The reason I came to write this piece is that, alongside my work as a writer, I also serve as a producer for Idol Production. I currently oversee the production of several idols, but before joining the company, I once heard a story from a fellow producer about a certain girl.
Her name was Nao Kamiya.She was said to be the granddaughter of one of Japan's most famous detectives. Though her surname differed, that lineage came through her mother's side. After her mother married into the Kamiya family, she took her husband's name.
Perhaps because she had inherited much from her mother's bloodline, Nao possessed an extraordinary gift for deduction. Her cousins too had solved numerous cases, and to borrow the words of a certain novelist, they might well be said to have inherited "the gray cells."
Nao was a member of Idol group, an idol unit belonging to the Production. They were still far from national stardom, but steadily building their career — opening for senior idols, touring regional venues (where they often found themselves entangled in mysterious incidents, or so I'm told). In the company's entrance hall hung a poster announcing their upcoming live performance at Shibuya.
It was nothing short of astronomical coincidence that I was assigned as her producer. Yet as I worked with them — through countless promotional events and live shows — I found myself repeatedly confronting danger that seemed to stalk them wherever they went. Each time, I was filled with anger toward the perpetrators, but also with guilt at my own failures in risk management. Or perhaps the girls themselves carried a kind of destiny — a chain of misfortune inherited from Japan's postwar "village" mentality: that claustrophobic and stagnant social atmosphere persisting since the early Heisei era.
In this paper, I will recount one of the many cases that Nao and her companions experienced — the one that stands above all others in its deep and haunting connection to their past. Please note that this account is based on testimonies from those involved, and certain details may differ from the actual events.
If one departs from Kasaoka on the Sanyō Main Line and travels roughly thirty kilometers southward, one reaches the Seto Inland Sea, where there lies a small island about eight kilometers in circumference — Gokumon Island. Old-fashioned yet accursed, the island's name carries several rumored origins.
According to the prevailing theory among modern local historians, during the Edo feudal period, the island was home to descendants of pirates who made their living extracting sand. When the feudal lord learned of their ancestry and visited the island, he decreed it a place of exile. "Exile," in this context, meant a reduction of the death sentence by one degree — in other words, criminals who would otherwise have been executed were sent there instead. It is said that from this practice, the island came to be called Gokumon Island — the Island of the Prison Gate.
Tracing back through history, it is said that the island was originally called Hokumon Island — "The Northern Gate." During the era of Fujiwara no Sumitomo, some of the pirates who operated throughout the Seto Inland Sea settled on the islands positioned to the east, west, south, and north. The island lying to the north became known as the "Northern Gate," or Hokumon-jima, because it served as a strategic lookout point. Over time, however, the name's pronunciation shifted, its meaning transformed, and "Hokumon" gradually evolved into Gokumon — the Prison Gate.
When the Meiji era began, the practice of exile was abolished. Over the centuries, the island's environment changed drastically. Some residents returned to their ancestral lands, while others remained, taking root on the island. There were even those from the mainland who, after being shipwrecked and drifting ashore, formed bonds with the islanders and spent the rest of their lives there.
Although technically placed under Okayama Prefecture's jurisdiction, the island was almost forgotten after administrative registration was completed. Until the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War, it remained a secluded and insular world untouched by outside influence.
The islanders, descendants of pirates and convicts who had survived harsh natural conditions, developed an extreme distinction between uchi (insiders) and soto (outsiders). They believed that outsiders brought disease and misfortune. During the height of the pirate era, smallpox outbreaks were frequent. Those stricken with blisters were, in tears, cast into the sea, and any newcomers suspected of carrying illness were expelled immediately.
For such an exclusionary community, government intervention proved futile. Because few islanders ever left the island, all law enforcement officers had to be dispatched from the mainland. Even when crimes occurred, the island's unity made investigation nearly impossible; most cases ended quietly in "reconciliation" before any resolution was reached.
However, in the early Shōwa period, when the winds of war reached Gokumon Island, the islanders faced an incident beyond their power to contain — a murder shrouded in horror and mystery. None among them could have imagined that human madness and obsession would one day unleash such an unspeakable tragedy.
After the war, as waves of modernization swept across Japan, the rigid divide between uchi and soto began to crack. Since before the war, tensions had been growing between the younger and older generations over whether to accept outsiders — and at the center of this conflict stood the Kito family.
The family head, Yosamatsu Kito, had married a woman from outside the island named Osayo and fathered several children with her. But they were all wiped out in a series of murders. Later, two of his sons perished in the war, leaving the Kito family on the brink of extinction, with only a distant relative, Sanae, remaining.
Thus, the old feudal order that had long revolved around the Kito family collapsed. Even as the surviving branch families struggled to restore the island, their efforts proved futile. Gradually, people stopped coming to Gokumon Island; those who lived there began leaving for work in the cities. In time, the island itself became a half-abandoned village, a relic of isolation and tragedy.
In the 1970s, during Japan's period of rapid economic growth, a "remote island boom" swept through the population — people with newfound leisure and wealth turned their eyes to the country's many small islands. Gokumon Island too attracted attention. While most saw such islands as mere tourist destinations, a few eccentric investors sought to own one for themselves.
Among them was Kikuemon Tōgōji, a magnate in Japan's maritime industry. His method of acquiring Gokumon Island was shrewd: he arranged for his second son, Kikujiro, to marry Sanae Kito, the final head of the old Kito family, thereby inheriting the island through marital rights.
Ownership of the island was later passed to Kikuemon's eldest son, Shouichirō, who had the Kito residence renovated into a private villa. However, the locals who had long found their only home on the island remained there. Many were relatives or retainers connected to Sanae — now Sanae Tōgōji — through blood or marriage.
Even after the island boom faded, the Tōgōji family continued to live there. But dark clouds began to gather once again when Kikuemon's temper, once legendary in the business world, grew uncontrollable with age.
While Shouichirō was abroad on business, he and his wife perished in an airplane accident, leaving Kikujiro as the heir apparent. As the aging patriarch became increasingly paranoid, he learned of Sanae's true feelings — that her marriage had been intended to restore the Kito family's lost status. Enraged, Kikuemon tried to cast her out of the Tōgōji household.
Disgusted by his father's cruelty, Kikujiro planned to flee with Sanae, cursing Kikuemon for his tyrannical behavior. Fearing public disgrace and the lack of a successor, Kikuemon hastily renovated a separate estate — originally built for the descendants of his own father's mistress — and granted it to Kikujiro and Sanae.
Yet Kikujiro, who had inherited much of his father's stubborn temperament, grew disillusioned with Kikuemon's hypocrisy and renounced his inheritance altogether.
In time, Sanae gave birth to two children — a son named Hatsuki and a daughter named Makie.
Kikuemon had four children in total. The eldest, Shouichirō, had perished, leaving only the second son Kikujiro and the third son Umezaburō alive. There was also Chūzō, Kikuemon's half-brother — the illegitimate son of his father's mistress. Kikuemon's late mother had left behind a will forbidding any inheritance for the mistress's line, a final act of resentment that still haunted the family.
Chūzō, however, was a gentle man, indifferent to the wealth of the "Shipping King." Though Kikuemon trusted him deeply, his mother's curse-like words prevented him from ever allowing Chūzō to live within the main estate.
Thus, when the time came, it was the third son, Umezaburō Tōgōji, who was named the next head of the main family — marking the beginning of yet another chapter in Gokumon Island's long, accursed lineage.
Umezaburō Tōgōji did not share his father's sharp mind or ruthless talent. This fact only deepened Kikuemon's rage.
During his travels through the provinces, Umezaburō fell in love with a woman named Yūka, a traveling street performer and spiritual medium. Yūka was extraordinarily beautiful — radiant, mysterious, and captivating. Yet to the elderly islanders, who had lived through many turbulent tragedies, she was a figure of dread. Her mere presence evoked unease, and her unorthodox faith made her an object of scorn.
Her relationship with Ryonen, the abbot of Senkō Temple, was particularly strained. While some on the island believed Yūka possessed genuine "mystical powers," Ryonen saw her as a dangerous heretic whose rituals threatened his religious authority. Determined to preserve his standing, he sought to expel her from the island altogether.
Cutting all ties with his father, Umezaburō married Yūka. Together they had four children. To the rest of the Tōgōji family, this was the ultimate insult — not only had he wed a detested woman, but now he was raising "tainted offspring." A family council was convened, and tempers flared.
Yūka, however, was no less fierce than Kikuemon himself. She turned the detached wing of the main residence into a shrine of her own, chanting incantations so loudly that Kikuemon could hear them from his quarters — a deliberate provocation. Their feud escalated until, at last, it was Kikuemon who broke first. His fiery temper and iron will finally burned out, and his life came to an end.
When word spread that Yūka had laughed and danced with joy upon hearing of his death, whispers soon followed — that she had killed him through a curse. Yet, three days later, Yūka herself collapsed, vomiting blood, and never rose again.
"When you curse another, you dig two graves."Yūka had paid for her vengeance with her own life.
After her death, Umezaburō's mind crumbled. Driven mad by grief and guilt, he descended into delirium, no longer the man he once was.
Today, the Tōgōji family is managed by Shouichi, Umezaburō's son from his first marriage, together with Mikokoro, the eldest daughter born to Yūka. The family's business affairs are overseen jointly by Shouichi, the second daughter Tomomi, and Hatsuki, the eldest son of the branch family.
And thus — the long, tragic saga of the Tōgōji clan leads us to the present day.