Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 2: Supernatural Babylon
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 1: Impossible Fight to the Death
Chapter 3: A Rescue
Tōkyō was shaking.
Crowds gathered at the intersections, shouting. The sound of military boots on pavement echoed all around. Soldiers parted the mass of citizens like a gash made by a hook. A straight path bisected the crowd. Along that path, soldiers marched in unison. Women and children screamed as they passed by.
Tōkyō was a battlefield where shouts of protest and the commands of the police collided. That spectacle brought to mind the apocalyptic aura of Babylon or Nineveh on the verge of collapse. The city did not seem like a divinely blessed imperial capital at all.
From 1906 to 1909 (Meiji 39 to 42), Japan turned in a new direction. The end of the Russo-Japanese War necessitated this change in course. Government intervened at every level of a citizen's life now. In March of 1906 (Meiji 39) came the promulgation of the Railway Nationalization Act; in November of the same year, the South Manchuria Railway Company was established. In March of 1907 (Meiji 40), there was a revision of the Elementary School Ordinance. In April of 1908 (Meiji 41), the Army and Navy Penal Code was revised and widely circulated. In September of the same year, the Police Offenses Punishment Ordinance passed into law. In May of 1909 (Meiji 42), the Newspaper Act created a nation-wide propaganda mill that strictly controlled public speech and the printed word.
In response to such national policies, social unrest and anxiety were greatly amplified. In March of 1906 (Meiji 39), a citizens' rally opposing a fare increase on Tōkyō streetcars intensified and finally turned into a mob. The area around Hibiya Park transformed into a lawless zone. On January 21 of 1907 (Meiji 40), the Tōkyō stock market—hit by a postwar slump—suffered a major crash, and labor movements across the country were galvanized into action. The Kure Naval Arsenal strike, the Ashio Copper Mine strike, the Horonai Coal Mine strike, and many other such strikes followed. Many of these strikes became riots, and sometimes people were killed.
The more the government limited citizens' rights, the worse the public unrest became.
In this tense environment, Narutaki Junichi suffered strange misfortune one day after visiting Tatsumiya Yukari in Sugamo Hospital.
There was a speaker inside a newspaper office for the Tōkyō Social with a crowd gathered around him. Junichi was bored, so he decided to stop and listen to what the speaker had to say. He was not a socialist, and the gist of the speech seemed to be about socialism, but he decided to listen politely for a few minutes.
Like most young men of university age in Japan at the time, Junichi was dissatisfied with the status quo. He might not identify as a socialist, but he sympathized with many socialist ideas. He decided to go inside the newspaper office so that he could hear the speech more clearly.
When he opened the glass door of the Tōkyō Social Newspaper office, the heat of the cramped room burst out in a rush. Quite a large audience had already gathered. Junichi stood on tiptoes. The man speaking was named Nishikawa Mitsujirō, the editor-in-chief of the paper.
As Junichi stepped forward, a young woman activist who was right in front of him glanced up at Junichi, frowning. Junichi stepped back again, letting her have her space as he kept listening to the speech and the murmurs of the crowd.
Before long, Nishikawa's voice became audible again, and Junichi leaned forward. The young woman lifted her angry face at him once more. This time he bowed as if making an apology.
The woman smiled back and opened a small gap for him to move closer. She was a stern-looking woman who wore no makeup. Resolve burned in her eyes.
Junichi stepped into the gap she'd made for him and listened intently to Nishikawa Mitsujirō's speech.
"Therefore, comrades, workers—whose rights does our government represent?!" Nishikawa shouted, pounding the lectern. "They are flat broke, indebted to us all, unable to balance revenues and expenditures. They oppress us with heavy taxation, squeezing the lifeblood of their people to enrich themselves.
"A prime example is the recent raising of streetcar fares. In the five years since the municipal streetcars were built in 1906 (Meiji 36), fares went from three sen to four sen. And now, with this latest increase, they are being recklessly raised to seven sen. By what logic must we, the suffering poor, bear the heaviest burden of fiscal poverty?
"Nearly twenty years have passed since the promulgation of the Constitution, and yet our government has not once deliberated a law concerning the rights of workers. Of the laws relating to workers now in force, there is only the Public Peace Police Law, and this law does not protect workers. On the contrary, it is an evil law that oppresses us.
"Why is it that legislation reflecting our demands cannot be submitted to the government? Because our political parties are corrupt. The fundamental cause of party corruption lies in the inadequacies of the Election Law.
"The Election Law grants the right to vote to only a little over one and a half million people out of a population of fifty million. Its conditions are governed by obligations to pay taxes related to the land tax and income tax. The majority of tenant farmers and workers do not possess this right.
"But can it be said that we workers bear no obligation to pay even a single sen in taxes? No. When buying a cup of rice wine, a pinch of salt, a single roll of tobacco—when using the streetcar even once—workers, too, bear the obligation to pay taxes. And yet we have no right to participate in politics. If this is not unfair, what shall we call it?
"When all other obligations are fulfilled equally, why is the right to vote not granted? This is not the spirit of the Constitution. We hereby aim for the realization of universal suffrage, and thereby seek to correct political corruption--"
"That's enough!"
A shout rang out from behind Junichi.
"We will arrest you all for violating the Peace Police Law!"
People screamed and confusion swirled through the crowd. A patrol squad of police officers in black, all carrying sabers, charged in. People fled in all directions; some ran up to the second floor of the building.
Junichi clicked his tongue, hoisted up a tin signboard that had been propped by the entrance, threw it at the police squad, and then dashed out into the street. One of the policemen waiting outside leaped at his legs; he forcefully kicked him off and kept running blindly. The street was deserted.
Judging it unwise to run when all else was quiet, Junichi quickly slipped into the thicket by the roadside and started running through a field full of wild weeds.
When he had the time and space to look behind him, he saw no pursuers. The other people listening to the speech had scattered. Three or four had been pinned down by policemen on the road and were being arrested. A few men and women had escaped the police as Junichi had done and were fleeing across the field.
"Stop!" a police officer called out.
Junichi hid himself in the shade of a nearby tree and considered which way to run. He heard someone else running nearby, their footsteps squelching the wet grass on the ground.
"Ow!" The running woman fell with one foot stuck in the grass.
A police officer landed on top of her. "Stop resisting, you bastard!"
The woman struggled violently. Junichi swiftly looked around. No one else was nearby. He burst out of his hiding place and struck the back of the policeman's head with all his might. The policeman groaned and reeled backward. Junichi hauled up the fallen figure, took her hand, and led her toward a thicket.
"Are you hurt?" Junichi asked.
No answer.
Junichi hoisted the woman onto his shoulder and dashed into the cover of several leafy bushes.
He ran and ran, stopping only when he was out of breath. He turned east and kept running toward Sugamo Hospital.
He heard angry shouts behind him, but he didn't stop.
Junichi's desperate flight continued for about twenty minutes. The lights of Sugamo Hospital came into view down the street.
"We're saved!" he shouted to encourage the woman he was carrying. They passed through the hospital gate together.
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