Silence Once Begun (5 page)

This led to Oda being dealt with harshly, most particularly because he would not cooperate. He was kept separate from the other prisoners, and visited almost constantly by a series of officials attempting to get information from him. The interrogations that have been made available to me form a part of this narrative, as you know, but are, I suspect, the least part of the many interrogations that took place. It is clear that the guards often would not allow him to sleep ahead of an interrogation in the hopes that it would weaken his will. However that may be, it appears, from the transcripts that we have, that it was not an effective strategy in this case.

Oda Sotatsu was in jail at the police station for a period of twenty days prior to charges being brought. He was then moved to a different facility, for the trial. The entire case was evidently expedited, possibly because of the enormous media scrutiny, and as well because of the confession, and because Oda refused to deal with any potential representation he would have in court.

[
Int. note
. Oda Minako, Sotatsu’s sister, was living elsewhere, possibly in Korea, when I began this series of interviews. It was important enough to her, when the family spoke about what I was doing, that she chose to return to Japan for some days to speak to me. These interviews also took place in the house I had let. She was an attractive woman, older, of course, and dressed very professionally. It seems she had acquired an advanced education, and was actually a professor at a university in Korea, in what subject I do not recall. She had been away at her studies when Sotatsu was apprehended by the police, and she returned from Tokyo to visit him. She was uncertain of the day, or whether her visits followed or preceded those of other family members. She did say that a childhood friendship with one of the police officers permitted her to actually enter the cell and sit with him, something allowed none of the other family members, and something mentioned by no other source.]

INT
.

You were there then, sitting beside him in the cell. You were a young woman, in the midst of her Ph.D., called away into what must have been as absurd a situation as you had ever dealt with.

MINAKO

I was angry with him. He had never lied, not once, and so I was sure that the confession was true. I was worried about the people who had gone missing. I knew two of them personally, an experience the rest of my family did not have, and so …

INT
.

And so it was more complicated for you?

MINAKO

You could say so, but I expect it was more than complicated for all of us.

INT
.

Of course, I don’t mean to say …

MINAKO

I know, I understand. I just meant that my loyalties, my immediate duties in the situation were twofold. I wanted simultaneously to help my brother, a person I loved as much as I had ever loved anybody. I preferred him, in fact, preferred him to Jiro, to my mother, to my father. He was the only other one who actually read, who encouraged my studies. He wrote a great deal of poetry. He was cultured, although I don’t know that anyone besides me knew that. I don’t believe he shared that with anyone … I wanted to help him, but I also wanted to find these two people who were missing, a woman who had been my violin teacher, and a man, a Shinto priest whom I had visited as a child. I was deeply concerned that they should be missing, and I felt the guilt of their disappearance keenly. If there was something I could do to help them, I must do it, so I told myself.

INT
.

And that led to you behaving in a certain way?

MINAKO

One can’t say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you are playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life.

INT
.

But you might have simply done things to make his time more bearable, irrespective of his guilt, or, alternately, tried to query him about the crime itself.

MINAKO

I did the latter. I sat by him and I told him that he was my brother, that I did not refuse him any family connection based on what happened, but that I needed to know if these people could be helped, or …

INT
.

Or?

MINAKO

Or if they were beyond help.

INT
.

And did he speak to you?

MINAKO

He did not. He watched me as I came in. He sat by me. He held my hand. When I left, we embraced. But there was no speech. It was as though he had become pre-literate. The expressiveness of his manner was magnified. His actions no longer leaned on his words. All that he meant he meant through his face and eyes, his hands.

INT
.

And what did those tell you? How did they speak to you?

MINAKO

That there wasn’t any hope in him, none at all. That he was waiting to die, and did feel, did indeed feel that he was not any part of any community, not ours, not any.

INT
.

But he embraced you.

MINAKO

I initiated the embrace. It might have been as much
out of habit as anything else. Or out of boredom. Who can say? He had been in the cell a long time.

INT
.

His silence, were you prepared for it by the way he had been as a boy?

MINAKO

Everything is contextual. No situation he had been in as a boy was anything like the one I found him in.

[
Int. note
. When Jiro discovered that Minako had come to be interviewed, he cautioned me against her. He said that she had always been against Sotatsu, that she had enjoyed the prestige that his crime had afforded the family (a peculiar point, and one I did not understand), and that it was in part due to her intervention that Sotatsu’s case had gotten worse. I absorbed this information, but did not act on it in any regard.]

INT
.

So you had visited him a half dozen times, simply sitting with him, before this visit that you just began speaking of?

JIRO

As I described before, I simply sat with him. I didn’t expect I could accomplish anything else. I was a young man, and had no idea what I would say, or if there was anything to say.

INT
.

But then you had this outburst.

JIRO

Yes, I had the outburst, on my eighth or ninth visit.

INT
.

Can you describe the events that led to the outburst?

JIRO

Things had become bad for us in the town. No one would speak to my mother. Only my very best friends would tolerate me, and even then, only in private. My father, who had been a fisherman all his life, could no
longer sell his fish. No one would buy them. It came to a head one day when my father went to the store to buy something. I don’t know what he was buying, but the store clerk wouldn’t serve him. They got into an argument that went out into the street. Apparently the grandfather of the store clerk was one of the people who was missing. They were shouting at each other. I wasn’t there, I only know what people say about what happened.

INT
.

And what do they say?

JIRO

That he was denying Sotatsu’s guilt. He was saying Sotatsu hadn’t done it. He just kept repeating it over and over, and although the clerk had been the one who was aggressive at first, denying him service and chasing him out of the store, my father became aggressive in the street. He was just shouting at everyone, getting in people’s faces—not behavior anyone had ever seen. He kept saying,
He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. You know him from a boy. You know him. He didn’t do it
. The crowd grew, and became angry. Someone hit him. He fell down. Other people began to hit him. He got hit and many people stepped on him before the police arrived. He was badly hurt and had to go to the hospital. And that’s when it got bad.

INT
.

How so?

JIRO

At the hospital, they wouldn’t receive him. So, he had to be driven to a different hospital where they did take him.

INT
.

How could that be, that the hospital wouldn’t take him?

JIRO

I believe the presiding doctor was connected with a victim of the Disappearances also.

INT
.

And so, this is all prelude to your visit, no?

JIRO

That day I went to see Sotatsu. He knew nothing of any of this, and was the same as he had always been, just sitting in the cell. When he saw me, he stood up and came to the bars. I looked at him and I thought, is there something I can see, some change in him that would make him a different person than the one I knew? I looked at him very carefully. I wanted to see who it was I was looking at. And it wasn’t anyone else. It was my brother, Sotatsu. I had always known him. It was absurd that he had done these things. He hadn’t done them. I was suddenly completely sure. I said to him, I said,
Brother, I know you didn’t do these things. I don’t know where this confession came from, but it isn’t true. I know this
. And I took his hand through the bars.

INT
.

The guards let you touch his hand?

JIRO

I don’t remember what the officers were doing. They were watching, but they didn’t stop us. I don’t think they felt that Sotatsu was any danger. If you had ever seen him, you would not think him any danger.

INT
.

And what did he say, you said he spoke then, what did he say?

JIRO

He said,
Brother, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do it
.

INT
.

And what did you say? You must have been shocked.

JIRO

I was not shocked. It was what I expected. I said to him that he hadn’t done it, because I believed he hadn’t done it, and then he replied, confirming what I said. It was all very clear.

INT
.

But there must have been some relief on your part?

JIRO

I don’t know about that. All of a sudden there appeared a huge mountain to climb where there hadn’t been anything before. Now it was a matter of trying to get him out. Before that it was just visiting, just standing. So, my mind was racing.

INT
.

And you said something to him?

JIRO

I told him he needed to get a lawyer to visit him, and he needed to sign a document protesting the confession, refusing it. I told him I would go and apply for the lawyer to visit, if he would agree to it. But he became hesitant.
I don’t know
, he said.
I don’t think it matters
. So, I tried to convince him that it mattered, I don’t know what I said, but when I left, he had agreed to speak to the lawyer and tell the lawyer what he told me. I left, and went straight to visit my father in the hospital. My mother was there, and I told them. My mother was just shaking. She didn’t cry, just sat there shaking. My father had many bandages and such. He seemed to stiffen. He said,
Why did he sign the confession, ask him that
. I said that I hadn’t thought to ask him that. He said I should have thought of that. I apologized for not
having thought of that. He was always very hard on me, my father.

INT
.

And then you went to make the application for the lawyer’s visit?

JIRO

I did.

INT
.

And the lawyer was scheduled to visit after three days, you said.

JIRO

Then I went to see my brother again. That was the next day, I think. I had to work, so I visited him late. He seemed happy to see me, for the first time. I asked him why he had signed the confession. If he hadn’t done it, why had he signed it? He said he couldn’t speak about it. I said he would have to. He became quiet again. I couldn’t get any more out of him. So, I stood there for about forty-five minutes hoping he would change his mind and speak. He didn’t. I reminded him I was coming with the lawyer and I left.