Seven leagues south of Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula coast lies a tiny, uncharted islet named Gekkin Island.
Gekkin Island—the ‘Island of the Moon-Lute’.
The name is relatively recent, of course. In older times the island was called by the less inventive name of Oki-no-Shima, ‘Island-Out-to-Sea’, and that remains its official designation even today.
It likely acquired its new, somewhat more romantic appellation in the latter half of the Edo period—the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, say—because of its resemblance to a Chinese musical instrument of the same name: the
gekkin.
Few if any readers today will recognize the word, but the
gekkin was a member of the lute family that arrived from China in the early modern period. Its name, meaning ‘moon-lute’, came from its sound box, which was as round as the full moon. Imagine a circular serving tray with a shamisen’s neck attached, and you won’t go too far wrong. A
gekkin’s sound box was usually just over a foot in diameter, augmented by a stubby neck four or five inches long.
The first
gekkin reached Nagasaki early in the seventeenth century, but it took another century or so to become a nationwide craze. Playing the
gekkin remained a popular pastime for women and children until around the middle of the Meiji era, which is to say the late nineteenth century, but after that the instrument gradually faded into obscurity. By the time the Taisho era dawned in 1912, it was scarcely heard at all, except the occasional plaintive strain picked out by a wandering busker in one of the nation’s more déclassé entertainment quarters. Within another decade, the buskers had given it up as well.
In any case, the name ‘Gekkin Island’ fits the islet perfectly.
It is more or less circular in shape, about a mile from coast to coast. Jutting from its northwest shore is a promontory, a mile long and a third of a mile across, that looks just like the neck of a
gekkin from above.
Locals call that promontory Sao-no-Misaki, the ‘Cape of the Neck’. Its pointed tip they call Washi-no-Kuchibashi, the ‘Eagle’s Beak’.
Were you, reader, to visit Gekkin Island in February or March, just before the arrival of spring, its beauty would astonish you, particularly its vast camellia fields, which stretch like Chinese brocade from the foothills of central Mount Kabuto to the tip of the Neck.
The people of Gekkin Island, like their neighbours on Izu Oshima, make a living chiefly from camellia cultivation, cattle breeding and fishing. The cattle are relative newcomers, of course, and even the camellias were a minor sideline, at best, in premodern times.
And yet from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, Gekkin Island was a much more prosperous place than it is today. This is because it had a wonderful way of making money back then—namely, smuggling. In those days, Gekkin Island was a thriving waypoint for illicit imports. Its chief counterparty was China, which was then still ruled by the Qing dynasty.
Many were the Chinese luxuries that slipped unseen through Gekkin and into Edo, the shogun’s capital, where novelty-loving Edoites snapped them up with glee.
Which brings us to the other sight that would captivate you, reader, were you to visit Gekkin Island today: the profusion of buildings in the Chinese style. Most of the wealthier families on the island had at least one such building on their property, presumably built to entertain guests from overseas.
By the docks, in the former pleasure quarters dubbed the New Shimabara, there are even two surviving Chinese-style structures that were quite clearly brothels at one point. Here, we may suppose, adventurers from Qing China abandoned themselves to sensuality, living for just one night as if in a dream. Perhaps they were the ones who gave the island its current name.
Thus did Gekkin Island enjoy over a century of prosperity, but no good fortune lasts forever. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the new government swept away the old restrictions on foreign trade and travel. This rendered smuggling pointless, at a stroke, robbing the island of its most productive industry. All those Chinese-style buildings, having lost their
raison d’être, were abandoned to the elements and left to rot. In their current dilapidated state, they impart to the island’s landscapes an ineffable and exotic sentimentality that evokes a pang of melancholy in all who visit.
That said…
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that these Chinese-style buildings did more than improve the island’s appeal to sightseers. The presence of buildings with such sturdy windows and doors, all lockable from within, on an island so tiny and remote, plays a major role in the adventure of Kosuke Kindaichi to be related in these pages.
Before we begin the tale proper, however, we must touch on another tradition connected with this island—this one reaching further back chronologically.
For a brief moment in the early 1930s, Gekkin Island was in all the major metropolitan newspapers. A student who had sojourned there happened to mention upon his return that one of the island’s families claimed to be descended from Minamoto no Yoritomo, first of the Kamakura shoguns. This was the Daidoji family, the richest clan on the island, and the details of their sensational claim to noble descent were fascinating.
Let us unpack the history involved.
Yoritomo died on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month of 1199. The cause of his death is said to have been a fall from horseback in the last month of 1198 while returning from a Sagami River bridge dedication in honour of the recently deceased wife of Inage Shigenari.
One account describes the event as follows:
Returning from a Buddhist service he had travelled to attend, Shogun Yoritomo was nearing Yamatohara when he saw the vengeful spirits of his brother Yukiie and half-brother Yoshitsune. Later, at Inamuragasaki, the august spirit of the Antoku Emperor deigned to manifest itself. Fainting at the sight, Yoritomo fell from his horse.
After this, the story goes, Yoritomo developed an illness that resisted both treatment and prayer. Thirteen days into the new year, he breathed his last.
The vengeful spirits of Yoshitsune and Yukiie, and the august spirit of the Antoku Emperor—ghosts of the Genpei war and its aftermath, in other words—very much strike one as the kind of thing a writer might have come up with in those times. However, there have always been doubts about the official story of Yoritomo’s sudden demise. One alternate theory pins the blame on his wife, Hojo Masako.
Around the time of his death, Yoritomo was in the habit of slipping away from his wife frequently to visit another woman with whom he was quite taken. Might not (the theory asks) a jealous Masako have seized on her husband’s fall from horseback as a chance to exact revenge by seeing to it that he never recovered? There is no evidence of such a thing, but it hardly seems impossible given the Minamoto clan’s propensity towards internecine conflict and Masako’s character.
In any case, this part of the story is key to the Daidoji family’s claims. For at that time, the Daidoji were a prosperous clan who lived atop Mount Izu on the mainland, and it was their daughter Tae who was Yoritomo’s final paramour. She had no idea of his identity initially, only knowing him as a military commander of some pedigree from Kamakura. When she learnt, after their mutual vows of devotion were sworn, that he was the shogun himself, the shock and terror almost killed her on the spot. The depth of Masako’s jealousy was widely known, and every woman Yoritomo dallied with was said to meet an untimely end.
Worse yet, Tae was already pregnant. She could only tremble at what her future might hold.
The news of Yoritomo’s death reached Tae without warning, accompanied by rumours of a rapidly approaching armed expedition from Kamakura. Fearing their days were numbered, the whole Daidoji family headed south, crossing the waves to resettle on Gekkin Island—or Oki-no-Shima, as it was still known in those times.
Some months later, Tae had a healthy baby girl. The girl, who came to be known as O-Tomo, was understood by the family to be the child of Yoritomo, and all Daidoji today claim descent from her, and therefore him.
When word of this intriguing tale—corroborated by several known historical facts—reached Tokyo in the 1930s, professional and amateur historians alike were captivated. They began to visit the island in a steady stream, hoping to unearth documents from the early Kamakura shogunate containing details intentionally left out of later sources like the
Mirror of the East and the
Nine Generations of the Hojo.
These hopes were not borne out. All the Daidoji family could offer was a small collection of personal effects they claimed had once belonged to Yoritomo: a sword, a helmet and a kind of commander’s baton known as a
saihai. These were all of highly dubious provenance, but the
saihai, in particular, was an absurd inclusion. According to one testimony, the first
saihai was made and used by Takeda Shingen, who was born in 1521. How could Yoritomo have owned one centuries earlier?
Though disappointed by the treasures of the Daidoji family, the seekers were surprised to discover an even more precious treasure nestled in the family’s bosom.
That hidden gem was Kotoe, only daughter of Tetsuma Daidoji, who was then head of the family. She must have been sixteen or seventeen, by the old way of reckoning age, and more captivating in her radiant beauty than the fragrance of the white camellia at sunrise. When appearing before company, she always wore a long
karaori brocade kimono with rounded Genroku-style sleeves. She also favoured a narrow obi, like those of the early Edo period, wrapped around her waist thrice and tied at the hip, its ends left to dangle and sway. Her hair was shockingly long and black, and she wore it tumbling down her back in a great mass tied with a slip of white paper towards the tip.
The Daidoji family always offered visitors a warm welcome, perhaps in accordance with the longstanding custom on Gekkin Island. If you had a solid introduction, you could stay as long as you wished and arouse no ill-will. Tetsuma, in particular, took great pride in his descent from Yoritomo, and all who came to see his treasures were treated with unfailing courtesy.
Naturally, the Daidoji household had a building in the Chinese style, as well. Inside it was a single, unpartitioned space, painted in colours that remained garish despite the patina of years. Here, by the glow of an exquisite lamp, Kotoe would take a
gekkin to her breast and pluck out a plaintive strain, making her audience feel transported to the mystical Peach Blossom Spring.
Was Kotoe truly descended from Yoritomo? The answer is unknown. Perhaps some later ancestor of hers had fabricated the family’s ridiculous treasures during the intervening centuries, in an effort to support a story that was, in fact, true. If so, the only result was to make the family a laughing stock.
Whatever the truth may be, that Kotoe
believed herself Yoritomo’s descendant is a fact—a fact that will have considerable relevance to our tale.
In 1932, two students visited the island. Like many others, they had found their curiosity stirred by the legends and made the crossing to Gekkin Island during a visit to Izu. Both young men found the island so scenic and agreeable that they stayed two full weeks, enjoying the Daidoji family’s hospitality to the full.
During their stay, Kotoe became intimate with one of the students. And after they had left the island, she realized she was with child.
In 1933, Kotoe was delivered of a healthy baby girl—but only after the child’s father died in a ghastly fashion, leaving Kotoe unable to help recalling, all too late, how the tale of Yoritomo and Tae had ended.
But let us save these matters for later and return now to the present day.
Copyright © 2027 by Seishi Yokomizo. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
