As my readers know, I rediscovered Kyoto again and again and again, and, having thoughts of my own about it, I have been making journeys to Kyoto over the past several years.
How many times during this period have I heard the following announcement on the platform at Shin-Osaka Station? “Today, due to the effects of an accident involving a person at…, train services are…”
It happened again only recently, on February 20.
Because the weather forecast had shown clear skies from the morning onward that day, the first place I headed was the Floating Garden Observatory, Hiroshi Hara’s masterpiece.
When I took photographs on February 18, the area around the Port of Osaka and Osaka Bay was cloudy—or rather, I could photograph it only in darkness—and I felt that if I did not return and photograph it again, I would be failing to do justice to the Port of Osaka, which is by its nature a world-class port.
I was able to take the magnificent photographs I had hoped for…the Port of Osaka at Sakishima, Osaka Bay as seen from the mouth of the Yodo River—how truly beautiful they were.
The urban district of Kobe visible on the opposite shore to the right was also splendid.
Very well, today I shall visit Horyuji Temple once again…A certain sensation, understandable only to me, was synchronized with Horyuji Temple.
I hurried from Umeda City and arrived at Osaka Station…
Before I had headed toward Umeda City, there had been an announcement: “Today, due to an accident involving a person at Tennoji, services on the Osaka Loop Line have been suspended…”
I went to the information desk and asked, “Is the Yamatoji Rapid Service operating?” I was told, “The 12:14 departure is running on schedule,” so I said, “That is perfect—what good fortune,” and headed to the platform, only to find services hopelessly delayed and no way of understanding what was happening.
For the time being, I boarded a Yamatoji Rapid Service train that had arrived, whereupon an announcement said, “We sincerely apologize, but today this train will be terminating at Kyobashi…”
This was no good, so I got off the train and abruptly headed for Kyoto instead.
I had already written, around the time I suddenly appeared on the Internet on July 16 two years ago, that the number of people who take their own lives in Japan exceeds 35,000 every year.
Now, I truly understand them as something I can actually feel.
It is just as, when one suffers a serious injury such as breaking a leg, one suddenly notices how many people in the streets are walking with fractures and other injuries and comes to understand through actual experience the inconvenience, and so forth, and the hardship they endure.
I imagine that among them are people who encountered various forms of evil and were defrauded of the entire fortunes they had accumulated to support themselves in old age.
I once read in Weekly Asahi that the benchmark for the Special Investigation Department of the Public Prosecutors Office to take action in cases such as bribery was 30 million yen.
I believe that people who defraud others of 30 million yen or more should be sentenced to life imprisonment.
A person who commits such a grave crime even once was an evil person to begin with and will repeat it again and again.
All the more so, anyone who has taken another person’s life should be sentenced to death.
To say, concerning this, that “the death penalty is…” is virtually equivalent to proving oneself to be a pseudo-moralist.
Recently, I have come to think this more and more strongly.
The only exceptions would be people like the avengers in Hissatsu Shiokinin—people who do not merely deceive others, but who remove from society those who have committed evil deeds that, in truth, amount to killing people…people who avenge otherwise unavenged grievances for the sake of society and other people. They alone should not be held criminally responsible.
I seriously believe that such a society is necessary.
Why?
If you were to encounter the twenty percent of evil that inhabits this world and suffer what I have suffered, you would understand that I am by no means saying anything absurd.
Money accumulated over an entire lifetime cannot be recovered; it will not return. People in society do not understand the magnitude of that suffering, anger, and bitter frustration. The grievance remains unavenged, while the criminals who stole the money live on without a care…Tormented in mind and body by such bitter frustration and anger, or by the tremendous anger of having lost the means by which they were supposed to enjoy a comfortable old age, some people die carrying grievances that can never be avenged.
Just as, on the great plains of Africa, numbers are constantly being culled to preserve the species.
Needless to say, in the human world, being inferior never means possessing an inferior intellect or inferior physical abilities.
Most of them are hideous brutes, monstrously cruel people lower than beasts; I believe they should be culled.
Why?…
Because it has been demonstrated throughout the world that the evil of people who deceive others never returns to its original state.
Such criminals repeat their actions again and again.…
From the very beginning, they lack the sensitivity required to understand how grave a crime it is to hurt another person.
Such people should not be released into society and should be confined in prison permanently.
That, I believe, is what a true place of confinement ought to be.