Repository path: workshop/translations/saigo-no-ikku/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

最後の一句 §4 — single-pass draft

This is the frozen draft required by R04 §Procedure step 2a, and it is therefore an R06 output in its own right. It is committed before the self-revision begins, so that the R06/R04 pair is real rather than reconstructed. The revised text, the full translator's log covering both passes, and the source and contamination apparatus are on T-saigo-no-ikku-R04-v1.

• Source: Mori Ōgai 森鷗外, 「最後の一句」 (1915), §4 entire — the trial at the West Magistracy. Aozora Bunko card 000129, file 45244_22341.html, decoded cp932; stored at ../source-ja-span4.txt (31 paragraphs, 2,281 non-whitespace characters).
• Regime: R06 (lead single-pass). Cost: $0, never ledgered.
• Contamination: none, unmeasured — basis and the reason no measurement was possible: ../../../experiments/E-20260727c-sense-boundary/contamination-preprobe.md.
• No published rendering of this passage into any language was consulted. Translated from the Japanese alone.

It is the last third of the hour of the Sheep, on the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month. The white sand of the West Magistracy presents a bright and formal spectacle. In the audience hall the two magistrates sit in a row. In a recess a separate seat has been placed, and there the castle warden, not attending in any official capacity, has come to watch the examination from the side. On the veranda the yoriki charged with the examination takes his seat, with his clerk behind him.

In the garden, where the dōshin stood guard in stern array with the three implements planted upright, every tool used for torture had been laid out. To that place came the five ward elders, bringing the wife of Katsuraya Tarōbei and her five children.

The questioning began with the wife. But when she was asked her name and asked her age, she barely got out an answer, and to everything else she was asked she said nothing beyond "I know nothing whatever of it" and "I am overawed" — not one statement did she make.

Next the eldest daughter, Ichi, was examined. For sixteen that year she looked rather young, a thin slip of a girl. But she made her statement from beginning to end with not the least sign of flinching. How she had overheard her grandmother's talk from behind a screen; how, after night came and she had got into bed, she had hit on the idea of petitioning; how she had confided it to her sister Matsu and talked her into it; how she had written the petition herself; how, Chōtarō having woken, she had let him come with them, and, once she had learned the ward the magistracy stood in, had had him lead the way; how she had come to the magistracy and dealt with the gatekeeper, and had then asked the yoriki of the guardroom to pass the petition on; how the yoriki and the others had compelled her to go home — everything she had been through since the day before, she answered clearly, as she was asked.

"Then you consulted nobody but Matsu — is that so?" the examining officer asked.

"I told nobody. I did not tell Chōtarō the details either. I only said I was going to ask that my father be spared. When we came home from the magistracy and were brought before the ward elders, I said we were offering up the lives of us four so that our father might be spared; and then Chōtarō said that in that case he wanted to offer his life too, and in the end he had me write a petition of his own for him, and he has brought it with him."

When Ichi had stated this, Chōtarō took a paper out of the breast of his robe.

At the examining officer's direction one of the dōshin took the paper from Chōtarō's hand and brought it out to the veranda.

The examining officer opened it and set it beside Ichi's petition. Ichi's had been handed in by the ward elders and produced before the examination began.

Chōtarō's petition said that he too wished to die in his father's place along with his sisters and his younger brother, and it was written in the same hand as the other.

The examining officer called out, "Matsu." But Matsu did not notice she had been called. Only when Ichi said, "His honour is calling you," did she lift, timidly and for the first time, the head she had been hanging, and look at the official above the veranda.

"You want to die together with your sister — is that it?" the examining officer asked.

Matsu said "Yes," and nodded.

Next the examining officer called, "Chōtarō."

Chōtarō said "Yes" at once.

"You want to die with your brother and sisters, just as it is written in the paper — is that so?"

"When they are all dying, I don't want to be the one left alive," Chōtarō answered clearly.

"Toku," the examining officer called. Her sisters and brother having been called in turn, Toku realised that this time it was she who was being called. And she only opened her eyes wide and looked up into the official's face.

"Are you willing to die too?"

As Toku went on silently looking at his face, the colour went out of her lips and her eyes filled with tears.

"Hatsugorō," the examining officer called.

Hatsugorō, the youngest, barely six, likewise looked at the official's face without a word; but when he was asked, "And you? Are you going to die?" he shook his head briskly. The people in the audience hall smiled at it before they could stop themselves.

At this point Sasa came forward as far as the threshold of the audience hall and called, "Ichi."

"Yes."

"There is no falsehood in your statement? If there is the least error in what you have said — if anyone put you up to it, if you consulted anyone — say so this instant. If you hide it and do not say so, I shall have you put to those implements laid out there until you tell the truth." Sasa pointed towards where the instruments of torture were.

Ichi gave one glance in the direction he pointed, and without the slightest wavering said flatly, "No. There is no error in what I have said." Her eyes were cold and her words were quiet.

"Then I will ask you one thing more. If the substitution is granted, you will be put to death at once. You will not see your father's face. Is that acceptable even so?"

"It is quite acceptable," she answered in the same cold tone; then, after a short pause, as though something had come into her mind, she added, "Since there can be no error in what the authorities do."

On Sasa's face there appeared the look of astonishment of a man taken unawares; but it vanished at once, and his eyes, gone hard, were fixed on Ichi's face. Eyes of wonder with hatred in them, one might call them. But Sasa said nothing.

Then Sasa whispered something to the examining officer, and before long the examining officer announced to the ward elders, "The business is done. Withdraw."

Seeing the children off as they went down from the white sand, Sasa turned to Ōta and Inagaki and said, "A frightening thing, what she will grow into." In his mind there remained no trace of a pitiable, dutiful daughter and no trace of a foolish child put up to it by others; there echoed only the last phrase of Ichi's last words, cold as ice and sharp as a blade. Officials of the House of Tokugawa in the Genbun years naturally knew nothing of the Western word martyrium, and the dictionaries of that time had no rendering-word kenshin, self-devotion, either; so it is no wonder they did not know that the human spirit is capable, without distinction of age or sex, of the working that had shown itself in the criminal Tarōbei's daughter. But the point of defiance hidden within self-devotion pierced the breast not only of Sasa, who had exchanged words with Ichi, but of every official in the audience hall.