Part 6: The Ōta Family: Prelude to Tragedy

The Ōta Family: Prelude to Tragedy
Day of December 9th

Every day Odo, the Ōtas’ lodger, would return to the house for lunch. This day, it was eerily quiet. He saw Tsuneo crouched, unmoving, beside the fireplace. Odo called out, supposing that Tsuneo was up to his usual tricks.

“Hey, Tsuneo! I’m back! Get ready to e…hey, quit playing around.” Odo got no reply. He shook the boy’s shoulder, and as soon as Odo saw the face, he gasped. 

Dried blood had collected below Tsuneo’s face, and part of his throat had been gouged out. On the side of his head a thumb-sized hole had been opened. He was notbreathing. Adzuki beans were scattered across the dirt floor, and two or three potatoes had been left in the fireplace, still half-warm.

Odo’s body was shaking. Dumbstruck, he at last managed to croak out, “Mayu! Mayu! Where are you? It’s me, Odo!” But there was no answer. Just an odd stink hanging in the dim room. 

Odo took off for his fellow workers four kilometers downstream. As he ran, he recalled the argument the couple had had at dawn about Tsuneo. Thoughts raced through his mind. Had the argument taken a turn for the worse? Had Tsuneo been killed by one or the other? Maybe Ōta and Mayu were on the run!
But the settlers at the work site understood what had happened as soon as they got back to the house. Tsuneo’s death was the work of a bear, and it had likely carried off Mayu. Based on Tsuneo’s body temperature and the warmth of the potatoes, they estimated that the attack had happened around ten-thirty.

Prisoner of the Bear
The pioneers had a fairly good idea of what had transpired. The brown bear, wracked by hunger, had first set its sights on the corn hanging in the window. It peeked into the house, surprising Mayu and Tsuneo, who both cried out in surprise. Their voices spooked the bear and it charged into the house, knocking down Tsuneo, by the fireplace, with a single blow. Mayu, armed with a burning log from the fireplace, turned to face the bear, but she could not hope to drive it away. Tsuneo was driven into the corner and pummeled to death. Burned kindling was scattered around the room and in the corner lay an axe, its shaft broken and smeared with blood. It appaeared from the bloody handprints and other bloodstains that Mayu had tried to resist but had been subdued by the bear. In addition, it looked like the bear had started to eat her: her pajamas were stained with fresh blood. There was hair wrapped in bunches around the window frame and the tracks and the bloodstains continued straight into the imperial forest, which meant that the beast had taken Mayu with it.

Matsuei Kometarō was 19 at the time. This picture was taken in 1961.

Immediately following the tragedy at the Ōta house, an acquaintance of the family, Matsuei Kometarō, passed by the house on horseback. He was too busy that day to stop in and say hello, so he passed on by. But from the foot of the mountain he saw the long ribbon of blood. Bringing along the rabbits he had caught, the matagi hunter entered the house, just to see if something was the matter.