Final post of readathon
Progress: End of Higurashi Questions Arc
Technically, I have still got a good bit of time left in the readathon, so I plan to get into Chapter 5 after this is posted. However, it seems only appropriate to put today’s post out at this point, given I reached the end of the Arc. We’re done. From here on out, I’ll get through the rest at my own pace.
Chapter 4 ended exactly how an Arc about questions should: With a challenge to the reader — in the style of an Ellery Queen mystery novel. All of the suspects and the clues have been arranged, if you know who the culprit is, declare it now! Or something like that. With respect to that challenge, I plan to put forward the best theory I can. However, first thing comes first, let’s talk about that last Chapter.
It was quite the creative choice to have the Rika route be a flashback route, but it worked reasonably well. Having Higurashi become a real procedural crime drama was a welcome shift, and only emphasised how much I preferred the genre to the usual dating sim affair we’ve been acclimatised to. Ryukishi07 has a compelling style when dealing with this kind of dime a dozen, cliché cop story. However, it mean putting a stop to the development of the majority of our cast. We focused in on a few characters like the aforementioned Rika, but otherwise the mystery was put front and centre.
We finally got to the village at the peak of the anti-dam protests, a period which has repeatedly been stated to be catalytic to the mood in our later story. We also had a number of crucial facts confirmed. The eruption of Onigafuchi Swamp seems to be an unavoidable event rather than anything particular to Chapter 3. Although exactly how set in stone the timing is escapes me. At the very least, the events of Chapter 2 seem to contradict the hypothesis that it cannot be delayed by some means. However, conjecturing on its total prevention requires an understanding of its underlying cause, and that is far more ambiguous at this point.
The most shocking revelation was of course Rika’s apparent precognition of the future murders which would appear to be Oyashiro-sama’s curse. Several important facts were clarified by her prophecies. Firstly, “Oyashiro-sama’s curse” and “Onikakushi” are two separate events. While the Onikakushi of Satoko and Rika’s mothers were among the prophesised “bloody events”, because of their deaths. The disappearance of Satoshi was not. This indicates that there is a single, congruent explanation for the deaths that occur on the night of the Watanagashi festival, whereas the interpretation of two disappearances and two deaths as evidence that an annual Onikakushi is occurring are mistaken superstitions.
By way of this clarification, we can now build a list of the “Oyashiro-sama curse incidents” in full:
- The murder of the dam project foreman in June 1979
- The murder of Satoko’s parents in June 1980
- The murder of Rika’s parents in June 1981
- The murder of Satoko’s aunt in June 1982
- The murder of Rika herself in June 1983
Leaving the blatant alternation of families for much of that list aside, the mere act of limiting and compiling will be essential for the act of theorising, which will now begin.
Let’s suiri
Back in the first post of this readathon, I mentioned the late Queen problem. I stated that it would limit the deductions that could be made regarding this mystery until we could at least say that all of the necessary clues had been gathered. However, that is far from the only circumstance where the problem applies. Another key feature of the late Queen problem is that so long as the motive remains unknown, one cannot be certain about their conclusions which are made on the basis of physical evidence. So long as the motive remains unknown, there could still be further culprits who manipulated a more obvious suspect and orchestrated the deduced outcome for their own reasons. For this reason, an absolute deduction cannot be made about the ultimate truth of Higurashi.
By their very nature as foreseen incidents, the various deaths of Higurashi are all likely to be interwoven in a grand sense. If we accept a supernatural explanation, that goes without saying. And if we do not accept a supernatural cause, the mere fact that they were foreseen suggests a level of planning and control over all of these events by one or more culprits. Despite that, the first act in building a sweeping theory to explain the events of Higurashi is separating out the many different events of each Chapter into separate incidents, each with distinct immediate causes. By doing so, we can start to string together the various connections and relationships which will lead us to a hypothesis.
Incident 1: The murder of Jirou Tomitake. Culprit: Miyo Takano.
Incident 2: The “murder” of “Miyo Takano”. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Miyo Takano.
Incident 3: The Oyashiro-sama curse incidents. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Unknown.
Incident 4: The disappearance of the 1979 culprit. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Unknown.
Incident 5: The disappearance of Satoshi. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Unknown.
Incident 6: The Great Hinamizawa Disaster. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Nature.
Even as I talk big about clarifying facts, there sure are a lot of “unknown” entries. However, that is only the case when looking at each incident separately. Even without being able to identify specific culprits, there are a lot of things we know about each of these incidents, and their relationships to one another. Perhaps more importantly, there are a great many unexplained facets of the story. Pieces of information which seem utterly incongruent with one another. These contradictions are important considerations for any theory.
- Why do Rena and Mion act as allies in Chapters 1 and 3, but do not cooperate in Chapter 2, and who was the “director”?
- Why did Miyo Takano appear to die in Chapters 2 and 3, with a time of death prior to her last known appearance?
- Why did dead characters (Mion, Teppei) appear to be alive in Chapters 2 and 3?
- Why were there two Keiichis in Chapter 3?
- What is the nature of the mysterious drug which has appeared in multiple Chapters?
- Why did the Great Hinamizawa Disaster not occur in the epilogue of Chapter 2?
- Why did Keiichi survive the Great Hinamizawa Disaster in Chapter 3?
Let’s start by positing the conclusions that can be drawn by these contradictions, and thereby a theory of the unknown can begin to form. We can, due to the events of Chapter 2, exclude the possibility of Rena and Mion being a part of a single conspiracy or organisation which would explain the end of Chapter 1 in full. Furthermore, a more simple explanation existss for the apparent “director” than any conspiracy. One which unfortunately escape those without any knowledge of Japanese. It was probably just Kyousuke Irie, the doctor of Irie Clinic. They are both simply referred to as “kantoku” by Mion. No “director” exists. Any further antagonism by those two which implied a conspiracy was likely just a delusion on the part of Keiichi, given how Chapter 1 ended.
As for Miyo Takano’s “death”, it remains somewhat mysterious. It could be related to the apparent phenomenon of dead characters reappearing in the story, especially if we accept a supernatural premise. However, if we leave the supernatural to the side for one moment, it can also be explained in a rather conventional manner. The story is set in 1983, forensic technology was not yet at the point where a burned body could be identified with complete certainty by any means other than dental records. Therefore, it is easy to imagine a plausible scenario where culprit could fake Miyo Takano’s death by means of faking her dental records. Therefore, I will provisionally posit that Miyo Takano faked her own death in order to complete her “disappearance”.
On the note of faked deaths, let’s talk about faked lives. Satoko’s uncle, Teppei, appeared to survive an unambiguous murder in Chapter 3. However, can we really be sure this was the case? At no point in that Chapter did we actually see him survive this murder. All we have are Satoko’s word and an empty grave to suggest such a conclusion. The empty grave is explained quite simply by the above point: Miyo Takano and her co-conspirators who killed Jirou Tomitake likely dug up the corpse and took it for some purpose. In regards to Satoko’s testimony: That cannot fully be explained, but it is not reliable either. She was so out of sorts that she almost died in a bathtub immediately following this testimony, and she appeared to accept that her uncle had been murdered once she witnessed the death of Rika. As for Mion’s case, I’m just putting that up to a combination of swapped twins and Keiichi’s delusions.
There are at least two cases where I have no credible explanation: This is in regards to the twin Keiichis and the mysterious drug. Both remain unexplained in my eyes. However, I would like to offer the two most convincing hypotheses I can come up with, which I will operate under for now. Although it seems irrational, I can only believe that the second Keiichi was in fact Satoshi, who has been in hiding. Perhaps he has been hiding under the protection of Rika. She seemed to understand that he could not return for some reason, and was the one who introduced the second Keiichi to the group. As for the drug, it is likely a special chemical designed to subdue victims so they can be Onikakushi’d as part of the Watanagashi torture rituals, and is accessible by various factions around the village to be used as a sedative.
In regards to the two contradictions of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, they are contingent on a credible explanation of its causes, which I cannot fully provide. However, some key facts have become clear due to these two incongruities: Firstly, Mion restarting the Watanagashi torture ritual and dumping bodies into the underground well correlated with the delay of the disaster by at least 6 months in Chapter 2. Secondly, the body of water near the dam project site was immune to the disaster, despite scientific expectations. Due to these contradictions, it can be reasonably theorised that the dam project, the Sonozaki underground tunnels, and Onigafuchi Swamp are all part of the same integrated water system. Therefore, the timing and effects of the disaster are contingent on the state of all three in a systematic manner.
With these incongruencies clarified, the beginnings of a theory begin to take shape:
Prior to the events of Higurashi, the Three Families invented the Watanagashi rituals as a means of controlling the integrated Onigafuchi water system which could release a toxic miasma if misused. A large part of these rituals is likely to be meaningless superstition, however, some part of what they do with the swamp itself and the underground tunnels is likely to manipulate this miasma. These practices died off in large part in the modernisation of Japan, but were kept going in some form by the Sonozaki family.
Then, the dam war begun. The Sonozaki family knew by reference to their superstitions that the dam project would cause “something” to happen in regards to this water system. It is unknown exactly what outcome they were trying to avoid. Perhaps the dam would have released the miasma on an even wider scale, or maybe the Sonozakis were just trying to maintain control of the system they were bound by tradition to control. Regardless, they knew that they could not allow the dam to be built, and so they used whatever means available to prevent its construction. However, despite already being likely to succeed by other means, their goals were achieved by a third party. This was the beginning of the Oyashiro-sama curse incidents. These were however, as we now know, not unforeseen. By some means certain members of the village knew these incidents were going to occur, notably, Rika was aware of this at least a year in advance.
The problem is, this is where things start to get ambiguous. Going back to our list of incidents, and entering in the hypotheses we have made:
Incident 1: The murder of Jirou Tomitake. Culprit: Miyo Takano.
Incident 2: The “murder” of “Miyo Takano”. Culprit: Miyo Takano.
Incident 3: The Oyashiro-sama curse incidents. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Unknown.
Incident 4: The disappearance of the 1979 culprit. Culprit: Unknown. Suspect: Unknown.
Incident 5: The disappearance of Satoshi. Culprit: Rika Furude.
Incident 6: The Great Hinamizawa Disaster. Culprits: Nature and the Sonozaki Family.
In terms of a culprit who we can theorise as being behind the recent attempts to revive the traditions of the Watanagashi by ensuring the Oyashiro-sama curse incidents continue, there is only one. For at least this year’s incident, the culprit can only be one person: Miyo Takano.
However, we cannot conclusive explain her motives, and therefore cannot connect her to the prior Oyashiro-sama curse incidents conclusively. The possibility exists that she is merely the latest participant in a larger scheme. And how this all leads up the ceremonial murder of Rika Furude which seems to herald the coming of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster is unknown. However, some conclusions can be drawn if we do pencil her in as a suspect.
The Murder of Jirou Tomitake was not the act of a single person. He was drugged by a ringleader, and then assaulted by a group of unknown assailants. We can therefore conjecture that Miyo Takano, a nurse, provided the drug and acted as the ringleader, and some other characters acted as the assailants. The presence of others implies a more complex organisation, one which could reasonably have orchestrated the prior Oyashiro-sama curse incidents in order to artificially fulfill the prophecy of Rika Furude.
Of course, the murder of Tomitake was not prophesied, but was still necessary in order to achieve two goals. Firstly, they needed a murder on the night of the Watanagashi in order to have Takada be able to credibly disappear as that year’s “sacrifice” of the Onikakushi. Secondly, they needed to keep up the appearance of Oyashiro-sama’s curse as part of their scheme for some reason. As for what that ultimate goal is, and how it relates to the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, that remains the greatest unknown.
That is not all that is unknown. We still just do not know how supernatural the world of Higurashi is, if at all. These prophesies may be legitimate, and the miasma may be supernaturally linked to the Watanagashi. However, it is equally possible that the prophesy was simply fulfilled intentionally by a culprit who knew it, and the miasma may just be a natural phenomenon related to the involvement of the swamp in the Watanagashi rituals. Many facts have been clarified, but I will just have to jump into the Answers Arc in order to learn what motivated Takada, and how vast her conspiracy reaches.
At the very least, taking on the reader’s role as the detective of this story, I will declare this provisionally, as the final word of this first Arc. The culprit is among us, and their name is (probably) Miyo Takano.
