Read an Excerpt
The Tale Begins
In February 194_, Sahei Inugami—one of the leading businessmen of the Shinshu region, the founder of the Inugami
Group, and the so-called Silk King of Japan—died at his lakeside villa in Nasu at the venerable age of eighty-one.
After his death, the rags-to-riches tale of this self-made man, already related over several decades in various newspaper and magazine articles, was published by the Inugami
Foundation in its most detailed version to date.
According to this book, The Life of Sahei Inugami, Sahei was orphaned at a young age and drifted to the Lake Nasu region when he was seventeen. He had no idea where he had been born, who his parents were, or even whether his unusual surname, literally “dog god,” had been inherited from his ancestors or conferred by someone with a fertile imagination.
Most men embellish their family trees when they become rich or famous, but Sahei Inugami made no attempt to do so. “We’re all born without a stitch on our backs” was his constant declaration to those around him. “Until I turned seventeen, I was like a pauper, drifting from place to place,”
he would say without hesitation. “It was only when I found my way to Nasu, and Mr. Nonomiya took me in, that fortune finally smiled on me.”
Daini Nonomiya was the priest of Nasu Shrine, a Shinto complex that graced the shores of Lake Nasu. Sahei felt he owed him a lifelong debt. So etched in his mind was
Daini’s generosity that the usually bold and arrogant Sahei would always sit up straight in humble respect whenever
Nonomiya’s name was mentioned. Yet, while his unchanging gratitude and devotion to the priest’s family were certainly commendable, Sahei failed to realize that everything—even gratitude—has a limit that should not be exceeded, and that his excessive gratitude toward the Nonomiya family would embroil his own kin in a series of bloody murders after his death. Let it be a lesson to us all that even good intentions can lead to great tragedy if not executed with the utmost care.
When the two men first met, young Sahei was, as he later recounted, an indigent drifter. One day, he lay exhausted under the raised floor of the worship hall of Nasu Shrine. It was late autumn and impossible to live without heat in this bitterly cold lakeside region, but Sahei was dressed only in the flimsiest rags, tied around him by a rope, and he had eaten hardly anything for three days. Starved and freezing,
he knew he was dying. In fact, if Daini had found him any later, Sahei probably would have died there like a dog.
Astounded to discover a young pauper beneath the floorboards of the worship hall, Daini carried him back to his house so his wife, Haruyo, could tend to him. And thus began the unusual relationship between the two men. According to The Life of Sahei Inugami, Daini was forty-two at that time,
while Haruyo was a young woman of twenty-two. Sahei would later say that she was as kind-hearted as a saint and as lovely as an angel.
Sahei had a naturally sturdy constitution, and thanks to the couple’s generous ministrations, he soon recovered completely. Daini, however, did not wish to see him go and,
learning of Sahei’s wretched circumstances, urged him to stay. Because Sahei, too, was loath to leave the warm nest he had found, he continued to live with the priest of Nasu
Shrine and his wife, not quite a freeloader but not quite a servant. Realizing that Sahei had never spent a day of his life in school and that he was totally illiterate, Daini took him under his wing and educated him diligently, as a father would a son.
Why did Daini so lavish his attentions on Sahei? True, he may have perceived the future that Sahei’s sharp intelligence promised, but there is said to have been another, darker reason, not mentioned even in The Life of Sahei Inugami:
Sahei was an extraordinarily handsome young man. He was radiantly handsome and would retain traces of that attractiveness even in his declining years. Because of this youthful radiance, Daini was drawn to Sahei. People whispered of a homosexual relationship between them and pointed out that Haruyo, as softhearted and understanding as she was,
left Daini a little more than a year after Sahei’s arrival and returned to her parents’ home for a time. Daini, as rumor had it, was so infatuated with Sahei that he completely ignored her.
Show More
