The Village of Eight Graves

Book 35: Detective Kindaichi Mysteries

by Seishi Yokomizo

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend. In the 16th century eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village. Centuries later a mysterious young man named Tatsuya arrives in town, bringing a spate of deadly poisonings in his wake. The inimitably scruffy and brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates.

Release date: December 7, 2021

Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo

Print pages: 320

Sample

PROLOGUE

The village of Eight Graves is perched amid the desolate mountains on the border of Tottori and Okayama prefectures. Naturally, arable land is scarce in these parts, and of what little there is, most is given over to a small handful of rice paddies dotted around, each measuring only ten or, at most, twenty tsubo, or about seven hundred square feet. The inhospitable climate makes for a meagre harvest, and no matter the calls to increase production, the rice paddies yield barely enough to feed the villagers. Nevertheless, owing to a wealth of other resources, the inhabitants there live in relative comfort.

Charcoal-making and cattle-rearing are the main industries in Eight Graves. The latter is a recent phenomenon, but the former has been the villagers’ chief livelihood for generations. The mountains that envelop the village stretch all the way to Tottori and are blanketed in various species of oak—blue, sawtooth and jolcham. They grow in such abundance that the region has long been famed for its charcoal throughout the whole of Kansai.

In more recent times, however, it is cattle-rearing that has become the village’s main source of revenue: the local breed, the chiya-ushi, serves just as well for working as it does for eating, and the cattle market at neighbouring Niimi attracts traders from far and wide.

Each household in the village is charged with raising five or six head of cattle: they aren’t the property of the village farmers, but that of the landowners, who give the farmers the calves and sell them on when they are fully grown. The proceeds of the sale are then shared between the farmer and the landowner at a fixed rate. Thus, as in any agricultural village, the owners and the sharefarmers are pitted against one another: in such a modest settlement as this, there are stark differences in fortune.

In Eight Graves, there are two wealthy houses: the Tajimis and the Nomuras. Since the Tajimi family is situated in the east of the village, they are known as “The House of the East”, while, by the same stroke of reasoning, the Nomura family is known as “The House of the West”.

But a mystery remains: the origin of the village’s name…

Inured to it across generations, those who have been born and laid their bones to rest there will scarcely have given a second thought to this bizarre name. But outsiders will wonder at hearing it for the first time. There must be a story there, they’ll think. And indeed, a story there is—and a strange one. To tell it, we must go back some 380 years, all the way to the Age of Warring States…

 

On 6th July, in the year 1566, when the great daimyo Yoshihisa Amago capitulated to his enemy Motonari Mori and surrendered the Tsukiyama Castle, one of his young samurai refused to give himself up and fled the castle with seven faithful retainers. Legend has it that, in the hope of continuing their struggle another day, they saddled three horses with 3,000 tael of gold and, after enduring many hardships, fording rivers and crossing mountains, finally arrived at this very village.

To begin with, the villagers received the eight warriors hospitably enough. Put at ease by this reception and the villagers’ simple ways, the warriors decided to stay in the village for a time, donning peasant clothes and even taking up charcoal-making.

Fortunately, the deep mountain terrain offered plenty of spots in which to take refuge, should the need ever arise. Because of limestone deposits throughout the area, there were caves, which also provided convenient hiding places. There were a great number of these caves and grottoes down in the valley, some so deep and labyrinthine that no one had dared to explore their furthest reaches. If ever you were pursued, you could easily hide yourself away there. Doubtless it was precisely this geography that led the eight warriors to decide to make the village their temporary abode.

Six months passed in peace and harmony, without any trouble between the villagers and the eight samurai. Meanwhile, however, Mori’s men had redoubled their efforts, for the leader of the fugitives was famous even in the Amago clan, and who knew what terrible calamity might yet come to pass if he were left alive to fight another day. At last, their search for the eight men led them to these very mountains.

The villagers sheltering the fugitives gradually began to fear for their own lives. Not only that, but the glittering reward offered by Mori’s men was also enough to make them rethink their hospitality. What tempted the villagers most, however, was the 3,000 tael of gold that had supposedly been carried on horseback. If only they could kill the fugitives, every last one of them, then no one else would ever know about the gold. Even if Mori’s men did happen to know about it, even if they were looking for it, all the villagers had to do was insist that they hadn’t ever heard about it, let alone seen anything of the kind.

There were many discussions about this, but eventually the day came when, having reached a consensus, the villagers took the eight samurai by surprise. It happened when the men were in a hut, burning wood to make charcoal. The villagers surrounded it and, in order to block the men’s escape, set fire to dried grass on three sides. The youngest and strongest then burst into the hut, brandishing bamboo spears and hatchets ordinarily used for tree-cutting. The era had been plagued by conflict, you see, and had instilled the art of warfare even in the peasantry.

The samurai were caught off guard. They had trusted the villagers absolutely and this unprovoked attack came like a bolt from the blue. There were no weapons in that little hut, of course, so they had to defend themselves as best they could with billhooks and axes, but the odds were stacked against them and it was a losing battle. One fell, then another, and another… until at last the tragic moment came when all eight of them lay slain.

The villagers decapitated every one of the bodies and, with cries of triumph, set fire to the hut: but according to legend, those eight severed heads wore an expression of such tremendous reproach that it made anyone who saw them shudder in fear. The leader of the eight samurai above all retained the terrifying look he had worn as he lay there dying, hacked to pieces by the villagers and drowning in his own blood; with his last breath, he had cursed the village, vowing to visit his vengeance upon it for seven generations to come.

Although the heads secured for the villagers the promised bounty from the Mori clan, they were never able to find where the all-important 3,000 tael of gold had been hidden. They hunted for it high and low, in a frenzy, uprooting grass, boring through sheer rock, tearing up the valley, but never did they find so much as a speck of gold. Worse still, during their searches, a series of ominous events occurred: one man met his tragic end, trapped by a cave-in in the depths of a grotto; another, while drilling the rock face, caused a landslide and lost his footing, falling to the bottom of a ravine, leaving him lame for the rest of his days; and a third man, who was digging the earth at the roots of a tree, was horribly crushed under the weight of the trunk that suddenly collapsed on top of him.

Mysterious happenings such as these followed one after another, but what came next plunged the villagers into an abyss of terror.

Six months had passed since the massacre of the eight samurai. Who can say why, but that year there were a great many thunderstorms in the region, bringing with them terrible bolts of lightning: frightened, the villagers saw in this a sign of the eight warriors’ curse. One day, the lightning struck a cedar in the garden of Shozaemon Tajimi, splitting the great tree in two with tremendous force, right down to its very roots. Now, the curious thing was that this Shozaemon Tajimi had been the ringleader of the attack on the warriors, and, since that day, he had been plagued by remorse and had begun to act strangely, tyrannizing his family and doing things that nobody in his right mind would do. Then the lightning struck the tree… He seized a sword lying nearby and struck dead several members of his own household. Then, running out into the street, one by one he felled every villager he came across, before finally taking refuge in the mountains, where he ended his life by self-decapitation.

All in all, there were more than a dozen wounded, but exactly seven had died by Shozaemon’s hand. Counting Shozaemon himself, that made a grand total of eight deaths, which, rightly or wrongly, the villagers fearfully interpreted as another act of retribution from those eight warriors who had been murdered in cold blood.

In order to appease their fury, the villagers decided to disinter the bodies of the eight samurai, whom they had buried like dogs, and to reinter them with all due ceremony, erecting eight graves where they were venerated as divinities. Of course, it was this shrine in the hills behind the village that lent the place its current name.

 

Such is the legend of the village of Eight Graves, as it has been handed down since ancient times.

But people do say that history repeats itself—and not without reason. In more recent times, there was a terrible event that was reported widely in all newspapers and brought the name of this desolate mountain village to the attention of the entire country. That incident in particular serves as the prelude to the strange series of events that are about to unfold.

The incident in question took place in the 1920s, more than a quarter of a century ago…

 

At the time, the head of the House of the East—that is, the Tajimi family—was a thirty-six-year-old man called Yozo. Ever since Shozaemon, a hereditary madness had been passed down through the generations of the family, and Yozo had been afflicted with it from childhood. Examples of his cruel and violent temperament were plentiful. At the age of twenty he married a young girl by the name of Okisa, and together they had two children.

Having lost his parents at a young age, Yozo had been raised by his two aunts. When the incident took place, the Tajimi family comprised six members: in addition to Yozo and his wife, there was his fifteen-year-old son Hisaya, his eight-year-old daughter Haruyo, plus the two aforementioned aunts. The two aunts, twins and both old maids, had spent their lives, since the death of Yozo’s parents, seeing to the affairs of the Tajimi family. While it is true that Yozo did have a younger sibling, this brother left the family early on in life to continue the line of succession in his mother’s family, adopting the surname Satomura.

Two or three years before the incident took place, despite having a wife and children, Yozo suddenly developed an infatuation for the daughter of a local cattle-trader. The nineteen-year-old girl had just left school and was working at the village post office. Her name was Tsuruko. Yozo being, as I have already mentioned, a man of violent inclinations, the passion that he conceived for the girl was intense. One day, as she was heading home from work, he blocked her way and abducted her, taking her to his storehouse, where he violated her and held her captive, subjecting her to the unremitting torments of his crazed desires.

Of course, Tsuruko called for help with much crying and wailing. Astonished by what was happening, the two aunts and Yozo’s wife tried to stop him, but their admonitions were stubbornly ignored. Tsuruko’s parents were horrified when they eventually learnt what had happened. Hastening to their daughter’s aid with tears in their eyes, they begged Yozo to let her go, but he refused out of hand. No matter how much they implored him, his only reply was a defiant glare, which seemed to threaten further violence.

In the end, the frightened individuals had no choice but to persuade Tsuruko to consent to being Yozo’s mistress. Tsuruko was reluctant, but where might her refusal lead? After all, the key to the storehouse was in Yozo’s possession, and he could come to satisfy his violent desires whenever he pleased.

Tsuruko mulled the situation over. If those were her options, wouldn’t it be better to consent and become Yozo’s mistress? That way, she would be allowed out of the storehouse. And if she was allowed out, then surely she could find another way to escape. She resigned herself to this course of action and asked her parents to inform Yozo of her decision.

Naturally, Yozo was overjoyed at the news. Tsuruko was immediately released from captivity and was provided with accommodation. Kimonos, hair ornaments, furniture and every magnificent object imaginable were bestowed on her. But that was not all: these luxuries had their price, and so, day and night, Yozo would steal into her house, lavishing caresses on her flesh.

These visits struck terror in Tsuruko. Rumour had it that there was such a crazed ferocity to Yozo’s passion that no ordinary woman could have endured it. Unable to go on, Tsuruko tried to run away several times, but on each occasion Yozo would fly into a crazed fury. Terrified by his behaviour, the villagers would beg Tsuruko to go back, and in the end, with little alternative, she would return to Yozo grudgingly.

It was in this state of affairs that Tsuruko fell pregnant and gave birth to a boy. Delighted by this, Yozo named the boy Tatsuya. For a time, it was hoped that having a child would calm Tsuruko down, but it only intensified her attempts to escape, now with a baby in her arms. Not only had the birth failed to have the least effect on Yozo’s unrelenting lust, but on the contrary: Yozo now fully believed that the birth gave him unreserved rights to the woman. He grew more and more arrogant, and his behaviour transgressed every boundary.

It was around then that Tsuruko’s parents and the villagers began to realize that there was more to these events than met the eye, that her repeated attempts to escape were not just because she could no longer bear her life with Yozo. The fact was that she had long since promised herself to another. He was a young man by the name of Yoichi Kamei, and he taught at the village school. His respected position meant that the young couple could not meet openly, so they were forced to hide their love for one another. It was said that the couple would meet clandestinely in the secluded depths of grottoes. (Hailing from other parts, Kamei had developed a passion for the local geology, and he would often go on expeditions to explore the limestone caves.) The villagers were given to gossiping, and so, naturally, once a thing like this became known, there were those who began to speculate about Tatsuya’s birth. “That child isn’t Tajimi-san’s, you know. He’s the son of the teacher, Kamei…”

In such a small village, it was only a matter of time before the rumours reached Yozo’s ears. His fury was like a raging fire. He was as mad in jealousy as he was cruel in love. He dragged Tsuruko by the hair, struck her, kicked her, beat her and, after stripping her naked, drenched her with iced water. Then he took Tatsuya, whom only moments ago he had cherished as the apple of his eye, and, seizing a pair of fire tongs from the brazier, branded his thighs, back and buttocks.

“He’ll kill us both at this rate,” thought Tsuruko. She was at breaking point. She grabbed the child and rushed out of the house.

For several days, she hid at her parents’ house, during which time she learnt that Yozo’s rage had only intensified. Terrified, she fled the village and hid with relatives in Himeji.

While he waited for Tsuruko to return, Yozo spent his days drinking. On previous occasions when Tsuruko had run away, her parents or representatives from the village had always brought her back with their apologies two or three days later. But this time, five days, then ten days passed without any sign of her reappearance. Gradually, his fury took on ever more diabolical dimensions. His two aunts and his wife were too frightened to go near him, and, for once, none of the villagers dared to act as a go-between. It was then that Yozo’s madness finally exploded.

It happened one evening towards the end of April. Spring arrives late in the mountains, so the charcoal braziers were still in use. The villagers were suddenly roused from their slumber by a gunshot and screaming. A few moments later there came a second shot, then a third. Cries, shouts, calls for help grew and grew. Those who rushed out to see what on earth was going on were met with a most peculiar sight.

They beheld a man dressed in an officer’s tunic, with gaiters and straw sandals on his feet. He had tied a white bandana around his forehead, under which he had affixed two flashlights to look like horns. On his chest he wore a lamp—the sort that looks like a mirror and is used by those who visit a shrine in the middle of the night, at the hour of the Ox, to lay their curses. Over his tunic he wore a soldier’s belt, which held a sword, and in his hands he was holding a hunting rifle. The villagers were stunned. They had still to recover their senses when the rifle went off again, shooting one of them dead where he stood.

The man with the gun was Yozo.

Dressed in this bizarre costume, he had, only a few moments before, killed his own wife with a single slash of his sword and, abandoning the body, rushed out into the street in his madness. He had not laid a finger on either of the aunts or his children, but now he was going about the village, slashing and shooting at random.

Details of the investigation later revealed that the owner of one house, having heard a knock at the door, was shot as soon as he opened it. In another house, where a sleeping newlywed couple lay, Yozo had prised open the rain shutters, slipped the rifle through the gap and shot the husband dead. Startled by the noise, the wife had run to the far wall and clasped her hands together, pleading for mercy: the rifle then discharged with another deafening bang. The sight of the young bride, her lifeless hands still clasped, brought tears to the eyes of the young policeman who rushed to the scene. It seemed all the more tragic that she had arrived in the village only a fortnight previously, after the wedding, and had no connection at all to Yozo.

Yozo terrorized the village like this throughout the night, and at dawn he fled into the mountains. The villagers had never known such a night of horror.

The next day, when hordes of policemen and journalists descended on the village after receiving urgent reports, they found the village bathed in blood, bloody corpses strewn everywhere. The groans of those at death’s door issued from every other house. Some were crying out for help. It is impossible to say now how many were injured by Yozo, but as for the dead, there were thirty-two in all. It was a horror unmatched in the annals of crime in Japan.

In the end, it proved impossible to find the killer after he absconded, although it was not for want of trying. The police, together with firemen and a team of youths from the village, who had formed a sort of militia, combed every mountain peak and every valley, right down to the limestone caves. Their search carried on for several months, but ultimately they had to admit defeat, having failed to uncover Yozo’s hideout. They did find evidence to suggest that he was still alive, however. There was the carcass of a cow that had been shot and from which the meat had been stripped in several places. (In this region, the cattle are kept in stables throughout the winter, but come spring, they are let out to pasture, where they roam free for days at a time, sometimes even venturing as far as the neighbouring prefecture. But once or twice a month, when they need salt, they come down from the mountains and return to their keepers.) Beside the carcass, traces of fire indicated that Yozo had lit gunpowder to cook the meat: it was obvious that in taking refuge in the mountains, far from having the slightest intention of ending his life, he had instead decided to go on living, come what may—a fact that plunged the villagers back into a state of terror.

Nobody ever did find out where Yozo had hidden himself. Common sense would suggest that he could not possibly have gone on living in the mountains for more than twenty years, but there were many in the village who nevertheless clung to the belief that he was still alive. There was something almost comical about such a notion, but then Yozo had sent thirty-two innocent victims to their death. Thirty-two… Each of the eight gods had demanded a sacrifice of four. It followed, therefore, that Yozo’s death would be one too many. And that was not all: proponents of this theory would always be sure to add, “What has happened twice will come to pass a third time. It happened once with the Tajimis’ ancestor Shozaemon; now it’s happened a second time with Yozo. Sooner or later there will be another horrible and bloody affair just like this one.”

 

In the village of Eight Graves, whenever children misbehave, their parents frighten them by telling them that a monster with flashlights for horns will come for them. Before their very eyes, there will appear an image that they have imagined so often before: a monster with a white bandana and two horns, a lamp on his chest, a sword in his belt and a hunting rifle in one hand. Instantly the tears dry. The nightmare has left its mark on each inhabitant.

But what about those villagers who were touched directly by Yozo’s frenzy? What became of them? The curious thing about it was that those whom Yozo had killed and maimed had nothing to do with him or Tsuruko, whereas the people actually involved in the affair escaped, for the most part, unscathed.

For one thing, Kamei, the teacher so detested by Yozo, had that evening gone to play go with a monk in a neighbouring village, thus escaping the massacre. All the same, it was reported that, fearing perhaps what the villagers might think, he transferred to a school far away soon after the events of that night. Then there were Tsuruko’s parents. As soon as they heard the commotion, they guessed at once how things would end and hid themselves under the straw in one of the cattle sheds, escaping without so much as a scratch. As for Tsuruko herself, she had, as we know, taken refuge with relatives in Himeji, and was thus spared the drama. Later, she was summoned by the police and had to return to the village, where she remained for some time, facing the deep resentment of the villagers.

“None of this would have happened if she had been obedient and submitted to Yozo,” the families of the victims would say, brimming with hatred.

Hounded by these whispers and the fear of seeing Yozo alive again, Tsuruko wasted no time in leaving the village with her young child.

After that, she was never heard from again.

 

Twenty-six years went by, bringing us now to the post-war period.

The old legend proved right: the village was indeed to become the setting for yet another series of mysterious crimes. But unlike those first ones, these murders were not impulsive, but carried out with a strange and insidious logic and plunged the village back into a state of terrible fear.

These preliminaries have taken a long while to lay out, but the time has come to raise the curtain on this new drama. First, however, I should like to point out that what you, ladies and gentlemen, are about to read was written by a person directly involved in this affair, someone who played a most important role in it. How I happened to come by his manuscript has little bearing on this tale, though, so I shall dispense with any explanation…

CHAPTER 1

“MISSING PERSONS”

It must have been around eight months after I returned from the village of Eight Graves that I finally managed to regain a sense of composure.

Right now I am sitting in my study, atop a hill in a western suburb of Kobe, looking out at a picturesque view of the island of Awaji. Quietly drawing on a cigarette, once again living a peaceful life, I find myself struck by a curious feeling. As avid readers will know, the experience of terrifying events can turn the hair white, but at this very moment, ...