Nocturne of Remembrance (7 page)

1. I am being questioned about the death of my husband, Shingo Tsuda, in the bathroom of our residence at about 9:00 p.m.
on May 5th of this year. My family relations are just as I discussed previously (May 20, 2011). Today, I will talk about the circumstances at the time of the incident.

2. My husband, Shingo, used to be the head of development for a firm that designs computer software. Our existence was stable then, but after the company was restructured three years ago, he remained unemployed. In the family besides me are elder daughter Miyuki and younger daughter Rinko, who are both of an age where money is needed for their continued education. I encouraged Shingo many times to find a new job, but perhaps because he was too haughty he would not readily seek work. In time he became what you might call a day trader; shut up in his room, he began to invest in the stock market. He poured in all his severance pay and provided almost nothing toward living expenses. In the beginning, he seemed to be making some profit and was in a good mood, but the “Lehman Shock” came in September of that year and burdened him with a huge amount of unrealized losses. Of his nearly eight million yen in severance pay, only 400,000 yen was left.

3. Even without any cash reserves, Shingo would not go to the government employment agency. I begged him to at least apply for unemployment compensation, but he said that such behavior was beneath him and didn’t pay attention to my pleading. Having no other choice, I began working part-time at an accounting office in our neighborhood. Before marrying, I had worked in another accounting office, so I was able to learn the job right away. Also working at that office was an accountant named Kenichi Yoshiwaki. Thus I was performing housework on top of working part-time, but Shingo, as usual, stayed shut up in his room and continued to trade stocks. Since he didn’t have any cash reserves to buy new stock, it seems that he was looking for a good time to sell his
shriveled stock holdings and was spending the rest of the time just looking at things on the Internet. He said that he was a white-collar worker and therefore not suited for jobs where he had to move around and sweat. Whenever he came out of his room, I would tell him to get another job, so naturally he stopped coming out. I think that in the past three years he went outside the house only two or three times. I’d been able to get a part-time job, but we still had a mortgage and with my income alone it was really difficult to manage the budget. We burnt through our savings and were in a really difficult situation. I tore through the ads in the newspaper every morning to see where I could buy food at even a yen less. I now think that paying such minute attention to those things drove me to the wall.

4. Shingo’s daily existence became one where he only came out of his room to eat or take a bath. If he said anything, it was that his stocks would see a reversal and hit the maximum allowable single-day gain or some such nonsense, so no one in the family took notice of him anymore. As a result he began to eat at a different time than the rest of us. His lack of exercise must have taken a toll; before, he had been slim, but now he became unsightly overweight with a pot belly. In the meantime, Mr. Yoshiwaki at the office was very nice to me, and we went out to eat together a number of times. He was the same age as my husband, but with a good reputation as an accountant, he was someone that had a promising future. I gathered from little things that he said and did that he cared for me. Before long, I began to imagine myself separating from Shingo and getting together with Mr. Yoshiwaki. Some time passed like that, and one day Shingo and I had an argument over how the head of a household is supposed to behave, during which I inadvertently said that there was a man close to me who was a wonderful person though they were both the same age.
I had yet to have any deep relationship with Mr. Yoshiwaki, but when Shingo heard that, he became enraged and hit and kicked me. He said with a menacing look that while he was suffering every day here I was cheating on him. But even so, he didn’t forbid me from going to my part-time job because he knew that if I didn’t, he wouldn’t get his three regular meals a day. After that incident, I began to distance myself from him even more.

5. On May 5th, Shingo came to the living room to have dinner as always. It was already nearing nine o’clock, and both of the girls were in their own rooms. I had some pressing things to do at work and was late coming home, so I had bought some frozen food on the way. Shingo complained about that, for starters. He said that I had not only kept him waiting but was also trying to make do with frozen food. I became angry in turn. Even though I was exhausted from working all day, I also did the housework, and wouldn’t take that from some aged NEET. I was tired and must have been irritated. We immediately began to quarrel, and Shingo threw a dish from the table at me and punched me pretty hard in the face. I was no match for him strength-wise so the quarrel just ended there, but I just detested him terribly. I wouldn’t have to suffer if that man disappeared, if not for him I could live with Mr. Yoshiwaki—my hatred deepened when I thought that, and in the end I came to believe that the only way out was to kill him. Shingo went to take a bath right after dinner. I followed him. I apparently had a retractable knife in my hand, but I did not realize it at the time. I must have taken it unconsciously from the toolbox in the cabinet. In the bathroom, Shingo was humming some song, which also angered me. When I said that I wanted to reconcile with him and wash his back, he didn’t suspect anything and invited me in. I told him to turn around, and he defenselessly showed me his back and sat down. Then I
stabbed him in the neck with the knife. Probably because the blade was sharp, it pierced his neck easily, and I stabbed him about three times. Blood flew out like a fountain. I had taken off my clothes and got a lot of his blood on my body, but it washed off easily in the shower.

6. After killing Shingo, I fretted. I couldn’t go live with Mr. Yoshiwaki if I got arrested for murder. In any case, I had to do something with the corpse that lay before my eyes. When I went to look in the girls’ rooms to see if they’d noticed, they both appeared to be sound asleep, so I thought that I had to do something with the body that night. What came to mind was just taking it somewhere and dumping it. The blood had stopped oozing from the wounds, but I thought that if it started again the crime would come to light. I got from the shed the blue tarp we’d bought before for outdoor use, spread it on the floor of the dressing area next to the bath, put Shingo’s body on top of it, and began to wash away the blood that had dirtied the bath area. Blood had squirted almost to the ceiling, and cleaning it took a long time.

7. While I was cleaning up, my father-in-law who lives nearby visited, but I didn’t notice his arrival at first because of the shower noise as I cleaned the bathroom. All of a sudden, I sensed someone’s presence in the dressing area, and my father-in-law opened the bathroom door and entered. I caught a glimpse of Shingo’s body through the open door, and realized then that everything was already up. My father-in-law’s face was ghastly pale as he looked alternately at me and at Shingo’s body, but after confirming with me that I had killed his son, he immediately reported it to the police. I just sat in the living room until the police arrived.

8. I certainly killed Shingo. However, as I just explained to you, I flared up because he hit me, and I had in no way been planning to kill him. I think all women would have done the same
thing if they were in my position. Perhaps this might sound callous, but Shingo was the entire cause of the murder. Of course, I regret killing him and am sorry for him, but I think that I’m the victim here, too.