant, a sacrifice must be prepared when making a doll.”
“This, my father believes, has a dual and deeply cynical meaning.”
“First, because the island’s food supply from farming and fishing was relatively fixed, a sudden, significant increase in population from buying slaves could very well lead to a devastating famine.”
“Second, because resources were scarce in ancient times, and each household had limited wealth, in order to buy a slave, it might have been necessary for a family to first sell one of their own.”
As he said this, a brief, heavy, and deeply uncomfortable silence fell over the activity room. It had to be said, this was the interpretation of a professional scholar – realistic, pragmatic, and utterly, chillingly, plausible.
Takada Shōji thought for a moment, then asked, “But that’s not quite right, is it? The story says the landlord prepared a sacrifice, doesn’t it? The financial limitations of the second meaning wouldn’t apply to a wealthy man like the landlord. And the villagers who came after him… they don’t seem to have been limited by their wealth either, since they didn’t offer any sacrifices.”
“What if you look at it from Tōkigan’s perspective?” Ōgami Yōsuke countered, then explained, “Although the landlord was not short of money, Tōkigan, as a trafficker, needed a continuous, renewable supply of people to trade. So, it’s very likely he made a condition for the landlord: in order to buy this new slave, you must first prepare a ‘sacrifice,’ that is, another person from your household to be sold into the trade. And the landlord, being rich and powerful, could easily sell off a household servant his family didn’t particularly care about, couldn’t he?”
“As for the villagers who came later not preparing sacrifices… that’s also easy to understand. Mie Island has always been relatively isolated, so it’s reasonable to assume that each household had at least some small savings. They only wanted to buy people; they had no intention of selling their own family members.”
“All in all, this first taboo was likely something Tōkigan fabricated in order to establish a continuous and profitable human trade with the islanders.”
Kana thought for a moment, then asked, “Okay, the first taboo can be explained, more or less. But what about the second taboo? Why couldn’t the ‘doll’ look in a mirror?”
“The so-called ‘mirror’ here, like the ‘doll’ itself, is likely just a metaphor. If ‘doll’ means slave, then ‘mirror’ probably refers to status, or identity. You must not let the slave realize, or be reminded of, their own slave status, otherwise they might run away, or even, in their desperation, harm their master. The so-called second taboo was probably a veiled warning to those who bought slaves, telling them not to treat their new property too cruelly,” Ōgami Yōsuke explained, scratching his head. It was clear that even he wasn’t entirely satisfied with this particular explanation; it felt a bit forced, a bit of a stretch. “Regarding the second taboo, it’s still something to be considered. As I said before, there are some parts of my father’s interpretation that don’t quite add up. The second taboo, I believe, is probably one of them.”
Hearing him admit this, the others didn’t dwell on it. They moved on to discuss the third taboo. Takada Shōji crossed his arms. “So, the failed dolls needing to be cremated… that refers to the bodies of slaves who died during transport, right? They needed to be burned to prevent the outbreak of a plague. Just interpreting the taboo itself, that seems quite reasonable. But when you connect it to the later parts of the story… it also seems a bit forced, doesn’t it?”
Kana nodded. “There’s no sign of a plague in the latter half of the story, is there? The villagers who died were all killed by other people. And I don’t think there’s any plague in the world that would make people murder their own kin or kill people in their sleep, is there?”
Junko paused in thought for a moment, then said, a look of confusion on her face, “And the twenty-one doll owners… if they were just people who had bought slaves, why would they listen to Aoi-jō and carry out a ‘hunt’ at night? They must have known that Aoi-jō was just Tōkigan’s slave, his property. If Aoi-jō had murdered Tōkigan, the villagers would probably have seized her and punished her immediately, wouldn’t they? Why would they be so scared that they’d scatter in a blind panic?”
Takada Shōji followed up, “And the strangest part is actually the timing, isn’t it?”
Hearing this, Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes narrowed slightly, a flicker of interest in their dark depths, but she quickly returned to her usual placid, observant expression.
“Tōkigan spent a whole year helping the villagers make dolls. In that time, he successfully made twenty-one. If Tōkigan was a black-market human trafficker, he would surely try to minimize his transportation costs. For twenty-one people, even without a large, dedicated ship, three or four trips would have been more than enough. Why would it possibly take him an entire year?”
“From the content of the story, it seems Tōkigan made the dolls one by one. But for human trafficking, once you’ve negotiated with the buyer, a single, bulk delivery would be the most logical and most profitable approach, wouldn’t it?”
“And what about the later disappearance of Aoi-jō and the other dolls? If you explain it as Aoi-jō leading the other slaves in a mass escape, that also seems a bit forced. If they were just purchased slaves who had run away, it’s highly unlikely the villagers would have built a shrine to worship their leader, would they?”
Everyone began to chime in, picking apart Ōgami Yōsuke’s father’s rational, non-supernatural interpretation, dismantling it piece by piece. But Ōgami didn’t get angry. Instead, he nodded in agreement. “It’s more or less as you’ve all said. In short, it’s still impossible to interpret the story completely, from start to finish, without any supernatural elements. The biggest, most profound mystery, the one that defies all rational explanation, is the mass sleepwalking of the villagers, and the fact that they murdered people in their sleep. That is a truly sensational and deeply unsettling event.”
“Hehe, so that means we’re pretty smart too, right? We easily found the unreasonable parts of Ōgami’s father’s professional interpretation,” Takada Shōji said, a little smugly.
Today’s club activity had gone on much longer than usual. Yomikawa Tsuko, seizing a lull in the conversation, and deciding she had gathered enough data for one day, finally announced the end of the activity. “It’s getting late. Let’s end it here for today. You all have had your fun, now it’s time to go home and do your homework.”
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