Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/174

164 tricked out with branches of artificial cherry-blossom.

The beginning of March. Terrible news reached Yotani through the newspaper—Hamamato Sendzo had been killed in Tokyo.

Old and young in Yotani and Simati fell silent. For half a day they looked at each other’s faces and said nothing.

The murderer was a member of the reactionary “Kakusuivan.” In the whirlpool of events following on March 15th, Hamamato was the only representative of the workers and poor peasantry left in parliament. The “Sosi,” the name given in Japan to persons who will commit any crime for money, had killed Hamamato because he was the deputy of these classes.

It seemed to the old men and women as if the murderer’s dagger had pierced their own breasts. And then their grief gave way to rage.

Twenty-three young people in Samati, thirty-eight old men, forty-nine women, twenty-five children—135 persons altogether—met at the stroke of the alarm bell and spontaneously, without any instructions, went to the houses of Ozawa and Toramatsu in Yotani. In Ozawa’s were only his wife, two little girls and his old mother. The whole population of Yotani was in the streets. Old Ogawa was there, too. Everybody met in front of Ozawa’s house and stayed there without moving.

“Ten years ago our teacher, Hamamato, told us in this house about the union. We have met together to avenge the death of our teachers,