Posting in the evening again as tomorrow will be quite busy.
Today’s fun word is 侠客 which my Japanese dictionary didn’t have an entry for, but which my English one defined as “persons acting under the pretence of chivalry who formed gangs and engaged in gambling”. This is what you get when you google image search that term:
I didn’t quite finish re-reading the second half of Case 0, but I was happy with my comprehension for what I did read. The old newspaper quotes still trip me up, but I’m getting more used to the author’s style and picking up a lot more details this time around.
Bearing in mind it’s historical true crime and to not expand if you’re bothered by violent content:
Here are details
Basically this 鬼熊 bumps into people who know him, they try to get him to turn himself in, he’s like “nah, I will commit suicide. I’m either gonna get the death penalty or will spend my life in jail” so they’re like… “ok!” (?!). Then one of the dudes he’s hiding out with is like “Before you do that, talk to this reporter friend of mine” so he does, and he allegedly tells this reporter that his only regret is that he didn’t lay low for longer so he could kill 3 more people. He then tries to kill himself (via カミソリ), it doesn’t work, so his older sister’s husband brings some strychnine to poison him. Somehow firefighters are involved in all this, despite my close reading I still don’t know why. I guess they were just friends? Anyways, this motley group then dump him in front of the family grave ( he’s still not dead ) and the police find him, and he eventually dies. The family members can’t be charged with harboring a fugitive, but the fire fighters, the reporter, and the friends can, so they are, but their sentence is commuted it seems (執行猶予). They technically could be charged with aiding in suicide, but it seems they weren’t for reasons unstated.
I’m traveling for the next week so reading will be more scattered and I won’t be bringing the device that has this book on it. Hopefully I can maintain reading each day though, between paperbacks and ミステリと言う勿れ on my phone