Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 2: Supernatural Babylon
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 5: Destruction in the Year of the Boar
Chapter 22: Kōda Shigeyuki Deduces the Plan to Destroy the Imperial Capital
“That won’t do, Dr. Morita,” Shigeyuki said in a voice like thunder.
“Sh—if Mr. Narutaki hears you, that would be bad. Please remain calm.” Dr. Morita frowned slightly and pressed his index finger to his lips.
Shigeyuki lowered his voice, frowning deeply. “But still… Ise face powder. Isn’t that a medicine for curing syphilis? I’ve heard rumors it contains mercury and is poisonous. Are you saying that Miss Yukari has syphilis?”
“No, I’m not saying it is syphilis. Ise face powder has a sadder use than that— one particular to women. Long ago, at temples where displaced women gathered, this medicine was used for… other purposes.”
“What other purposes?”
“Sh. They’ll hear.”
“Hey—don’t tell me… is she pregnant?”
“Yes.” Dr. Morita held his head in his hands. “That’s why I’m so troubled by all this. I’m a brain specialist, you see, so I don’t know much about that field, but I doubt she’d miscarry naturally. Her attending physician decided to use Ise face powder.”
“But the danger? It’s poison, right?”
“It is, but it is also medicine. There is always some risk. Pregnancy itself can be fatal.”
“What should we do?” Shigeyuki asked.
Dr. Morita looked away. “I consulted with Tatsumiya Yōichirō. The pregnancy must be terminated, so we will use the Ise face powder. Then we will take measures to prevent Miss Yukari from meeting the people involved in this whole affair, beginning with Mr. Narutaki. She will be confined to her home.”
“But—”
“The confinement will be lifted after she recovers. Further treatment can be carried out at Dr. Morita’s Home Liberation Clinic, my experimental facility.”
Shigeyuki shuddered. “To force himself on a poor innocent girl… Is Katō the father?”
“Very likely. We absolutely cannot tell Junichi that.”
“Please take care of Miss Yukari. We’ll manage Junichi somehow.”
Dr. Morita saw Shigeyuki to the door.
Narutaki Junichi, who had been looking out the window at the end of the hall, spotted the two of them and came running over. “How is Yukari?” he asked. “I haven’t been allowed to visit her even once since she was hospitalized.”
“Never mind that. Leave the patient to the doctor. More importantly, there is something we must do.”
“What is it?” Narutaki asked.
“We must catch Katō, obviously.”
“But where is he?”
“Come to the reception room for a moment.” Shigeyuki patted the shoulder of the reluctant physics student and pulled him inside the room.
“I have a conjecture. First, we must consider Qimen Dunjia. According to Yukari’s delirious muttering, Katō is quite obsessed with the Ministry of Finance’s courtyard. He even dug a hole there. He is trying to dig down into a corner of the Imperial Palace grounds and break through the protective barrier that has stood since Edo’s founding. Most likely, he will return to the Ministry of Finance in Ōtemachi.”
“Shall we keep watch in the courtyard through the night?”
“Yes, until he appears.”
“Please wait, Professor Rohan,” said Junichi.
Shigeyuki raised an eyebrow.
“Professor Torahiko Terada of our Imperial University of Science—”
“—The scientist and foremost disciple of Natsume Sōseki?”
“The very one. As it happens, Professor Terada is also pursuing Lieutenant Katō. He had formed an astonishing hypothesis about the relationship between the Ministry of Finance courtyard and Katō, making use of his specialty, which is seismology.
“Professor Terada has turned his attention to the earthquakes that have been occurring frequently in the city lately. He discovered that, in the vast majority of cases, the tremors in the courtyard of the Ministry of Finance were markedly stronger than at other observation points. Moreover, the dates on which the earthquakes occurred seem to follow certain regular patterns—every twelve days, or every sixty days. After comparing earthquake records from various places, he discovered that there were common features in the way the ground shook in Dalian and the Ministry of Finance’s grounds. Astonishingly, many of the tremors recorded in Dalian are said to have been caused by anti-Japanese resistance fighters blowing up military facilities and railways.”
Shigeyuki’s jaw dropped.
“It’s true! Many of the tremors in Dalian were caused by explosions. And Dalian and Tōkyō are connected geologically. They record extremely similar tremors. To put it plainly, the two cities are sitting on the same geologic stratum.”
“Wait. Are you saying that many of the recent earthquakes in Tōkyō—at least around Ōtemachi— were artificially caused?”
“Yes. Otherwise, the seismograph inside the Ministry of Finance must have been moved by the spiritual power of vengeful spirits or something.”
“Don’t be absurd. That is impossible.”
“Yes, my apologies. Professor Terada determined that Lieutenant Katō was involved in the cause of those artificial earthquakes.”
“How?”
“Strangely enough, the sabotage bombings in Dalian have been occurring repeatedly ever since Lieutenant Katō was transferred to Manchuria. What do you make of that?”
“Well, I am astonished. So this man Terada has seen through the whole matter quite clearly, then. Would you tell me all the dates on which those bombings occurred?”
Junichi handed over a list of the bombing dates.
Shigeyuki immediately prepared a brush, paper, and a calendar, and continued making minute calculations for about thirty minutes. When he finished, his face lit up.
“I’ve got it, Junichi. I’ve figured it out. Look — if we take the sexagenary signs of the roughly forty bombing dates that we know about, every single day invariably contains either the month’s or the day’s sign. It’s exactly as old Hirai Yasumasa predicted. Katō must have fixed the year of the imperial capital’s destruction as the year of the boar. There can be no doubt that in this month, this day, and this year, he will begin some dreadful act of destruction.”
“The year of the boar?”
“Precisely. The earliest would be Taishō 12. Come to think of it, Sun Wen’s Revolution also fell in a year of the boar. The disaster is coming twelve years after that.”
“Professor Kōda, why would Katō choose the year of the boar?”
“Do not ask for details now. Everything is proceeding exactly as Hirai Yasumasa predicted. Katō intends to destroy our imperial capital. The death gate of Tōkyō will open, and the god of death will invade the Imperial Palace. Of the eight gates spoken of in Qimen Dunjia, the death gate and the injury gate indicate the direction from which a fatal invasion will come. Katō has undoubtedly calculated his invasion path already.”
Junichi’s eyes widened.
“Professor Terada says the same thing. Katō intends to bring catastrophe down upon our imperial capital.”
“I see. I have not yet had the chance to meet Mr. Terada, but he seems to be a man of keen insight. What else does he think?”
“Professor Terada, of course, does not possess knowledge of the Qimen Dunjia techniques Katō employs. But he is a scientist of some distinction. Professor Terada has grasped the true nature of the plan Katō is attempting by observing nature.”
“In what way?”
“Simply put, the Earth has natural vibrations. It repeats pulsations like a heartbeat. These great vibrations have something like a fixed tempo. When these natural vibrations receive vibrations along the same frequency, resonance occurs, and the force of their motion becomes two or three times greater.
“Professor Kōda, are you familiar with the tuning fork experiment recently conducted in our elementary schools? It is the experiment in which, when one tuning fork is sounded, resonance occurs and another tuning fork also begins to sound. Of course, the reverse is also true: if waves completely out of tune with the natural vibrations collide, they interfere with each other and the vibrations are canceled out. Professor Terada is presently devising a method of constructing houses that will not collapse in an earthquake by applying the principles of resonance.
“Katō intends, by applying what science calls resonance, to cause earthquakes by blowing up Dalian. As a result, he will bring about a great disaster in the imperial capital, Tōkyō.”
Shigeyuki opened his eyes wide and bit his lip.
“I think it sounds insane, but I also think he must be right,” Junichi said. “On his way back from studying in Berlin, Professor Terada stopped in America. He heard a story about a strange man—an electrical engineer called Nikola Tesla, who was mentioned alongside that king of inventors, Thomas Edison. Nikola Tesla apparently boasted that if he could produce vibrations capable of resonating with the Earth’s natural vibration once a day using dynamite or something similar, then in about ten years he would create vibrations so powerful that they would split the Earth clean in two. Professor Terada said that he was an amazing engineer and was thoroughly impressed.”
“Split the Earth in two?”
“Yes. They say that Nikola Tesla has built a gigantic power plant in Colorado in the United States, and lives a bizarre life in which he runs alternating current through his body and rejoices in it.”
“But Katō uses Qimen Dunjia, not electricity or dynamite.”
“Yes. Katō just so happened to adopt an extremely rational method of destruction that makes use of the Earth’s resonance. In other words, he intends to cause an artificial earthquake.”
“How terrible.” Shigeyuki opened his eyes wide and let out a shuddering breath. “What is Mr. Terada doing now? I would very much like to make his acquaintance and confront Katō with him.”
“Well…”
“What is it?”
Junichi’s expression became sorrowful. “Professor Terada has been in poor health lately, and his lectures have been interrupted. He can hardly walk around anymore. It would be impossible for him to confront Katō.”
“He’s ill?” Shigeyuki sank back weakly into his chair.
Junichi opened the door to the reception room. He saw several nurses dressed in white hurrying past. Had an emergency patient arrived?
Shigeyuki’s shoulders slumped as he looked up at Junichi with a vacant expression on his face. This young man was his only hope.
“All right, Mr. Narutaki. I will stake out Ōtemachi with you. We must capture Katō no matter what. We must prevent the destruction he is planning.”
“Yes.” Junichi said this firmly, but there was a faint tremor in his voice. The enemy was formidable: a terrifying avenger who wielded ancient secret arts that were only beginning to be explained by modern physics. Who was Lieutenant Katō Yasunori?
“Let me say one more thing,” Shigeyuki murmured, turning his gray eyes toward him. “You will never see Miss Yukari again. That is for the best, for both of you.”
Junichi let out a small cry. This was outrageous! Dr. Morita, Yōichirō, and now Professor Kōda had all told him the same thing, but he couldn’t just blithely accept it. What on earth had happened to Yukari?
Junichi left the reception room under a cloud.
Kōda Shigeyuki slowly followed after the student of physics, shuffling his feet as he walked. His informal kimono was loose on him.
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