KOUTOKU Shusui published "Eliminating the Christ" declaring that this posthumous work would be his last words. Likewise NAKAE Chomin, Shusui's master, also published a treatise denying the God and the Spirit just before his death. Though Chomin was an open-minded man and wasn't strict about the ralationship between a master and desciples, Shusui didn't forget to respect his master's spirit with condolences. Anybody like him might commit high treason, who is highly grateful to his master. From his character I guess that if he were in the Bunsei or Tenpou period, he would have lost his life at Honegahara as a loyalist, or if he were on the regular cource of academic education to be an university professor, he would have contributed to academism as a scholar of erudition, strict proof and subtle argument. Though he seemed in desperation for these years, he managed to finish this book in a steel cage. This shows that he was not a wretched jobless guy without talent.
While even eliminating Benkei* is difficult, it is a hopeless task to eliminate Jesus Christ whom people all over the world worship. If you judge from this preconception, however, that Shusui's this extensive work has no value to consider, it's a hasty conclusion. In fact this work helps us no less than a mere reference. If you think that he not incidentally commited a high treason after eliminating Christ by this work recklessly, your reasoning is weak. While Ingersol attacked Christ and his religion, in his behavior he was far beyond other ordinary priests. Fake common man sometimes exceeds fake great man. Certainly Shusui was disloyal in the nation, undutiful in his family. Then, under the name of disloyality and undutifulness, he went to death seeking death. Should we call him evil or stupid, or more, crazy? Though we get trouble to find appropriate adjective for him, I think the best name for him is "cornered mouse" or "mouse in shrine".
* Benkei: a famous Japanese soldier of Kamakura period accompanied MINAMOTO no Yoshitsune who failed to be a Shogun and was trapped by a conspiracy.
Being a son of a man, of course he wanted to know the way to be a man, neverthless he did thigs a man mustn't do. Was his consciousness so sick that he did so? Or, was he moved away by his circumstanses so much that he did so? Touba* said:
* Touba (jpn) (Tong po (chn)): a nickname for Sosyoku (Sushi (chn.)) (1036-1101), a Chinese poet of Sou (Song (chn.)) period. His nickname comes from that he was at Touba when he was exiled.
"Born a human being, learning letters, and you begins to fear.
So if you can write your name roughly, you must stop there."
Learning letters, Shusui closed his life in lament, nay rather, in an extreme lament. If he had not learned letters, however, he couldn't left this book for a reference for later generations. I have no idea whether if he had better learn letters or not. I feel as if one carefully listen to a wild goose crying something at the end of cloud.
The day after the day I heard Shusui got a death sentence.
MIYAKE "twisted" Setsurei
Now I'm under arrest in a room of the Tokyo prison. When I was in a mountain in Yugawara of Iyo province from April to May this year, curing my disease there I wrote this book for killing spare time. While I didn't finish it, I was suddenly arrested for violating the criminal law article 73, and brought to Tokyo. It was the first day of June of the same year.
After that, incredibly complicated judical processes kept my drafts untouched in a stack room in the prison. Five years passed, finally the preliminary examination was finished and the process was brought to the trial at the supreme court. Then, getting spare time again, I asked to give me a pen and ink for resuming my work.
Both in a mountain and in the prison, however, regrettably I couldn't refer to references nor beg comments widely from specialists. Moreover, approaching in the blink of eyes, the trial robbed me of time for brushing my drafts up. So I couldn't make this work above brief investigations and rough descriptions. When I read it through after I finished it, I was shocked to find that the work didn't reach to even the halp point I had intended at the beginning. Publishing such an incomplete work like this, I can't help sighing over my poor talent.
On the other hand, I have been in this prison for a long time with an incurable disease and, even if it's not impossible for me to be released from this process, I cannot expect I can see the outside world again. Then I assume, at the end of ten years' career as a writer, this treatise I write before I die should be my swansong. I cannot help feelling reluctant to release this trifle work.
Moreover, among so many scholars studying Christ and christianity I cannot find anybody denying his existence as a historical figure and pointing out that the cross is a kind of symbol of genitals. So I'm the first person affirming them. Then, although I regretted that this work has only brief description and still needs stylistic refinement, since I was convinced that I carried my first objective through, I gave this to some of my friends and asked them to criticize, in order to give some stimuli and awakening to students going to christianity.
Finally let me repeat that this is my last words and may be published posthumously. In a three-mat roon without any light, under the weak light poured from a small steel window on the high wall, I wrote this book with trembling sick body and warming a icy cold pen with my breath. Understanding this terrible situation, even if you, dear readers, are going to complete a well detailed book carefully furnished with every references and evidences, forgive my incomplate achievement. I hope you follow and extend this narrow way I led.
Meiji 43 (1910) November 20
KOUTOKU Shusui