Mystery Of The Headless Corpse In A Cemetery
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“It’s a long way down,” I muttered to myself as I climbed the hill. It was my first time here, and I wasn’t really sure where the cemetery was located exactly. I had driven around for some distance before finding it, but even so, there were only two directions: north or south.
So far south that if you went too far south you would be in another state. There were no signs anywhere. Just a big, old-looking graveyard. I looked at the sun, which had moved quite far since it came up; about noon already.
The place was mostly empty. No flowers anywhere, not on grave sites nor on trees lining the streets of headstones. Not that this meant anything, though; maybe they just hadn’t been put out yet. But still… I felt like there should have been something, some decoration on these graves.
Some sort of sign saying, “Hey, people! This is an important spot!” Maybe the gravestones were supposed to stand out somehow. As if each one could say, “I’m special because I’ve got all these names!” Well, maybe they were, but I couldn’t see any difference. They just stood there, looking plain and boring with their flat surfaces.
There was a small group of people gathered near one plot, and from what I overheard they were probably relatives. They were whispering excitedly amongst themselves. “Is it really him?” they asked one another. “Oh! Look how young he looks.” One man had tears in his eyes when he spoke, although I don’t think anyone else noticed.
And then, as if everyone needed someone to do something, someone took off running toward the door. He returned with a folded white cloth that he laid over the coffin, then he walked back to join his family. I wondered why there was no funeral service? I thought maybe this person was famous or something.
Perhaps the reason he looked younger than everyone else was that he’d died much earlier. But if that’s the case, what did the rest of them mean by calling him “young”? If a person dies at twenty-five and comes back again at eighty-four, is he young or old? How could it be both ways?
But now I realized there was no point thinking about this anymore; I wasn’t going to find the answer right away. So I decided I would simply enjoy myself, like the others who were visiting the grave. For me, the whole idea of visiting a grave was fun because I liked to look at the names and dates, trying to figure out just when someone had passed away.
That was part of the appeal, along with seeing which ones were the newest and the oldest. But I didn’t want to interrupt these people while they were paying their respects. Instead, I walked around behind the rows of headstones, looking for some shade from the hot summer sun. My legs ached from walking on such uneven ground.
And that’s when I found him. It seemed like he shouldn’t have been there, but I could swear he was. I looked around carefully. Nobody else seemed to notice him either—not even the people gathered near the grave site, not even the woman who ran after him, not even the man who came to help him.
The grave itself was a simple stone, nothing fancy or ostentatious. But when you got closer, you could tell it must have taken months to carve the lettering into its surface. It was perfectly aligned and neat, each letter carved in place with a steady hand. The word was spelled out in Japanese characters.
The inscription said, “Mitsuharu Urakami.”
He had died in 1945, when Japan lost World War II. He was thirty-nine years old. When I read the name, I thought back to the news articles I saw last year—they mentioned something about a body being discovered buried underground at Nagasaki; this would have been the same guy. Apparently, the corpse had been in good shape and almost completely intact.
He had been killed, then wrapped up and placed in a hole. His hands and feet had been bound together with rope, and it looked like his tongue had also been removed. This made sense since the killer had probably planned to use his tongue as evidence at trial.
When he died, Mitsuharu Urakami had been an officer in the Imperial Army. He was also an accomplished composer of traditional Japanese music. Although his work was widely respected during the war, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima he was one of many who were suspected of being anti-war or pro-American; this made him a traitor in the eyes of the government.
The authorities wanted to make sure they had solid evidence against him, so after his death, they cut his tongue out.
As strange as it sounds, that really bothered me.
It wasn’t like I wanted to be the bearer of bad news to the victim’s friends and family. But I just couldn’t help noticing.
This might seem crazy, but if the police hadn’t done that, if Mitsuharu Urakami’s headstone had a line like, “Taken from us too soon,” or something equally poetic, I wouldn’t have found him quite so interesting. A person doesn’t live forever, no matter how hard he tries.
There’s only so long that we can remain here, and I believe that life ends just as suddenly as it begins. So perhaps all of the people who come to visit these graves are searching for proof that death has struck a friend or loved one down once more.
I walked back around to where the others stood. The man who brought Mitsuharu Urakami’s headstone approached me. “Can I help you?” he asked in a friendly tone.
“Yes,” I replied. “Could I see your ID, please? And why do you keep staring at me like that?”
The man took off his hat. In place of his balding head was a mass of black hair, as thick and dark as a raven’s feather. But unlike a raven’s feathers, his hair appeared to have been artificially grown; it was so smooth and glossy. Then I saw his eyes. They were very unusual, pale gray—almost white. They reminded me of a crow’s feathers.
I handed over my driver’s license. It was the one issued by Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, with a picture of a young, handsome man and information about where and when I was born. But this man—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say his head—didn’t look anything like me.
I wondered if this could actually be his true appearance or if he was wearing a prosthetic or some other device underneath his hat to hide what lay beneath.
My own face showed on the screen and he quickly glanced at it. He held up my driver’s license in front of his face and peered closely at the photo, looking for any sign that he and I shared a common ancestor.
We spoke in English, which I hoped would help ease the awkwardness if things went awry. “You don’t sound like you speak English.”
The man nodded. “Yes, this is my real voice.” He put on his cap again and looked away, as though embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself first. My name is Yuki.” He extended his hand to me in greeting.
I shook his hand firmly. His fingers were long and thin. “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “But there’s something I’d like to ask you. Do you know this guy?”
Yuki turned his gaze upon Mitsuharu Urakami’s grave.
“No, I have no idea who this is, either. I’m not Japanese, though—I’m from South Korea.”
He didn’t seem upset by my revelation. Instead, he gave me a curious look—as if he had already figured out that I was Korean and wanted to hear the rest of the story. So I told him the truth: “I’ve lived here since I was five years old, but I still speak only Korean.
I was raised by American parents. I have no memories of Korea except for the occasional television program.” Then I added, “Why does this matter?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps you shouldn’t think too much about the question. Just listen to what I have to tell you, okay?” He turned back to Mitsuharu Urakami’s gravestone and began talking without hesitation. “Mitsuharu Urakami was killed by a member of the yakuza last year.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or not. But then he spoke again. “Do you know about the yakuza?”
“Yes,” I replied. “They’re the criminal organizations that operate in Japan.”
“Well, yes,” he said, nodding. “Most people call them the yakuza, but technically their members prefer to be called kobun.” Kobun refers to an individual who has committed ritual suicide after losing his honor in the battle against another warrior or clan.
It was originally a word used to describe samurai warriors who were disgraced and dishonored and chose to end their lives rather than return to society. Today the term refers primarily to the most powerful of the yakuza. Kobun-kai refers specifically to one particular yakuza group.
That made sense—a person would choose to die rather than live with shame and disgrace. But then, why had Mitsuharu Urakami taken his own life? Was it because of his dishonor as a yakuza or his failure as a father? Or was it something else entirely? I was afraid to ask.
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” Yuki went on. “Urakami was a young father with a good future ahead of him. He loved his daughter dearly. When he married her mother, his parents accepted it and wished them all the best.”
The words ‘honorable death’ floated through my mind again. If Mitsuharu Urakami couldn’t redeem his family name as a yakuza, maybe he felt he had nothing left to live for and decided to kill himself so that his wife and daughter could be spared a similar fate. The thought made me feel sick, though. How could this happen?
Then Yuki asked something that made my blood run cold. “Did your friend say anything about where he was headed tonight?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh, well, you may want to take a look at these graves,” he said, motioning toward the cemetery. He pulled up his sleeve and pointed to where he had tattooed an intricate design onto his arm: a sword crossing over two crossed knives, which formed a circle. The swords were drawn across a skull.
A shiver ran through me. That’s exactly how I felt. I remembered Mitsuharu Urakami’s eyes staring deep into the mine that day in front of the sushi restaurant. What did they mean? They looked like two pieces of paper being sliced apart; two halves of a jigsaw puzzle.
“These are the graves of two samurai who fought each other,” Yuki continued. “The one with the sword crossed over the knife is Seigeki Koyanagi. And the one with the sword under the knife, the one who lost, is Satsuma Hijikata.”
Hijikata was the leader of the Hijikata-gumi—the most powerful yakuza organization in Tokyo—and a rival of the Satsuma-kai. The fact that we found his grave at all meant that Mitsuharu Urakami had some connection to the Hijikata-kai, and that’s why they were looking for him. “Who was Seigeki Koyanagi?” I asked, hoping Yuki would provide me with more answers.
“Koyanagi was a great warrior, a man of great honor, a true samurai.” He paused, looking off into the distance as though he had come to some sort of decision. Then he said, “If you see someone with tattoos like this, then don’t hesitate to contact me. You should probably also tell the police if you do.”
He seemed to sense that I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while longer, so he walked away slowly. As soon as he’d disappeared around a corner, I stood there frozen. A chill ran through me. There was something about that graveyard. It was like being inside a story like I was watching a scene play out before my very eyes.
Two pieces of paper were cut open into two different shapes, forming a single jigsaw piece. Mitsuharu Urakami’s body and soul had been cut apart in order to join together as a new form. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of shape Mitsuharu Urakami’s body would take from here on, and whether or not it would fit into that strange jigsaw puzzle.
***
The night wore on and dawn finally came. Daylight washed away the darkness like water washing away a rock. I went back to work and did everything I could think of to distract myself. It wasn’t easy—nothing ever is. I knew I was running away from the truth of that graveyard by pretending I hadn’t seen it, and yet every time I closed my eyes, it would pop right back into my mind.
The End