Silence Once Begun (21 page)
Sato Kakuzo
)
[
Int. note
. The statements were carbon copies of originals that Kakuzo kept. I occasionally had difficulty making out a word here or there. In such cases, I strove to keep meaning clear and chose the least outlandish or strange usage. Some of the statements were little more than scraps. Others were on larger paper, printed with diagrams and explanatory text. I do not give all here, as the relationship of some to the matter at hand was tangential at best.]
1. Narito Disappearances: Blueprint
2. The Invention of a Crime
3. Confessions & The Idea of a Confession
4. Joo & How It Went in Practice
1. The abduction of individuals from their homes
2. The confession of a person
3. The trial of that person
4. The execution of that person
5. The reappearance of the various individuals
6. Public acknowledgment of wrongdoing on the part of the governing mechanism
The first should be accomplished in total secrecy. There must be no intervention of law enforcement at this time. It should be easily accomplished, but must require elaborate and long-standing plans, as well as the use of specific resources.
The second must involve either: a. an unbreakable person (dedicated to the cause and understanding it thoroughly); or b. a person who will prove unbreakable based upon arbitrary reasons, reasons of peculiarity, i.e., an eccentric.
The third will proceed naturally, as should the fourth.
The fifth is an artificial event, prompted by the announcement of the fourth.
The sixth may be hoped for, and can be accomplished by the pageantry and spectacle of the fifth, particularly by the directedness of the fifth, and the manner in which it places blame.
The invention of a crime is a special matter. A crime does not exist, and then it is invented. It is not executed. Never is the crime executed; it is merely invented. It is not carried out, but it appears to have been carried out. This appearance of execution creates the crime in the eyes of the populace who beg for enforcement. The individual who accepts guilt for the crime that never occurred is then caught (or comes forward) and is punished. The punishment, of course, is real. Should the society have sufficient resources to detect that the crime is an invented crime, and marry it with an invented execution, similarly un–carried out, though appearing to have been, then the crime would be un–carried out, would be revealed in its un-carried-out-ness and the criminal released. The system would have proven efficacious in the extreme. The chances of such an event are nil.
The invention of a crime is not the province of the criminal mastermind, as it does not, in its essence, involve any crime at all. The principals, both the victims and the agents, are complicit in the event. Some have said that this is always the case (in nature). We do not accept or make that point here. Here we simply say: all involved in the “invented crime” are a part of an organization created for the purpose of arranging the “invented crime,” and all have knowledge of the enterprise in which they are embroiled. The single exception may be (and must be) the confessor, if he be of the second type (spoken of previously).
The action of the crime must be such that it involves tremendous fear on the part of the populace with little reason
for that fear. In other words, the fear that is generated must be archetypal, must not be truly causally connected with the crime. The fear must be inspired. Any direct connection between the fear and the event of the crime could serve as an infraction of sorts, and would, at the end of all events, prove to be a true crime, actually punishable.
The organization must have within it members capable of long silence and great discretion. The gathering of such individuals is the principal difficulty that faces any organizer at the founding of such an organization. It is most especially problematic when the ethical problem the organization has been created in order to combat is itself vague and full of complication.
To that end: a discussion of confession.
It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
This is to say, if a man makes a soup, a patently bad soup, and another tastes it on the end of a spoon and says to the first, “This is good soup,” the soup then is known as good. It is acknowledged good. It fulfills its purpose as soup. The consensus regarding the soup is that the soup is good. It perhaps will be made again in the same way. Others arriving on the scene, perhaps with doubt in their hearts as to their ability to accurately judge a soup to be good or not, they hear this verdict of the soup. They taste the soup and know it to be good. They are not judging the soup themselves; this power they have not obtained: rather they listen to that initial agreement.
When a man has committed a crime, it should be prosecuted in a fair society only if the evidence of that crime may be seen. No imaginary documents, that is to say, documents that are the province solely of the human mind unconnected with the world, should be used toward a prosecution or conviction.
That we as humans believe we see things we do not see.
That we will stake our lives and reputations on the above.
That we as humans believe we have done things we have not.
That we will stake our lives and reputations on that, too.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is clear that the mechanism of the law cannot discover all ends. They cannot find all evidence. It is the nature of the world that all evidence is ground into nothing, sometimes in mere minutes. It is the nature of the world that this grinding of evidence into nothing does not proceed (always) with malice or intention. The world simply renews itself. Chaos and order rear their alternate heads as two winds that tear at each other’s cheeks.
This being the case, it was soon determined (early in the course of law) that an element, a freeing element, might be obtained in the search for justice. This freeing element may be divided into two parts:
1. The first: eyewitness testimony.
2. The second: the confession.
That a person saw something, himself or herself, has long been accounted a part of the judicial process, however, it never was given the pride of place that it enjoys today, principally because the opinion of any one individual was never accorded respect on the basis of an individual being an individual. This is to say, in previous times, one’s office as a human did not accord one the full opportunity to both claim something and be its proof.
In previous times, such proofs were made thusly: by appeal to the gods.
That agency was then made known through various trials: trial by combat, trial by fire, trial by water. This then was the
proof. The proof was not the accusation, nor the statement of an individual.
That said, it has generally always been the case that a person willing to confess to a crime may be acknowledged to have performed that crime. Such a position is mistaken: one cannot know that a person has the truth of a thing, most particularly in the manner in which he/she is affected by it. Our knowledge about ourselves is our least reliable knowledge. Yet, so thoroughly do we ordinarily champion our own cause that it is acknowledged
effective
to believe that a person who deems it impossible to any further champion his/her own cause must be guilty. Else, why would he/she not continue to declare innocence?
It is primarily through a judgment that favors efficiency over truth that confessions are deemed viable.
All true convictions should proceed from a scientific investigation the results of which can be replicated (and which should be shown to be replicable). A particular person should not necessarily have any involvement whatsoever in the investigation into or trial of their offense. The world itself should provide all details and all evidence. If such evidence is lacking, then a crime cannot be proven without a doubt, and a person ought not to be convicted or punished.
[
Int. note
. This was the most recent of the papers. In my opinion, the previous sheets were old notes, written by Sato Kakuzo prior to the Narito Disappearances, likely even prior to his departure from Sakai. This paper, on the other hand, might even have been written in the year I received it, or thereabouts, long after the last gasps of the Narito Disappearances had been forgotten. He begins this with a vague ascription of date, but whether it can be trusted is unclear.]
The Unwilling Participation of Jito Joo
I write now to explain the unwilling participation of Jito Joo in the events of last year. Whether this document will be read by anyone during my life, whether it will be destroyed before anyone has seen it, whether it will be seen next week after I am carted away on some unrelated charge, who can say? I write it in order to not be a part of any deception related to Jito Joo, in order to say my piece about the truth of the matter.
I had known Jito Joo before I returned from Sakai. When we resumed our relationship, it was not much of a surprise to either of us. Things had gone well before I left; they went well after. It was simply a geographical dislocation that made us stop seeing each other. It was a geographical reuniting that prompted the resumption of our relationship.
I will say this also: Joo was smarter, sharper, and more clever than any of the other girls I knew, whether in Sakai
or anywhere in Osaka. This alone was a determinant for me. I loathe to repeat myself, and with Joo, one never must. We also shared certain sympathies of temperament, and of political viewpoint. As I see it, the politics of our daily life are inextricable from the larger politics of the world. Therefore, when we felt ourselves confined, when Joo and I, sitting in our small apartment, felt ourselves confined, we sought for ways out.
I had been reading a great deal. I had read of various French attempts to throw off this oppressive air that infiltrates daily life. Debord, Vaneigem, and others had made many attempts, both to inspire, and to act in their own right. This led directly, as I will explain, to the events that I caused, that I and Jito Joo caused, in Osaka Prefecture.
I had planned the matter already. I had a sense of what I wanted to do. My eye had pinpointed a term, had seen a specific, which I felt should be overloaded and made to destroy itself. That specific, that element, was
the confession
. I felt that no one had stood against it sufficiently. I felt that its innate duplicity, its essential divergence from truth or fact, should be marked and seen by all for what it was. Yet wherever I went, whomever I spoke to, I was astonished. The matter was not clear; this matter, so clear to me, was not clear to others. Patently, I saw this as an opportunity, one to be prosecuted with swiftness, if I may take liberties with the phrase.
So, to return to the narrative, I was living there with Joo. I had made a plan, but had no helpers. I was working at the docks, traveling to the docks to work, and returning exhausted. I was angry. I was in love. I was also afraid—I
was not sure that Joo would share my adherence to the precise elements of my plan, and once I confided it to her, it would have to go forward in that exact way, else fail.
That is why I trapped her. That is why the first contract was not the contract signed by Oda Sotatsu. The first contract, made in the same way, after a supposed game of chance, was signed by Jito Joo. I was ashamed to have had to make it, ashamed to have had to perpetrate it. But, in the course of time I saw that she would never have agreed to the repeatedly heartless actions that were required of her, had she not been forced by her agreement, and by her fealty to what she saw as her honor.
One night, Joo and I were playing at a game, a game of chance, a comparison of cards, a drawing and comparison of cards. Neither would win more than the other. She would at times win; I would at times win. Our method at first had been to play for forfeits. When the burden of inventing forfeits proved too much, we moved to agreed-upon and more dangerous consequences. We began to cut ourselves with a knife upon a loss. I stepped from a second-story window and injured my leg. She stepped in front of a car and caused it to drive off the road. I give these examples as evidence of the state of mind in which we were going forward. We were in love with each other. We were in love with the mechanism we were using to repel the dank pressure of conformity. We were despairing all the while, because after each arch of our backs, the weight pressed down again, just as strongly as it had before.
Yet, I had my plan. Joo knew nothing of it. I said to her, I said,
Joo, this time we shall write an agreement. We shall make a contract. The contract will bind one to the will of the other for a period of time
. She objected. A period of time? How banal. Why not the course of a project, why not for the duration of some project, that therefore could stand for a week or a year or more. This was the sort of thing Joo would suggest. I agreed, and so we hammered out the terms of the bargain. The loser would be forced to obey the other entirely within the confines of the proceeding, of the particular project. Beyond that, he or she could have his/her will, but only insomuch as he/she would not affect the successful execution of the project by his/her actions.
I wrote it up. We cosigned the establishment of a bargain: that the loser of our card game would be forced to sign the sheet. We dated it.
We then sat facing each other. I laid the cards out. She cut them and drew one. I cut them and drew another. I won and she signed the agreement. It was as simple as that. I had placed the cards in order, and knew where to look for my winning card. She didn’t guess that I would do such a thing. She didn’t realize that there was a thing for which I was working, a thing for which I would cheat. But there was, and I did. And from then on, I had Jito Joo’s complete obedience in all matters related to the Narito Disappearances.
She never went back on her agreement, and she never threatened to. She never wanted to see it. Indeed, I did not keep it. I destroyed it immediately, the very day she signed it. To see such a document, and remember my behavior in relation to it—I wanted no part of that. I was looking to the future. I was thinking on how I could use her, and how I could cause a dislocation in the life of my society.