Repository path: workshop/translations/saigo-no-ikku/R06-v2/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-saigo-no-ikku-R06-v2 — Mori Ogai, «Saigo no ikku», the two official scenes, lead single-pass draft

Source. Mori Ogai, 森鴎外, 「最後の一句」 (1915), first published 『中央公論』第30年第11号. Aozora Bunko card 45244, file 45244_22341.html, 底本 「山椒大夫・高瀬舟」岩波文庫; decoded as cp932 and cleaned by tools/fetch_aozora.py. The passage is the story's second half taken whole and continuous: from the children's arrival at the West Magistrate's gate to the end of the white-sand examination — 72 paragraphs, 4,976 Japanese characters, copy-text stored at workshop/translations/saigo-no-ikku/span-source.txt. The story's opening exposition (the family, the shipping fraud) and its closing legal coda are outside the span and were read but not rendered.

Regime. R06 — lead single pass. This draft is frozen as its own artifact before the R04 self-revision began, per R04 v1.0 §Procedure step 2a. Cost $0; never ledgered (charter §3, A4).

Contamination: none — the basis is stated in full on T-saigo-no-ikku-R04-v2 §Contamination and is not repeated here. In one line: the direct measurement is unreachable (exactly one English translation of this story has ever been made, Dilworth & Rimer 1977, in copyright and lending-only), and a same-author sibling measurement against the one public-domain published English Ogai returns 0 shared 7-grams and a longest common run of 6 tokens, against 160 / 27 / 12 / run 24 for an independent published pair.

Paragraph numbers [1]–[72] are editorial, added to align the rendering with the copy-text one paragraph to one paragraph. They are not in Ogai.

The translation

[1] They reached the West Magistrate's office at last, only to find the gate still shut. Going to the window of the gatehouse, Ichi called, over and over, "Excuse me. Excuse me."

[2] After a while the shutter opened and the face of a man of about forty looked out. "What a racket. What is it?"

[3] "I have come with a petition for His Honour the Magistrate," said Ichi, bowing politely from the waist.

[4] "Eh?" he said; but the man seemed to have trouble making out what the words meant.

[5] Ichi said the same thing again.

[6] The man appeared at last to understand. "A child cannot address His Honour the Magistrate. The parent had better come out himself," he said.

[7] "No. My father is to be put to death tomorrow, and it is about that that I have a petition."

[8] "What? Put to death tomorrow. Then you are Katsuraya Tarobei's child?"

[9] "Yes," Ichi answered.

[10] "Hm," said the man, and thought a moment. Then he said, "This is outrageous. Even the children, it seems, have no fear of Those Above. His Honour the Magistrate will not see you. Go home. Go home." And with that he shut the window.

[11] Matsu said to her sister, "Elder sister, he scolds us so — let us go home."

[12] Ichi said, "Be quiet. Being scolded is no reason to go home. Do just as I do." And so saying, Ichi squatted down before the gate. Matsu and Chotaro squatted down after her.

[13] The three children waited a good long while for the gate to open. At last there was the sound of the bar being drawn, and the gate opened. The man who opened it was the same one who had put his face out of the window before.

[14] Ichi went in first, and Matsu and Chotaro followed behind.

[15] Ichi's manner was so unruffled that the gatekeeper did not at once try to stop her. For a while he stood staring after the three children as they made their way toward the entrance hall; then, coming to himself at last, he called out, "Here, here."

[16] "Yes," said Ichi, and stopped obediently and turned round.

[17] "Where do you think you are going? Did I not tell you just now to go home?"

[18] "You did say so, but we do not mean to go home, whatever happens, until our petition has been heard."

[19] "Hm. A stubborn creature. In any case you are not to go over there. Come this way."

[20] The children turned back and came to the gatekeeper's post. At the same moment two or three duty officers came out from beside the entrance hall, calling "What is it, what is it," and surrounded the children. Ichi, almost as though she had been waiting for this to happen, crouched down where she was, took the paper from inside her kimono, and held it out before the yoriki who stood at their head. Matsu and Chotaro crouched down with her and bowed.

[21] The yoriki, with the paper held out to him, seemed uncertain whether to take it or what to do, and looked down at Ichi's face in silence.

[22] "It is a petition," said Ichi.

[23] "These are the children of Katsuraya Tarobei, the man on public show at the Kizugawa mouth. They say they have come to beg for their father's life," the gatekeeper explained from one side.

[24] The yoriki looked round at his colleagues. "Well then, shall we take the paper into our keeping, at any rate, and put the matter to his honour?" he said. To this nobody objected.

[25] The yoriki took the petition from Ichi's hand and went into the entrance hall.

[26] Sasa, the West Magistrate, was the junior of the two magistrates, and had not yet been a year in Osaka. In matters of office he consulted his colleague Inagaki about everything, referred to the Castle Warden, and so disposed of them. For that reason, ever since he had taken over the Katsuraya Tarobei suit from his predecessor, he had kept it in mind as an important case, and when the formalities of the execution were at last completed he had felt as though a load had been set down.

[27] Now, this morning, the yoriki on night duty had come out and said that someone had presented a petition begging for the man's life; and Sasa's first feeling was that an obstacle had got in the way of a thing he had taken such pains to bring forward.

[28] "What sort of person is it that has come?" Sasa's voice was out of humour.

[29] "It is Tarobei's two daughters and his son that have come, and the elder daughter says she wishes to present a petition, so I have it here in my keeping. Would your honour care to look at it?"

[30] "Considering that the petition-box too has been established by His Excellency's own intention, it may be received, according to the circumstances; but the proper formalities must at least be explained to them. At any rate, if you have it, let me look it over privately."

[31] The yoriki laid the petition before Sasa. Opening it and looking at it, Sasa put on a doubtful face. "Ichi is the elder daughter, I take it. How old is she?"

[32] "I have made no enquiry, but she appears to be about fourteen or fifteen."

[33] "Indeed." Sasa looked at the paper for a while. It was written in an unpractised kana hand, but the reasoning was so well ordered that even a grown person, one felt, could hardly have set down so much matter in so short a document. The thought came to him suddenly that a grown person might have made her write it. Next he wondered whether it was not the work of some brazen fellow imposing upon Those Above. Then he considered what should be done for the present. Tarobei was to be exposed until the evening of the next day. There was time yet before the sentence was carried out. Whether to receive the petition or not, he could consult his colleague and refer to his superior in the interval. And even if there were some deceit in the case, it could be found out in the course of making them go through the proper formalities. At any rate the children should be sent home, Sasa thought.

[34] So to the yoriki he said this: that he had looked the petition over privately, but that it could not be presented to a magistrate; they were to take it back and tell them to present it to the ward elders.

[35] The yoriki told Sasa that the gatekeeper had tried to send them home and that they would not go on any account. Sasa ordered that in that case they should be given sweets or something, coaxed, and sent home; and if they still would not listen, they were to be marched off.

[36] After the yoriki had risen from his place, the Castle Warden, Ota Bitchu-no-kami Sukeharu, came to call. It was not an official round of inspection; he had come on private business. When Ota's business was done, Sasa told him that such and such a thing had just occurred, stated his own view, and asked for instructions.

[37] Ota had no particular ideas of his own and agreed with Sasa: in the afternoon the East Magistrate Inagaki should attend as well, and the five ward elders should be made to bring Katsuraya Tarobei's children before them. Since Sasa's misgiving that there might be deceit in the matter was reasonable enough, it was decided to have the instruments of torture set out in the white sand. This was a device for frightening the children into telling the truth.

[38] Just as this consultation ended, the same yoriki came out, waited at the entrance, and looked to see how matters stood.

[39] "Well? Have the children gone home?" Sasa called out.

[40] "It is as your honour says. We gave them sweets and tried to send them home, but the girl called Ichi would not listen on any account. In the end we pushed the petition back inside her kimono and marched them off. The younger sister cried and snivelled, but Ichi went home without crying."

[41] "A girl of very hard feelings, it would seem," said Ota, turning to Sasa.

[42] It is the latter half of the Hour of the Sheep on the twenty-fourth of the eleventh month. The white sand of the West Magistrate's office presents an imposing spectacle. In the audience room the two magistrates are seated in a row. In a recess a separate place has been set, and the Castle Warden, though not officially in attendance, has come to watch the examination from the side. On the veranda the yoriki charged with the examination is seated, with his clerk behind him.

[43] In the garden, where the constables stood guard in formidable style with the three implements planted upright, every instrument used in torture had been laid out. There the five ward elders came, bringing Katsuraya Tarobei's wife and his five children.

[44] The examination began with the wife. But when she was asked her name and asked her age she barely managed an answer, and when she was asked anything else she said nothing at all beyond "I know nothing whatever of it" and "I am overcome with shame."

[45] Next the eldest daughter Ichi was examined. She was a thin little girl who looked rather young for her sixteen years. But she made her whole statement without the least sign of being cowed. How she had overheard her grandmother's story from behind a screen; how, after getting into bed at night, she had conceived the idea of petitioning; how she had confided in her sister Matsu and won her over; how she had written the petition herself; how Chotaro had woken and she had let him come, and after asking the name of the district where the magistrate's office was, had him lead the way; how they had come to the office and dealt with the gatekeeper, and then asked the yoriki of the duty officers to pass on the petition; how they had been forced by the officers to go home — everything she had gone through since the day before, she answered clearly as she was asked.

[46] "Then you consulted no one but Matsu about it?" asked the examining officer.

[47] "I told no one. I did not tell Chotaro the particulars either. I only said that I was going to make a petition that our father might be spared. When we came back from the office and were brought before the ward elders, I said that we were offering up the lives of us four children and begging that our father might be saved; and then Chotaro said that in that case he wished to offer up his life too, and in the end he made me write a petition for himself alone, and he has brought it with him."

[48] When Ichi had made this statement, Chotaro took a paper out of his kimono.

[49] At the examining officer's direction, one of the constables took the paper from Chotaro's hand and brought it out to the veranda.

[50] The examining officer opened it and compared it with Ichi's petition. Ichi's petition had been produced from the hands of the ward elders before the examination began.

[51] In Chotaro's petition it was written, in the same hand as the other, that he too wished to die in his father's stead along with his sisters and brother.

[52] The examining officer called out, "Matsu." But Matsu did not notice that she had been called. When Ichi said, "His honour has called you," Matsu for the first time raised her lowered head timidly and looked at the officer above the veranda.

[53] "You wish to die together with your sister?" asked the examining officer.

[54] Matsu said "Yes" and nodded.

[55] Next the examining officer called out, "Chotaro."

[56] Chotaro said "Yes" at once.

[57] "You wish, as it is written in your paper, to die together with your brother and sisters?"

[58] "When they are all dying, I do not want to be left alive by myself," Chotaro answered clearly.

[59] "Toku," the examining officer called. Since her sisters and brother had been called in order, Toku understood that this time it was her turn. And she only stared, and looked up into the officer's face.

[60] "You too are willing to die?"

[61] Toku went on looking at his face in silence, and the colour went out of her lips, and her eyes filled with tears.

[62] "Hatsugoro," the examining officer called.

[63] Hatsugoro, the youngest, who had only just turned six, also looked at the officer's face in silence; but when he was asked, "And you? Are you going to die?" he shook his head vigorously. The people in the audience room, seeing it, smiled in spite of themselves.

[64] At this point Sasa came forward as far as the threshold of the audience room and called, "Ichi."

[65] "Yes."

[66] "There is no falsehood in your statement, I trust. If there is the least mistake in what you have said, if anyone has taught you or you have consulted anyone, say so this instant. If you conceal it and do not tell, I shall have you put to the instruments laid out there until you speak the truth." Sasa pointed to the quarter where the instruments were.

[67] Ichi glanced once at the quarter he pointed to, and without the slightest wavering said out, "No. There is no mistake in what I have said." Her eyes were cold, and her words were unhurried.

[68] "Then I will ask you one thing more. If the substitution is granted, you will be put to death at once. You will not be able to see your father's face. Even so, is it well?"

[69] "It is well," she answered in the same cold tone; and then, after a short pause, as though something had come into her mind, she added, "For in what Those Above do there can be no mistake."

[70] In Sasa's face there appeared the colour of astonishment, as of a man taken unawares; but it vanished at once, and his eyes, grown hard, were fixed on Ichi's face. Eyes of wonder charged with hatred, one might call them. But Sasa said nothing.

[71] Then Sasa whispered something to the examining officer, and presently the officer announced to the ward elders, "The business is done. Withdraw."

[72] Seeing the children off as they went down from the white sand, Sasa turned to Ota and Inagaki and said, "A child whose growing-up is a fearful thing." In his heart there remained no shadow of a pitiable filial daughter, and no shadow of a foolish child put up to it by others; only the last phrase of Ichi's last words, cold as ice and sharp as a blade, was echoing there. The Tokugawa officials of the Genbun era knew nothing, of course, of the foreign word martyrium, nor was there in the dictionaries of the time any word to render self-devotion; so it is not to be wondered at that they did not know that there is in the human spirit, without distinction of old or young, man or woman, an operation such as had shown itself in the criminal Tarobei's daughter. But the blade of defiance that lies hidden within self-devotion pierced not only Sasa, who had exchanged words with Ichi, but the breast of every one of the officials in the audience room.

Translator's log

The draft and the revision were written in one session and the log is filed whole on T-saigo-no-ikku-R04-v2, frozen before any evaluation was designed. It is not duplicated here.

Which of its entries are draft-stage, i.e. were settled before this artifact was frozen and are therefore decisions of this text: L1 (the address system as the passage's material), L2 (お上 → Those Above, settled at [10]), L3 (the honorific on the father's execution, [7]), L8 (the inventory of what is unrepresentable). L4, L5, L6 and L7 are revision-stage and describe changes this draft does not contain. L9, the registered prediction about the source, was written after both artifacts were frozen and before any API call.

The one thing worth saying about the draft on its own: it renders the propositions of every utterance accurately and renders the standing of almost none of them. It contains no sir, no your honour, no was pleased to. That is not a stylistic difference from the revision — it is a draft in which a reader cannot tell a magistrate from a gatekeeper from a sixteen-year-old petitioner by anything except what they say. The revision is the record of noticing it.

CORRECTION, made at hand-off: this is not the lead's first rendering of this passage

T-saigo-no-ikku-R04-v1 already exists. At S027, 2026-07-27, the lead rendered §4 of this same story — the whole white-sand examination, 2,281 Japanese characters, which is paragraphs [42]–[72] of the present passage — under the same regime, with its own frozen log, as the held-out material for E-20260727c-sense-boundary. This artifact was originally filed over those ids and has been restored; the present rendering is v2. Nothing of S027's was lost — it is intact at ../R04-v1/translation.md and ../R06-v1/translation.md.

The consequence is a contamination fact and it is measured, not asserted. tools/dependence_check.py on the two lead renderings of the overlapping span, eleven days apart:

The lead matches itself, across eleven days and without consulting the earlier text, more closely than two independent published translators match each other — on every column but the longest run, where they tie at 24 tokens. Note (bhb) predicted exactly this and this session's contamination gate did not look for it: it measured against published comparators, which is what the standing rule names, and never asked whether the project had already translated the passage itself.

What it does and does not bite.

• It does not bite the experiment's within-site contrast. MARKED and BARE both come from this rendering and are matched proposition for proposition, so a phrasing carried over from S027 sits in both arms.
• It does bite the translator's log §L9. The S027 log analyses, by number, D14/D15/D17/ D19/D20/D21/D22/D23 — which are utterances U22, U24, U25, U33, U34, U35, U37, U36 of the present inventory. Five of the eight utterances §L9 names as discordant had already been singled out and discussed in a lead log in this repository. §L9 is therefore not an independent prediction from a fresh reading, whatever the lead's actual recall was, and RS-20260807d §4.5 is corrected to say so.
• It is worth adding what the earlier log did not supply: it does not use the concordant/discordant distinction at all, it does not name U32 (the one site the seats found and the lead missed), and three of the utterances it discusses most closely — U33, U34, U37 — came back CONCORDANT. The prior log, if it guided anything, guided the prediction wrong.