Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

Impressions of the interviewer, Lt. Robert O'Connor: Professor Tsukayama was quite calm and relaxed throughout the interview, as one might expect of an expert of his caliber. He is one of the leading psychiatrists in Japan and has published a number of outstanding books on the subject. Unlike most Japanese, he avoids vague statements, drawing a sharp distinction between facts and conjecture. Before the war he was an exchange scholar at Stanford, and is quite fluent in English. He is surely well liked and respected by many.

We were ordered by the military to immediately undertake an examination of the children in question. It was the middle of November 1944. It was quite unusual for us to receive requests or orders from the military. The military, of course, had its own extensive medical branch, and being a self-contained entity that put a high priority on secrecy, they usually preferred to handle matters internally. Apart from the rare times when they needed the special knowledge and techniques that only outside researchers or physicians had, they seldom appealed to civilian doctors or researchers.

Thus when they broached this we immediately surmised that something extraordinary had occurred. Frankly, I didn't like to work under military directions. In most cases their goals were strictly utilitarian, with no interest in pursuing truth in an academic sense, only arriving at conclusions that accorded with their preconceptions. They weren't the type of people swayed by logic. But it was wartime and we couldn't very well say no. We had to keep quiet and do exactly as we were told.

We'd been continuing our research despite the American air raids. Most of our undergrads and grad students, though, had been drafted. Students in psychiatry weren't exempt for the draft, unfortunately. When the order came from the military we dropped everything and took a train to [name deleted] in Yamanashi Prefecture. There were three of us-myself and a colleague from the Psychiatry Department, as well as a research physician from the Department of Neurosurgery with whom we'd been conducting research.

As soon as we got there they warned us that what they were about to reveal was a military secret we could never divulge. Then they told us about the incident that had occurred at the beginning of the month. How sixteen schoolchildren had lost consciousness in the hills and fifteen of them had regained consciousness thereafter, with no memory of what had taken place. One boy, they told us, hadn't regained consciousness and was still in a military hospital in Tokyo.

The military doctor who'd examined the children right after the incident, an internal medicine specialist named Major Toyama, gave us a detailed explanation about what had transpired. Many army doctors are more like bureaucrats concerned with protecting their own little preserve than with medicine, but fortunately Major Toyama wasn't one of them. He was honest and straightforward, and obviously a talented physician. He never tried to use the fact that we were civilians to lord it over us or conceal anything from us, as some might do. He provided all the details we needed, in a very professional manner, and showed us medical records that had been kept on the children. He wanted to get to the bottom of this as much as anybody. We were all quite impressed by him.

The most important fact we gleaned from the records was that, medically speaking, the incident had caused no lasting impact on the children. From right after the event to the present day, the examinations and tests consistently indicated no internal or external abnormalities. The children were leading healthy lives, just as they had before the incident. Detailed examinations revealed that several of the children had parasites, but nothing out of the ordinary. Otherwise they were completely asymptomatic-no headaches, nausea, pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, listlessness, diarrhea, nightmares. Nothing.

The one notable thing was that the two-hour span during which the children had been unconscious in the hills was erased from their memory. As if that part had been extracted in toto. Rather than a memory loss, it was more a memory lack. These aren't medical terms, and I'm using them for the sake of convenience, but there's a big difference between loss and lack. I suppose it's like-well, imagine a train steaming down a track. The freight's disappeared from one of the cars. A car that's empty inside-that's loss. When the whole car itself has vanished, that's lack.

We discussed the possibility that the children had breathed in poison gas. Dr. Toyama said that naturally they'd considered this. That's why the military is involved, he told us, but it seems a remote possibility. He then told us, Now this is a military secret, so you can't tell anyone. The army is definitely developing poison gas and biological weapons, but this is carried out mainly by a special unit on the Chinese mainland, not in Japan itself. It's too dangerous a project to attempt in a place as densely populated as Japan. I can't tell you whether or not these sorts of weapons are stored anywhere in Japan, though I can assure you most definitely that they are not kept anywhere in Yamanashi Prefecture.

– So he categorically denied that special weapons, including poison gas, were being stored in the prefecture?

Correct. He was very clear about that. We basically had no choice except to believe him, but he sounded believable. We also concluded that it was highly unlikely that poison gas had been dropped from a B-29. If the Americans had actually developed such a weapon and decided to use it, they'd drop it on some large city where the effects would be massive. Dropping a canister or two on such a remote place wouldn't allow them to ascertain what effects the weapon had. Besides, even if you accepted the premise that a poison gas had been dropped on the spot, any gas that makes children fall unconscious for two hours with no other lasting effects would be worthless as military arsenal.

Also we knew that no poison gas, whether manmade or naturally occurring, would act like this, leaving no aftereffects whatsoever. Especially when you're dealing with children, who are more sensitive and have a more delicate immune system than adults, there would have to be some aftereffects, particularly in the eyes or mucous membranes. We crossed off food poisoning for the same reason.

So what we were left with were psychological problems, or problems dealing with brain function. In a case like that, standard medical methodology wouldn't help at all in isolating the cause. The effects would be invisible, something you couldn't quantify. We finally understood why we had been called here by the military to consult.

We interviewed every child involved in the incident, as well as the homeroom teacher and attending physician. Major Toyama also participated. But these interviews yielded almost nothing new-we merely confirmed what the major had already told us. The children had no memory whatsoever of the event. They saw what looked like a plane glinting high up in the sky, climbed up Owan yama, and began hunting mushrooms. Then there's a gap in time and the next thing they recall is lying on the ground, surrounded by a group of worried-looking teachers and policemen. They felt fine, without any pain, discomfort, or nausea. Their minds just felt a bit blank, as you do when you first wake up in the morning. That was all. Each child gave the same exact response.

After conducting these interviews we concluded that this was a case of mass hypnosis. From the symptoms the homeroom teacher and school doctor observed at the scene, this hypothesis made the most sense. The regular movement of the eyes, the slight lowering of respiration, heartbeat, and temperature, the lack of memory-it all fit. The teacher alone didn't lose consciousness because for whatever reason what produced this mass hypnosis didn't affect adults.