The Structure of the Logic on Castles and Prisons

 The Structure of the Logic on Castles and Prisons 

                  by Tadami Yamada

Introduction

     Tatsuhiko Shibusawa's The Life of the Marquis de Sade vividly reveals the topos that gave rise to prison literature, in which a prison is both a place of confinement and a place of reverie. [1] One could even rephrase "literature" as the arts in general, whose essence is reverie.

     Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "Even the confinement of a nutshell is too vast for me. Within it I can fancy myself master of an infinite universe" (Act 2, Scene 2).

     Or, as Charles Nodier put it: "Only in dreams can the map of the imaginable world be drawn."

     Although it may not be called imprisonment, the practical sense of confinement or physical hardship awakens the spirit, and an inward gaze intensifies dreams of freedom - this mechanics is, so to speak, part of the secret to the birth of an artist. From the late 18th century to the early 19th century, the Marquis de Sade spent 27 years in exile in over 10 prisons. The prison doors were locked and opened, opened and locked again. Shibusawa points out that when the heavy doors of the Bastille finally closed before his eyes, the true Marquis de Sade was born.

     Incidentally, the Englishman John Howard went to see the inside of the Bastille in May 1783, but was silently pushed out by the guards. In his book, he quoted the memoirs of a former prisoner that had been published 10 years earlier and was banned for sale in France at the time. According to this, the cell doors in the Bastille's Tower of Liberty were double-doored, with bolts and locks, and the inner door barred with iron. The Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in the Tower of Liberty in February 1784, nine months after John Howard was pushed out by the guards.

     At the beginning of The Life of the Marquis de Sade, Shibusawa Tatsuhiko describes a portrait of Sade as a boy. A nervous, stubborn, conceited, competitive, with strong likes and dislikes, and a hothead. A naturalist and lover of nature with an encyclopedic and intense curiosity about it, this young Sade is somewhat similar to the portrait of Shibusawa himself that we know. In clear and lucid terms, Shibusawa depicts how this boy absorbs the Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, known as the Century of Light, and eventually transforms into a "monster" who constructs a secret staircase to heaven with relentless logic.

     "Now, Sade's circumstances became worst. He was finally driven into a situation where he had no choice but to write."[2]"

     "Having overcome several brinks of despair, he gradually gains a resolute certainty about his fate. While the anxiety and frustration of his prison cell are still there, one can sense a clear, cool resolve flowing like underground water, piercing the murky mud of resentment and mania. What else could this be but the resolve of a writer?" It seems he has finally mastered the art of completely defending his human dignity against the onslaught of external reality. [3]

     Here, I would like to examine Shibusawa Tatsuhiko's essays on Sade, particularly "The Castle and the Prison," and, using this as a foothold, trace the castle and the prison as topos of fantasy in a topoanalytical manner, considering the logical structure of their spaces.

The Prison in the Century of Light

     In "The Castle and the Prison," Shibusawa Tatsuhiko focuses on the importance of castles in Sade's literature.

     The Marquis de Sade had been the lords of Avignon since the Middle Ages and was a distinguished family with ties to the great Bourbon dynasty. "Sade had his own château in Lacoste in the south of France, where he often spent his childhood, adolescence, and middle age immersed in reading, theater performances, grand banquets, and secret pleasures with young women. The château must have played an inseparable and important role in the life of this aristocrat. (Omitted) As a prisoner, Sade was forced to live in several famous châteaux that served as prisons in pre-Revolutionary France, including Vincennes, the Bastille, and Miolan. Sade's prison was the castle. [4]"

     Sade embodied the castle, a concrete symbol of the despotic monarch, and the prison, a concrete symbol of its rebels (victims).

     The 18th century was an age of intellect and rationalism. This was the era of Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, and Goethe, as well as d'Alembert (who wrote the preface to the Encyclopedia), Herpesius (On the Mind), d'Holbach (The System of Nature), Buffon (Natural History), and Casanova (Memoirs).

     At the same time, their century of light was also, as Marcel Brillant put it, "an era in which magic, pseudo-mysticism, and a bizarre level of supernaturalism were rampant."[5] In other words, it was the era of Piranesi and Goya, who peered through the darkness of night into the depths of human consciousness.

     It was also the century in which "the theme of prisons became an obsession in the minds of writers" (Shibusawa).

     Influenced by Rousseau, Beccaria, author of Crimes and Punishments, became a major prison reformer. John Howard, mentioned earlier, the Englishman, visited prisons in 11 European countries based on his own experience of imprisonment, and wrote Prison Circumstances. Michel Foucault calls this the age of the "Great Confinement." The classicism of the last century imprisoned human irrationality. But it wasn't just irrationality that was imprisoned.

     Foucault writes, "The fortress of confinement appears to have added a cultural function that is the polar opposite to its social role of isolation and purification."

     "On the surface of society, the fortress of confinement separated reason from irrationality, but deep within, it stored various images in which reason and irrationality blended together. This fortress functioned, so to speak, like a great memory that had long remained silent, preserving in the dark the imagination that people believed they had banished."[6]"

     The irrationality that classicism imprisoned and silenced thus appears in the light of the Enlightenment as "discourse and desire."

     In his copperplate engravings, "Capriccio" and "Proverbs," Goya's confessions of his own irrationality, expressed as natural desire deep within the unconscious, transcend any enlightened or political allusions.

     In other words, while sarcastically mocking the "ghosts" of the night, he longs for the security of daylight as soon as possible. He is connected to a dark world, to witches and magic, that lies far beyond his memory.

     Deaf and seriously ill, imprisoned as a body, and as a rebel against the oppressive absolute monarchy of Ferdinand VII, he confined himself to the "House of the Deaf" (Goya's villa and studio), where he indulged in dreams filled with a mixture of fear, rage, despair, and even ecstasy, erupting from the depths of his being.

     However, according to his son Javier, Goya carefully inspected his entire collection of works every day, looking at them from different angles. What a great deal this fact teaches us about the 18th century. Reason and irrationality are truly one and the same in the artist Goya. This is the 18th century, known as the century of light.

     In his Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard states that the "house" is imagined as a vertical entity. One might even rephrase "house" as "castle."

     Verticality is supported by the polarity of the attic and the basement, opening the imagination in two distinct directions, contrasting rationality and irrationality. The absolute usefulness of the roof guarantees the existence of the attic. Meanwhile, the basement is the dark entity of the house.

     "By dreaming of this, we come into contact with the irrationality deep within."[7]"

     However, Jaspers argues that subterranean forces do not tolerate being treated relative to one another, ultimately displaying only themselves. This is how Sade's fantasies manifested themselves. Regarding the meaning of Sade's castles and prisons, Shibusawa cites Beatrice Didier's view: "A castle confines an entire space. However, for Sade, this space is essentially vertical and descending."[8]"                      The protagonists and their victims in Sade's novels enter the castle, completely isolated from the outside world by thick walls, and move up and down along the vertical axis of the space before finally reaching a closed room. Didier connects Sade's descending space to the image of death.                                                          The castle is a kind of tomb, the object of necrophilic desire. Piranesi's Infinite Staircase

Piranesi's Infinite Staircase

     The image of space as both a castle and a tomb bears an almost direct connection to Piranesi's metaphysical copperplate engraving series, "Prisons of the Imagination," by Piranesi, a generation older than Sade. Piranesi's prints were also a valued part of Goya's collection.

     Piranesi proudly called himself the "Architect of Venice," but his only practical work as an architect was the partial reconstruction of the Church of St. Mary of the Assumption in Rome. The church later became his resting place and tomb.

     He became famous throughout the world for his meticulous investigation and observation of the ruins of ancient Roman sites as a copperplate engraver and archaeologist, revealing their tragic nature. What clearly distinguishes Piranesi from the so-called painters of ruins is that the latter are merely moved by the pictorial effect of ruins and indulge in a sweet nostalgia. Marcel Brillon has said that even in his series "Roman Views," which are considered to be an architectural record, Piranesi was ultimately an artist who sprinkled various symbols of philosophical meditation into his work.                                                                                               Skulls, exposed tombs, snakes, skeletons in hooded cloaks wandering through ruins...                                                                                                                         Do these things prove Piranesi's necrophilia?

     As the title suggests, "The Tomb of Hadrian, or the Foundations of Castel Sant'Angelo" is a civil engineering record of ancient stonework. However, if you look closely, you will notice a tiny figure wearing a tricorn hat on a stone rampart in the upper right corner of the painting, looking as if it is about to fall off.

     Huge stone structures are the surest traces of those who aspire to eternity. Human existence is fleeting, as if it could be blown away by a single gust of wind. And yet Piranesi's message falls into the former category.

     Marguerite Yourcenar says the following in "Piranesi's Black Brain":

     "For Piranesi, the image of ruins does not serve to emphasize or exaggerate the rise and fall of empires or the transience of human life, but rather to invite meditation on the duration or slow wear and tear of things, and on the opaque nature of the stone blocks that continue to exist as stone doors within structures. [9]"

     The unsettling impression that dominates Piranesi's dizzying spaces can be felt in all of his "Prison" series, which are the product of pure fantasy. These nightmarish spaces are completely free from the loss of perspective, reversal of perspective, or confusion of perspective that often characterize the aspects of dreams.

     The first distinctive feature of Piranesi's prison spaces is their extremely strict geometric logic. The intricate interiors of his megastructures are calculated down to the smallest detail. Minimal human figures stray from the precise scale of perspective. This means that we, the audience, are suddenly imprisoned in this enormous prison, just like Kafka's protagonist.

     Hans H. Hofstätter wrote, "The spectator is not in a position to view this constructed world as a whole. He is also unable to recognize the limits of this world. He is suddenly positioned within this world. The spectator vividly feels the horror of this impasse.[10]"

     In 19th-century British prisons, there was a torture device known as the infinity ladder. It's like the wheeled ladders attached to the cages of pet squirrels and mice. Prisoners would climb the ladder endlessly. According to Junichiro Kida, this torture device was used simply to inflict fear and pain on prisoners, since prison labor was no longer an economically viable option.

     Piranesi's prison is itself an infinity ladder. The bridges, drawbridges, and spiral staircases crisscrossing the prison do not inspire dreams of escape. Rather, they inspire the expectation that at the end of each bridge lies another, equally enormous prison cell. Imprisoned by a dark logic, prisoners (and the audience) are forced, like mice, to endlessly ascend and descend the infinite spiral staircase.

Rembrandt's Meditation

     Going back in time again.

     The spiral staircases dreamed up by Rembrandt, who lived even a century before Piranesi, were even more vertical. They rose toward the heavens.

     Rembrandt inherently contained a paradox in his existence as a painter. While painters are generally driven toward the outside world in search of visual pleasure, Rembrandt liked to close his eyes, seeking some unknown light within.

     Let's take a look at the copperplate engraving titled "The Philosopher in Meditation."

     An elderly philosopher is sitting beside a desk placed by the window. The light from outside filters in, bathing the pages of a book spread out on the desk in light. However, the philosopher has his eyes closed, half of his body immersed in darkness, as if to avoid that light.

     In the center of the room is a strange spiral staircase. It rises, completely covering the space above the philosopher's head, and disappears into deep shadow. The light the elderly philosopher seeks is not that of the outside world. It seems that the knowledge of books illuminated by the light of the outside world is no better than meditation. He locks himself physically in a cell, closes his eyes, and blocks out external light. Through meditation, he climbs the spiritual ladder in search of new light.

     Rembrandt's thought, expressed in these images, can be said to be part of the Neo-Platonist tradition. In particular, it is loosely connected to Plotinus' doctrine of three realities, namely, "the One (th-hen)," "mind (nous)," and "soul (psyche)," which he developed as a ladder, and to Dionysius' Christian mystical theology, which took this up and developed it into a new three-stage structure: "the divine principle," "the celestial ladder," and "the ecclesiastical ladder."                                                             Dionysius says: "I believe that the ladder (hierarchy) is a sacred order, knowledge, and activity. As one reaches each stage, one strives to resemble the image of God, and rises toward divine likeness in accordance with the degree of illumination (manalogia) bestowed upon one by God." "Therefore, whoever speaks of a ladder is speaking of an entirely sacred order." He also states, "Reason (Logos) ascends from the lower to the higher, contracting in proportion to its ascent. Therefore, when reason (Logos) reaches its full ascent, it becomes completely voiceless and unites with the "ineffable" (the unknown God; Yamada's note). [11]"

     Rembrandt's "The Philosopher in Meditation" speaks of such a sacred ladder. The old philosopher's reason ascends the spiral staircase and eventually penetrates into the darkness beyond "mind (nous)," that is, the dazzling depths of the unknown God.

     Next, I will go back even further in time to Dante, another successor to Dionysian mysticism, who lived 340 years before Rembrandt. Dante's "Nove" tells the story of a sacred ladder and uses the image of a ziggurat-like spiral staircase. 

The Power of Dante's Eye

     Dante's image of the world (imago mundi), as expressed in the Divine Comedy, is revealed as a space of concentric circles rising along a vertical axis.                             Canto 14 of the Paradise chapter begins as follows:

     "Water in a round vessel, struck from the outside or the inside, vibrates from the center to the rim and from the rim to the center."[12]"

     Georges Boulet writes about this Dante image: "These two characteristics of the Danteian God—absolute center and absolute circumference—are well expressed in the series of paths that ultimately lead to the beatific vision of God, represented by a circle and a point."[13]"

     In my opinion, this path follows a world axis that is perpendicular to the center of the concentric circles, in contrast to their horizontality. In other words, Dante's fantasy worldview was one in which a funnel-shaped hell was at the bottom of the earth, and human souls were purified of their sins by the fires of purgatory before climbing seven ziggurat-shaped steps (Mount Purgatory) to enter heaven. Heaven then continued in concentric circles, from the first heaven (Mountain of Luna) to the seventh heaven (Saturn) and on to the tenth heaven (Heaven).

     Led by the earthly woman Beatrice, Dante ascended along the world axis from Hell (spiritual anguish) - Purgatory (exhilaration in the soul's purification process) - Heaven (bliss).

     Five hundred years later, Goethe criticized the Paradise chapter of the Divine Comedy as extremely boring, but as you know, he concluded the second part of his own Faust with the words, "The eternally feminine draw us upward."

     Standing among pure white roses in heaven, Dante witnessed the following scene.

     "In the midst of the deep, brilliant light, three circles appeared, three in color and equal in size. One seemed to reflect the light of the other, like the rainbow of a rainbow; the third resembled fires spewing forth from both sides. Oh, how indescribably feeble are these thoughts compared to my imagination! And yet, compared to what I have seen, these thoughts are insignificant." [14]

     Dante's perception of the world is purely visual. Please keep this in mind for a moment. I intend to consider later the difference between spatial structures perceived visually and those perceived tactilely.

     Now, let's read the Divine Comedy a little further to confirm Dante's visual perception.

     This is the 33rd movement, the final part of the Divine Comedy. (The following italics are by Yamada.)

     "The circle you appeared to produce like a reflective light, and when I guarded it for a moment, I saw within it the same color as a human figure. I forgot my power of sight and poured all my attention upon it." Like a geometer who exerts all his strength to measure the circle, yet fails to consider the principle he seeks. I saw the strange image, trying to understand how it fit into the circle and how it found its place there. My wings were not yet ripe for this, but at this moment a light struck my heart, fulfilling my desire. [15]

     This shows how much Dante focuses on seeing. It also shows how he seeks to recognize objects through his vision. Perhaps no phrase is more appropriate here than "like a geometer."

     A logical structure based on vision can be described as a one-point perspective. In other words, the object is fixed at a single point and placed on a straight line at a distance. On the other hand, a logical structure based on touch does not fixate the subject's position relative to the object, relying instead on tactile perception from all directions, naturally resulting in a loss of sense of distance. Thus, the issue of distance is always present in the recognition of objects. However, the image of a "geometrician" is perhaps more appropriate for a visual type. When Dante reaches the limits of his physiological vision, he ultimately resorts to the "mind's eye."

     Incidentally, what impresses Shibusawa Tatsuhiko so much about Beatrice Didier's aforementioned analysis of Sade is her comparison of Sade's castle with The Castles of the Soul, a book by the 16th-century mystic Saint Teresa of Avila. Shibusawa writes, "If Sade exemplifies the dark eroticism of the body, then Teresa could be said to represent the white mystical eroticism of the invisible soul. [16]" I would like to point out, out of my own interest, that the saint's The Castles of the Soul has a tactile logical structure.                                                                               Whether the mystical thought of Saint Teresa of Avila belongs to the lineage of the so-called Christian mystical theology of the Church Fathers, like that of Dionysius Areopagus, appears to be a rather difficult theological question. To put it bluntly, Teresa's view of the world is not dissimilar to that of Dante, if only just a little.                                                                                                                           "We can think of our soul as a castle made of a perfectly transparent diamond or crystal. Just as there are many dwellings in heaven, there are many rooms within this castle. [17]"                                                                                                           The castle—in Shibusawa's view, just like Sade's—is located at the center of concentric circles, with seven dwellings within it forming a hierarchy. The progression from the first to the seventh dwelling corresponds to the soul's degree of perfection. Moreover, the soul ascends while enduring trials equivalent to the torments of hell. Theresa described these trials as the fiery spears of the cherubim piercing her flesh.

     "I saw him holding a golden spear with a slight fire burning in his chest. He repeatedly pierced my heart with it, and I felt it reach my very organs." When he pulled out the spear, I felt as if my very organs were being pulled out, and I felt as if I was being completely thrown into the fire of God's great love. The pain was so great that it made me scream, but the sweetness of this excessive pain made me not want to escape. My soul was now truly filled with God. The pain was not physical, although the body was involved, and very much so. The loving contact between the 'soul' and God is so sweet that I pray that all who believe what I say may experience it. [18]

     Saint Teresa's words are so tactile that they almost seem like an analogy to sexual intercourse. I quote this passage from the writings of psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, who equates Saint Teresa of Avila's mystical experience with sexual orgasm. Teresa directly 'touches' the presence of God, just as a secular woman accepts a phallus into her body.

     What a difference from Dante, who poured his entire attention into seeing and ultimately beheld God with his 'mind's eye'!

Campanella aims for horizontality.

     The concept of a concentric urban structure was entirely realistic for Italians.

     The typical structure of medieval Italian city-states was a concentric space built around a hilltop castle. The Romans called the mundus a circular moat surrounding a city. To be precise, when building a city, the mundus was excavated as a barrier between the upper and lower worlds. The castle was the center of the world. If its upper levels were open toward the heavens, then the conceptual distance to Dante's worldview is very close.

     Come to think of it, Campanella's utopia, "City of the Sun," also had a concentric structure.

     Campanella was a Catholic Dominican friar. However, he was often summoned to the Inquisition as a heretic, subjected to brutal torture, and spent 29 years of his 71-year life in prison. (Sade was imprisoned for 27 years until he was 74.)

     Campanella was a man who was obsessed with survival and did everything he could think of. "City of the Sun" was written in 1602, while he was imprisoned in the Castel Nuovo (New Palace) in Naples, which was once the residence of the Anjou family in the 13th century.

     The prison was not located underground within the castle, but, ironically, in the attic on the top floor. The copper-plated attic was freezing cold in the winter and scorching hot in the summer as the copper plates burned. The imagination of state-sponsored cruelty deepened endlessly along a perverse vertical axis.

     Campanella was considered a heretic because his ideology advocated the establishment of a proto-Christian communist republic, and at its core was the idea of ​​a "human Christ." This is, of course, reflected in his conception of the City of the Sun.

     The city was built on a hill rising in the middle of a vast plain, surrounded by seven walls and consisting of seven rings, each named after a planet. At the center of the hilltop stood a perfectly circular temple surrounded by beautiful columns. A very large celestial globe and a terrestrial globe were placed on the altar in the center of the temple.

     God refers to nature itself. The people of this city believed that they followed only the laws of nature, and that Christianity was merely the addition of numerous sacraments to those laws. When Christianity was guided by the laws of nature, it became the primary law of the world.

     Their souls did not go to heaven, purgatory, or hell after death. They believed in the immortality of the soul, and that upon death, a person was accompanied by either a good or evil spirit depending on their achievements in life.

     In other words, this is where Campanella's theory of reincarnation can be seen.

     While reincarnation involves issues of place and time, it can be said that the awareness of reincarnation is tactile.

     For example, recall the steps involved in confirming the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

     Or consider how Yukio Mishima described the location of reincarnation in his story of reincarnation, "The Sea of ​​Fertility."

     As Honda approached the waterfall, he suddenly glanced down at the boy's left side. He clearly saw a cluster of moles on the area outside the left nipple, usually hidden by the boy's upper arm. Shivering, Honda gazed at the boy's gallant face in the water, smiling. Beneath his frown, his eyes, frequently flapping, gazed back at him. Honda remembered Kiyoaki's parting words: "We'll meet again. We'll definitely meet. Under the waterfall." [19]

     Jin Jiang's armpits were now exposed. Further to the left of her left nipple, in a spot that had previously been hidden by her arm, three tiny moles, evocative of the Subaru sky, were clearly visible on her brown skin, reminiscent of the afterglow of the evening sky. [20]

     The immortal soul is not reborn in a different world, but is reborn on the same horizon. However, this transformation, both microscopic and macroscopic, is difficult to perceive through a fixed perspective. In other words, the sense of distance arises from multiple points, caressing the subject, and then disappears in proximity.

     Hattori and others' insightful term for Mishima's literary depictions of the transformation of minute fragments of nature into the vastness of nature was "tactile perspective." Mishima's gaze was infinitesimally close to spectatorship. It's important to note that the narrator of "City of the Sun" is a Genoese who served as Columbus's navigator. The Age of Discovery was fueled by a desire to "palpate," so to speak, the Earth in all directions. They caressed the Earth's surface like ripples, centered on their home port.

     This tactile spatial awareness is strongly reflected in the structure of Campanella's City of the Sun. The city spreads out concentrically across the Earth's surface, but the presence of a vertical axis is extremely weak, or even nonexistent.

     Although Campanella groaned in his prison for 29 long years, the verticality of his prison space was completely nullified in his fantasy.

A place where fantasy is not born

     All senses fell headlong, like a soul falling to the underworld, and I felt myself being swallowed up by the abyss. All that remained was silence, stillness, and the dark night—that was all there was in the universe. [21]

     This passage is from E. A. Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum."

     This dreadful murderer's mansion was supposed to be the prison of the Toledo Inquisition on the eve of the French occupation. This exquisitely designed prison, designed for the torture of monks, was a dark room 30-40 feet high, surrounded by metal walls and measuring 25 yards in circumference (approximately 6 meters on each side). It had a stone floor. In the center was a deep pit. And from the ceiling hung a scimitar-shaped pendulum that slowly descended. The only way to avoid its blade was to throw oneself into the pit.

     But remember, this prison itself was already a pit. It was double-layered, with a pit within a pit. No, triple-layered, quadruple-layered...

     What ingenuity! What cunning! The thought of falling and falling endlessly sends shivers down my spine.

     In fact, the image that terrifies me the most is that of falling into this black, abysmal depth.

     In concluding "Castles and Prisons," Shibusawa Tatsuhiko wrote, "What appears to the protagonist as a castle appears to the slave as a prison; in essence, the two are the same place. A castle is a prison turned inside out, and a prison is a castle turned inside out. Sade had the rare experience of a prison becoming a castle and a castle becoming a prison, all in his lifetime. [22]" and thus closing the circle of his critique.

     Perhaps the prison, the infinitely nested pitfall that so terrifies me, is a topos (a place where dreams cannot be born).                                                                           

References

[1] [4] [8] [16] [17] [22] Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, "Castles and Prisons," Seidosha

[2] [3] Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, "The Life of the Marquis de Sade," Togensha

[5] M. Brillant, "The Fantastic Arts," translated by Otoro Sakazaki, Kinokuniya Shoten

[6] M. Foucault, "The History of Madness," translated by Toshio Tamura, Shinchosha

[7] G. Bachelard, "The Poetics of Space," translated by Yukio Iwamura, Shichosha

[9] M. Yourcenar, "Piranesi's Black Brain," translated by Tomoko Tada, Hakusuisha

[10] H. H. Hofstätter, "Symbolism and Fin de Siècle Art," by Toshihiro Tanemura Translated by Bijutsu Shuppansha

[11] A. Rous, "The Origins of Christian Mysticism," translated by Kenji Mizuochi, Kyobunkan

[12][14][15] Dante, "The Divine Comedy," translated by Heizaburo Yamakawa, Iwanami Shoten

[13] G. Bourret, "The Metamorphoses of the Circle," translated by Saburo Oka, Kokubunsha

[18] M. Bonaparte, "Chronos, Eros, Thanatos," translated by Koji Sasaki, Serika Shobo

[19][20] Yukio Mishima, "The Sea of ​​Fertility" tetralogy, Shinchosha

[21] E. A. Poe, "The Pitfall and the Pendulum," translated by Nishijiro Tanaka, Tokyo Sogensha

First published in the Spring 1995 issue of "AZ," published by Shinjinbutsu Oraisha co., Inc..