[Holmes Detective Chronicles] Episode 16: The Sign of the Tsu-no-Kuniya Ghost

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Holmes Detective Chronicles: The London Detective Reincarnates as an Edo Constable

Author: Conan Kidoyle

Episode 16: The Sign of the Tsu-no-Kuniya Ghost

~ The Sign of the Tsu-no-Kuniya Ghost ~

[Introduction: The London Era]

It was a June evening in 1895.

The living room on Baker Street was filled with the long light of dusk. In London, the days are long in June, and even after nine o'clock at night, the western sky remains faintly bright. In that golden light, Holmes was sunk deep into his armchair, his fingers pressed together in a steeple, his eyes closed.

As I read the evening paper, I noticed that this silence from my friend was unusually long.

"Holmes, what are you thinking about?" I eventually asked.

"About adopted children," he said quietly.

"That's quite sudden."

"It is not sudden," Holmes said, his eyes still closed. "It follows from the story of last week's client. A childless couple adopted their nephew. But later, a biological child was born, and they cast the adopted child out—such stories are not rare. But the problem is what happens after that."

"You mean what becomes of the cast-out adopted child?"

"Exactly. When a person is treated unfairly, where do they direct those emotions? Do they suffer in silence, or do they stand up? Or—" Holmes opened his eyes. "Do they choose death?"

I remained silent for a while.

"That is a dark thought," I said.

"It is reality. I do not think it is dark—I simply recognize it as a fact. And when such a death occurs, considering what kind of traces are carved into the hearts of those left behind, it is truly fascinating."

"Fascinating, you say?"

"Emotionally speaking, it is cruel," Holmes admitted. "But logically speaking, it is fascinating. The resentment of the dead—it always appears in a different form. Because someone who is still alive will inevitably take it upon themselves."

"It sounds just like a ghost story."

"Most ghost stories are just retellings of unsolved cases," Holmes said. Then he stood up. "Watson, why don't we go out tonight? There's an interesting case near King's Cross. Let's walk."

London on a June night was mild, and gas lamps cast orange light onto the streets. We walked toward King's Cross. As we crossed Euston Road—though there was no fog, there was a sudden roar.

It was a gas pipe explosion.

It came from a construction site on the other side of the road. The air expanded for an instant, and the next moment, a tremendous shockwave tore through the street. I was blown away. Holmes's shout—

There was light.

There was a white, empty light.

And then—

[Main Story: The Edo Case]

—Narrated by Sanda Wato—

When I woke up, the first thing that reached my ears was the sound of a shamisen.

The low, melancholic sound of the strings gently swayed the evening air. My mind, now accustomed to life in Edo, identified this as the sound of Tokiwazu practice—a school of Edo joruri, a performing art where stories are told through shamisen and a tayu narrator.

I was lying at the edge of an alley.

June of the fourth year of Koka—1847 AD—at dusk in Edo. In the long summer twilight, the city was dyed a soft orange.

Shichi Torikiri was sitting nearby, slowly puffing on his kiseru pipe. The sound of the shamisen continued in the distance.

"Santa," he said. "We've come again."

"We've come again," I repeated.

"This time it's Edo from quite a long time ago. The fourth year of Koka—six years before Perry arrives."

"Where are we?"

"Honjo," Shichi Torikiri said. "It's on the east side of the Okawa River, a town where many artisans and merchants live. It has an atmosphere similar to the East End in London, but it's not dangerous. It's just that people are close to one another."

Honjo is a downtown area spreading along the east bank of the Sumida River (also known as the Okawa), a district densely packed with lumber wholesalers and tenement houses for craftsmen. It is located just across the river from Asakusa, making it a lively place, yet one with a distinct, earthy atmosphere.

In an alleyway at dusk, we were soon to be drawn into a particular story.

The incident began with a woman in her forties named Mojiharu, a master of Tokiwazu music.

A Tokiwazu master is an instructor who teaches the art of the shamisen and storytelling to disciples, holding a significant status in Edo's popular culture. In London terms, it is close to a music teacher, but the prestige of the art and the bond between master and disciple are incomparably deeper.

Mojiharu had a strange experience on her way home from visiting a temple at dusk.

“When I looked back, a young girl was following me,” she told us. The next morning, when Torikiri Shichi went to hear the story, Mojiharu’s face was still pale. “She was a girl of sixteen or seventeen, wearing her hair in a Shimada style and dressed in a white yukata with a pink pattern. When I stopped, she stopped. When I walked, she followed. When I spoke to her, she said she had come from Hachioji to see Oyuki-san at the liquor store in the same neighborhood, Tsu-no-Kuniya.”

“And then?” Torikiri Shichi asked.

“The next moment, the girl vanished into the shadows. As if she had never been there at all.”

Mojiharu’s voice was trembling.

Torikiri Shichi spun his pipe once with his finger and said quietly, “Did you ask the girl’s name?”

“...She said her name was Oyasu.”

“Do you have any idea about the name Oyasu?” Torikiri Shichi asked an old man named Kanekichi, a local leader, later on.

Kanekichi pressed his lips together tightly and remained silent for a while. Then he let out a heavy sigh.

“I do indeed. But it is not a pleasant story to hear,” he said.

What Kanekichi told us was as follows.

There is a liquor store with the trade name Tsu-no-Kuniya. The owner is a man in his fifties named Ihee, and it is a merchant house with moderate wealth in Edo. Edo merchant houses—wholesalers and retail merchants—are similar to middle-class shopkeepers in London, but their sense of family business status and the reputation of their shop curtain (noren) is far stronger. The trade name passed down through generations is the family name itself.

Ihee and his wife had no children for a long time. So, they adopted a girl named Oyasu from a distant relative in Hachioji. They had taken her in as family.

However—after that, Ihee’s wife gave birth to a biological child.

First, their eldest daughter, Okiyo, was born. Then, their second daughter, Oyuki, was born.

Once they had two biological children, Ihee drove Oyasu out, making up excuses like 'I have errands for our distant relatives'.

"It was a pretext," Kanekichi said. "Everyone knew. O-Yasu had simply become a nuisance."

O-Yasu returned to Hachioji, and the following year, she took her own life. She was seventeen.

"Two years after that, the eldest daughter, O-Kiyo, passed away suddenly. She was seventeen," Kanekichi continued. "The morning after O-Kiyo died, a rumor started that the neighbors had seen the shadow of a girl wearing a pink kimono. O-Kiyo and O-Yasu were both seventeen—do you understand?"

I felt a chill run down my spine.

"Now, the second daughter, O-Yuki, is at Tsu-no-Kuniya," Kanekichi said. His voice dropped. "That O-Yuki will also turn seventeen this year."

Kaburagi Nana fell into a long silence upon hearing that story.

I looked at him. His eyes were calm, yet they were fixed intensely on something. It was that same focused gaze Holmes had in his London days when he was piecing together the structure of a case in his mind.

"Santa," he said eventually. "We will judge whether it is a ghost story later. First, let us stack up the facts."

"What was the cause of O-Kiyo's death?" I asked Kanekichi. My instincts as a doctor were stirring.

"I heard it was death by illness, but as for the details... she collapsed suddenly and was gone in an instant."

"A sudden death?" I said. I looked at Kaburagi Nana.

"A sudden death," he repeated quietly.

That afternoon, Kaburagi Nana called for a man.

He was a fair-skinned young man of twenty-five or twenty-six named Kiribatake no Tsunekichi. He had refined features and, at first glance, looked like a shop clerk, but there was a sharpness in his eyes. Among Kaburagi Nana's subordinates, he was one of the quickest-witted, and he was especially reliable when asked to conduct inquiries in places with many women—because he had a pleasant appearance that made women less likely to be on guard. Much like how Holmes was a "master of disguise" in his London days, Tsunekichi had a "talent for blending into the atmosphere of a place."

"Tsunekichi, get close to Tsu-no-Kuniya," Kaburagi Nana said. "You need to make contact with the daughter, O-Yuki. But as for you making your move—that will be a little later. First, there is something I must investigate."

"What will you investigate?" Tsunekichi asked.

"O-Kiyo's death. It happened two years ago, but they must have had a neighborhood doctor examine her. I will find that doctor."

The next day, Kaburagi Nana took me to visit an old man named Nizaemon, a town doctor in Honjo.

An Edo town doctor was a figure close to a General Practitioner in London, handling everything from internal medicine to surgery. However, their system differed from Western medicine, as they used their own unique medical arts based on traditional Chinese medicine. The standard practice was to decoct and prescribe crude drugs—dried and processed roots, leaves, and animal bones.

Nizaemon was an old man nearing eighty, sporting a white chin beard. Upon seeing Kaburagi Nana's jitte, he spoke to us quietly.

"It's about Okiyo-san, isn't it?" the old man said. "It was a sudden death. The symptoms were... she said she felt unwell from the morning, suddenly lost consciousness in the evening, and passed away at night. Her pulse quickened, her body became hot—"

As I listened to the old man's words, I analyzed them with my physician's mind. Those symptoms—rapid onset, high body temperature, loss of consciousness—were very similar to a certain type of toxic reaction.

"Dr. Nizaemon," I said. "Forgive me, but have you considered the possibility that there was something wrong with what she ate or drank?"

The old man looked a little surprised. "...It's not that I didn't think about it. But at the time, I judged it to be a sudden illness caused by the hot summer."

"Do you know what she was drinking?"

"Okiyo-san was frail and was taking a decoction for nourishment. It was medicine prepared by the master of Tsu-no-Kuniya—"

Torimushichi and I locked eyes.

"Who prepared the medicine?" Torimushichi said on the way home.

"Was it Ihei, or perhaps his wife?" I said.

"Or perhaps—there might be one more person. Santa, remember what O-Yasu said. O-Yasu was a distant relative from Hachioji. O-Yasu's family should still be in Hachioji. And after O-Yasu took her own life, that family—"

I thought, "It wouldn't be strange if someone held a grudge."

"That's right. But what's important here is—what if the girl in the pink kimono is still alive?"

"Alive...?"

"O-Yasu is dead. But if another girl of about the same age, wearing the same kimono as O-Yasu, were to appear near Tsu-no-Kuniya—that wouldn't be a ghost, but a performance by a human."

I stopped in my tracks.

"Someone is making it look like a ghost—to do what?"

"They killed Okiyo and are now trying to kill Oyuki," Torimushichi said. "Using O-Yasu's death to make it look like the work of a vengeful spirit, while picking off the daughters of Tsu-no-Kuniya one by one—"

"But who does that benefit?"

"That answer is the core of this case," Torimushichi said quietly. "The time has come to put Tsunekichi to work."

From the next day, Tsunekichi began visiting Tsu-no-Kuniya.

I posed as a sake buyer to show my face at the shop and created an opportunity to speak with Oyuki. According to Tsunekichi, Oyuki was a quiet seventeen-year-old girl with eyes that looked somewhat frightened.

"When I brought up the subject of O-Yasu, her face turned pale," Tsunekichi reported. "And she said something strange. She said that recently, she has felt someone lurking near the veranda in the middle of the night. She said the same thing happened before her older sister, O-Kiyo, passed away."

"What was on the veranda?" Torimushichi asked.

"The bottle of medicine that Oyuki-san takes is kept on the veranda. It is her habit to place it in a cool spot at night."

Torimushichi's eyes flashed sharply.

"Tsunekichi, from tonight, keep watch over the veranda of Tsu-no-Kuniya. Do not call out to anyone who approaches. Just watch and remember their face."

"By myself?"

"A man with a face like yours has the advantage of not looking like a suspicious person even when standing in a dark alley at night," Torimushichi said. I believe he was being serious, not making a parody.

Tsunekichi gave a bitter smile.

Three nights later, Tsunekichi came rushing in.

"I saw her. It was a woman. She was around twenty, thin, and even in the darkness, her face looked pale. She crept up to the veranda of Tsu-no-Kuniya and put something into Oyuki-san's medicine bottle. Then she ran away immediately."

"Did you follow her?"

"I did, but the alleys of Honjo are intricate, and I lost sight of her. However, I definitely saw her face. Her hair was in a Shimada style, and she was wearing a white yukata with a pink pattern."

Torimushichi immediately had the medicine bottle secured, and I examined it the next morning.

As a doctor, my judgment based on the scent and color was that this was not the original ingredient of the herbal medicine. Something had been mixed in. While I could not perform an exact analysis, there was a possibility of a certain type of plant poison. Several plants known to be used as poisons existed in Edo, and those with that knowledge were limited—such as herbal medicine merchants or those involved in the medical field.

"This is poison," I told Torimushichi. "O-Kiyo's death was not from illness. It was murder by poisoning."

The structure that Torimushichi uncovered was as follows.

The woman in the white yukata with the pink pattern was O-Yasu's older sister. Her name was Osawa, and she was twenty-one. After O-Yasu died, she lived quietly in Hachioji while harboring intense resentment over her sister's death.

However, it was not just resentment that drove her.

At Tsu-no-Kuniya, there was a man who was Ihei's nephew. He worked as a head clerk, but as long as Ihei had two living daughters, this nephew could not inherit the family business. However, if the two daughters were to die one after another—and if it appeared to be the work of a vengeful ghost—there was a possibility that this nephew would become the successor.

The nephew's name was Zenzaburo, and he had been secretly involved with Osawa.

The two conspired together. Osawa posed as a ghost to poison the daughters, and Zenzaburo assisted the crime by managing the medicine from within the house.

"Okiyo's death was a success," Torikiri Shichi said. "But if Oyuki dies, that will be the second case. Only then will the number of people who truly believe in the vengeful spirit increase, and Ihei and his wife will either let go of the house out of fear or begin to rely on Zenzaburo—that was the calculation."

"Good heavens," old man Kanekichi said, unable to breathe for a moment. "Are you saying that living people exploited O-Yasu's grudge?"

"That is correct," Torikiri Shichi said. "Ghosts do not kill people. But people who pose as ghosts do."

Osawa and Zenzaburo were subsequently handed over to the Okazaki constable.

Oyuki was unharmed because she had switched the medicine bottles before drinking the poison.

That night, Ihei held Oyuki and wept. Listening from the side, I struggled with both anger toward this man and a complex emotion regarding the sight of a father weeping while holding his daughter.

"Ihei-san," Torikiri Shichi said. His voice was calm, but it had the edge of a blade somewhere. "The retribution for driving O-Yasu away has come back in this form. How you accept this is for you to decide. I have no right to say."

"Yes. I was wrong," Ihei said. His voice was mixed with sobs. "I knew it. But—"

"You knew it, yet you drove her away. That is the root cause of this whole affair," Torikiri Shichi said. "Human connections, if treated lightly, will always return in some form. It would be good to remember that, as a separate matter from vengeful spirits."

Ihei could not reply any further.

On the way home, while walking through the alleys of Honjo at dusk, I asked Torikiri Shichi.

"I couldn't tell if you were blaming Ihei or protecting him."

"Neither," he said. "I simply stated the facts."

"But... that man will face no punishment. Under the law, driving O-Yasu away is not a crime."

"That is true," Torikiri Shichi said quietly. "Whether by the laws of Edo or the laws of London, there is likely no article to judge that. However—"

He stopped and looked toward the Okawa River at dusk. The water surface was glowing orange.

"What the law cannot judge, the human heart judges. And sometimes, that judgment lasts longer than the law. I believe that is the archetype of the vengeful spirit legend."

The sound of a Tokiwazu shamisen could be heard again from somewhere far away.

The summer twilight was long, and the Edo sky gradually faded into a deep red.

[Conclusion: London Era]

When I came to, I was on the cobblestones of Euston Road.

I should have been blown away by the force of the explosion, but for some reason, I was conscious. The gas pipe explosion had occurred on the other side of the construction site. There were injured people, and a crowd of onlookers had gathered. Holmes was sitting beside me, holding his head lightly.

"Are you alive?" he said.

"It seems so," I said. "I had a strange dream."

"A dream of Tsu-no-Kuniya?" Holmes said immediately.

"Did you see it too?"

"I did," Holmes said, standing up. "Watson, there is one thing I want to confirm about this case."

"What is it?"

"The doctor who determined O-Kiyo's death to be from natural causes—did he not think something was wrong as soon as he saw the symptoms?"

"If I had seen her, I might have noticed," I said. "But with the medical arts of Edo at the time—"

"It is not a matter of technique," Holmes said. "It is a matter of attention. The moment the word 'vengeful spirit' is mentioned, people stop thinking logically. That becomes the perfect cover for a villain."

I stood up while thinking about that. My leg hurt, but it was not broken.

"Holmes, may I ask you one thing? That woman, O-Sawa—was it only resentment, or was she used by Zenzaburo?"

Holmes was silent for a while.

"Probably—both," he said eventually. "The resentment was real. But that resentment was directed by someone else. That may be the saddest part. Pure anger being used as a tool for someone else's desires—that is a tragedy even for the one who is angry."

In the London night, the sound of a carriage echoed in the distance.

In the light of the gas lamp, Holmes brushed the dust off his coat and began to walk as if nothing had happened.

As I followed behind him, I could still see the orange of the Okawa River at summer twilight behind my eyes.

This work is written with respect and gratitude to "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle and
"Hanshichi Torimonocho" by Kido Okamoto.

Author: Conan Kidoyle

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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