us now is representative of his technique and thematic outlook. The victim is a merciless moneylender, the accused a young owner of a noodle shop. The crime is murder, the investigator a legal detective. The style is "documentary real-life"—with a surprise twist at the end. . . .THE case seemed simple. . . .
On an autumn night, a sixty-two-year-old moneylender was clubbed to death in his own home by a twenty-eight-year-old man. The murderer stole a cashbox from the victim's house and fled. The box contained twenty-two promissory notes. Of these notes, the killer stole five, then threw the cashbox into a nearby irrigation pond. The murdered moneylender's house was located in a western part of Tokyo that was beginning to prosper architecturally, but at the time of the killing, the immediate vicinity was still roughly half agricultural fields.
When the young lawyer, Naomi Harajima, received word from his lawyers' association that he had been designated court-assigned counsel for the case, he did not much like the idea and was on the verge of refusing. He already had three private cases on his hands, and they were keeping him occupied.
The president of Harajima's lawyers' association argued that he would very much like him to take the case. It appeared that one other lawyer had already been appointed but had suddenly taken ill. The trial was scheduled for an early date. The court would obviously be embarrassed if no legal representative for the defendant was found.
The president said, "Besides, Harajima—this case is nothing much. Come on, now, man—at least give it the once over. All right?"
Section 3 of Article 7 of the Japanese Constitution makes provision for state-assigned legal counsel in cases where the defendant is too poor or for some other reason unable to procure legal advice (Article 36, Criminal Legal Procedural Code).
Since the state pays, the legal fee is extremely low; busy lawyers usually do not want these cases, though sometimes humane reasons for aiding a defendant enter in. The association attempts to divide these duties among its members on a rotational basis, but any attorney is free to refuse. But something must be done. . . .
Accordingly, cases like this usually find their way into the hands of lawyers who are quite young, or who are not too busy.
Because the fee is small, handling of such cases often becomes less careful than it might otherwise be.
Recently the reputation of the system has improved slightly. But actually, these men, often disinterested or very busy, may do no more than give the case a brief run-through before the trial and meet the defendant for the first time in the courtroom. Things will never be completely remedied until fees for court-assigned counsel are raised.
Harajima was urged to defend Torao Ueki in the case of the murder of Jin Yamagishi, because the work was simple. He finally agreed.
In reading the documents pertaining to the indictment, the records of the criminal investigation, Harajima learned the following things.
Originally, the victim, Jin Yamagishi, had owned a rather large amount of agricultural land. But he had sold this to a realtor. With the money accrued, he built a two-story house and immediately opened a small-scale financing business. This had happened ten years ago. At the time of the murder, Yamagishi lived alone. Childless, his wife had died three years before. Yamagishi rented the second floor of his house to a young primary-school teacher and his wife. The rent was not high, though the old moneylender had a reputation for being greedy. He was impressed because the schoolteacher had a second-dan black belt in judo. In other words, the young man would be a combination tenant and guard.
Any elderly person living alone might want protection. In this case, it was still more important for Yamagishi, since he had made a bad name by charging high interest on the money he lent. Many of his customers were small businessmen trying hard to succeed in a newly developing part of Tokyo. The neighborhood was along one of the private commuter train lines. A good location. But population growth had been slow, and business was not thriving. Some of the people who paid Yamagishi's high rates went bankrupt. There were cases in which older people used their retirement funds to open stores. They put shop and land down as security for loans from Yamagishi. He took everything when they could no longer keep up their payments.
Customers in other districts along the same train line suffered because of Yamagishi's behavior. It was not alone fear of thieves but also the knowledge of the many people who hated him that encouraged the moneylender to install the young judo expert and his wife in the upstairs apartment.
On October 15, the young teacher received word that his mother was close to death. He and his wife left that day for their hometown. The murder took place on October 18, and Yamagishi's body was discovered by a neighbor on the morning of October 19. This person found the front door open (later it was disclosed that all other windows and doors were firmly secured with rain shutters that were locked from within), entered the hallway, and immediately saw Yamagishi stretched out face down in the adjacent room. Fearful, he called out. There was no answer from the inert form.
He reported the matter to the police.
Autopsy revealed the cause of death to be brain concussion and cerebral hemorrhage, caused by a blow on the head. An area about as large as the palm of an adult hand was caved in and flattened at the back of the skull. The wound had been fatal. Yamagishi had tumbled forward and expired in a crawling position. He had apparently been struck from behind and, after falling, had crawled a short distance on hands and knees.
From the contents of the victim's stomach, it was ascertained that he had died about three hours after his last meal. Yamagishi, who cooked for himself, was in the habit of eating dinner around six. This would mean that the murder took place between nine and ten, an assumption that agreed with the autopsy doctor's estimation of lapse of postmortem time.
Nothing in the room was disturbed. In a smaller bedroom next to the one in which the corpse was discovered, a sliding cupboard door was open. The black-painted steel cashbox in which Yamagishi kept his customers' promissory notes and other documents was missing. Japanese-style bedding was spread out on the floor of this room. The top quilt was pulled partly back. The sheets and pillowcase were wrinkled but not violently disordered. This suggested that Yamagishi must have gotten out of bed and walked into the next room. He habitually retired at nine o'clock (testimony of the young teacher and his wife).
It was apparent that Yamagishi had opened the front door of the house himself, letting the murderer in. Usually the door was locked by means of a stout wooden pole forced against the frame in such a way as to make opening from the outside impossible. When the body was discovered this pole stood in the entranceway beside the door. Only Yamagishi could have removed it and opened up from inside.
Someone Yamagishi knew and who knew his habits well must have come to visit.
Why was the greedy, suspicious old man willing to get out of bed and admit someone at the hour of nine o'clock at night?
There were no reported rumors about Jin Yamagishi's masculinity. He was not prohibitively old. But perhaps because of his curious personality or stinginess, from his youth he hadn't much been interested in women. The person who called at nine that night must have been a man.
Not one of the neighbors had heard anybody knocking on the old moneylender's door or calling out to him on the night of the murder. If he had already gone to sleep, anyone who called loud enough to wake him in the inner sleeping room would have been heard. Possibly the telephone had roused him. The instrument stood on a small table in a corner of the room where he slept. The murderer could have called Yamagishi first to tell him he was coming. Yamagishi then removed the pole from the front door and waited. He must have been quite familiar with the person, if this were true.
