Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, volume 2.pdf/166

140 against all this sort of thing?”

“Because, sir, I had various things to consider.”

“What were they?”

“I wanted to feel that I was acting rightly, yet when I tried to think this way, I never found any solution at all.”

“Had you never thought of killing your wife?”

Fan did not answer. The judge repeated the question again. Fan still hesitated before he answered, but at last he said,

“Before that I often wished that she were dead.”

“Then perhaps if the law had permitted you, you might have killed her?”

“It was not that I was afraid of the law. It was only because I was weak, and my desire to live a decent life was very strong in me, sir.”

“And did you think of killing her after that?”

“I made no decision to take her life, but I thought of it, sir.”

“Was that before the accident?”

“It was on the previous day.”

“Did you have any quarrel with her before the accident?”

“Yes, sir.”

“About what?”

“About quite a trifling matter, sir.”

“All the same, tell me about it.”

“… I have a way of being rather irritable when I’m hungry, you know, and during a meal together I became angry with her because she had taken such a