On the Man Who Liked to Stare

 

 'When you stare long into the abyss, the abyss will also stare into you ...' [a] 

 

Nakamura has a fascination for staring death in the face; provided it's the death of another and that individual is deserving of their fate having been found guilty by a court of law of some grievous crime, such as murder.

 

Without getting into the rights and wrongs of capital punishment, most societies consider the unlawful and intentional killing of another human being to be an extremely serious matter, deserving of harsh punishment, be that a life behind bars, or state-sanctioned execution. 

In Nakamura's mind, murder is always an act of malicious evil whilst judicial homocide is morally justifiable and also a social necessity when considered in terms of deterrence, for example. And so, he feels he has a sacred duty to witness the death of criminals and the desire to do so is one that often arises within him:

"Nakamura's pride and joy in witnessing the death penalty, which he had felt on several occasions, and which he had told his friends and even his wife about, was on the rise again. He felt as if something special, something powerful, something stern and unmovable, like divine punishment itself, resided within him." [b] 

 

And yet, on the morning of the execution Nakamura often felt a level of physical anxiety that went beyond nervous anticipation; his entire body would begin to tremble in an unpleasant and uncontrollable manner. And his weak cup of tea "tasted of nothing" [91]. 

 

His wife obviously notices, but when she tries to speak to him and tell him of her dislike for the whole business, he grows angry and wants to strike her. 

 

"'Of course, I don't like it either,' he said. 'But if everyone felt that way, it would be easier for warmongers and criminals. You have to choose one side or the other. Either we, as citizens, will make society safe, or we will leave them to their own devices.'" [92]

 

Having said this, he reassured himself somewhat: "And he also felt that he was a hero, a hero who fulfilled his duty without regard for his own interests" [92]. His wife, however, is less than convinced; she knows that there's a real and often terrible price to pay for repeatedly witnessing executions, as studies have shown and many have testified [c].  

 

Nakamura boards his early morning train. Sat opposite him were a couple of businessmen, two young men in uniform, and "a beautiful, drowsy young woman" [93], who particularly fascinates him:    

 

"Her colour gave him a certain masculine feeling. The girl's eyes, which were a kind of melancholy grey, made him think of the rumpled bedclothes she had just woken up on. [...] Nakamura was so busy looking at her eyes, her breasts, and the rich lustre of her hair, that he almost forgot where the train was heading." [94]  

 

Almost: but not quite. His intrusive and sexualised staring [d] ultimately doesn't distract him from his sacred duty of attending the gallows. For the thought of an imaginary fuck was not as thrilling to him as the prospect of an actual death. It was the latter that filled him with "a certain dark and powerful force" [93] and made his erection as hard as a judge's hammer.   

 

He arrives at the prison: he takes his seat: he awaits the arrival of the condemned: "He was a young man. He was tall. Nakamura could not take his eyes off this man's body" [96], unless it was to look at his "youthful, slightly beaming, blushing face" [96].

 

And when the condemned man's eyes meet his own, "Nakamura thought he saw something beautiful shining in the man's small eyes like a flash of lightning" [96]. 

 

He shivers and feels himself lightheaded as the trapdoor opens, closing his eyes in a kind of ecstasy as "the sound of people’s voices whispering" [97] echoed around the room.  

 

Afterwards, Nakamura is desolate, his eyes glowing "as if fevered" [98], or having ejaculated.  

 

Consummatum est ...

 

Nakamura was obliged to sign a note saying that he had witnessed the execution. Although unable to think clearly, he felt himself filled with the silent knowledge of death; his avaricious curiosity satisfied (for the moment).

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV. 146.

 

[b] Chōkōdō Shujin, 'The Condemned', in Nakajimi Says and Other Stories (The Tripover, 2025), pp. 90-91. All future page references in this post are to this text. 

 

[c] Research suggests that witnessing executions - in whatever capacity - can have a profound and often traumatic impact on individuals, affecting their mental and emotional well-being. Indeed, even those who facilitate the executions and hardened journalists who report on them, often experience significant levels of stress, leading to nightmares, insomnia, panic attacks, and a sense of detachment from reality or other people. 

      Thus, the idea put forward by proponents of capital punishment that executions bring closure and allow healing is questionable to say the very least. 

 

[d] As far as I know, it is not yet a crime to look at someone in a public space, but so-called intrusive staring is now regarded as a form of harassment (particularly if it's an unwanted form of sexual leering) and so can get you arrested and possibly banged up. 

      To be fair, I can see how one might be made to feel uncomfortable if one is watched and evaluated by a stranger, but I don't have much time for arguments framed within the context of objectification; no one is dehumanised by being looked at or lusted after. Ultimately, I suppose whether or not staring is a genuine concern depends on context, the intent of the individual staring, and the sensitivity of the person being looked at. 

 

 

This post is for Soko and Rebecca. 

 

Click here for an earlier post responding to Nakajimi Says and Other Stories (2025). 

He Who Lives by the Tusk ...

 

 

I.

 

As a matter of fact, I'm not what some would term an elephantophile. 

 

For whilst I wouldn't describe them as pig-tailed monsters, they're a bit too big and grey for my tastes and do sometimes possess a look in their long-lashed, colour-blind eyes that makes me uncomfortable. And don't mention those appalling feet and toenails!   

 

Putting these things aside, however, I have nothing against them and in the unlikely event an elephant should wander into my backgarden, I would happily give them a sticky bun to eat (providing they were careful not to tread on the cat). 

 

 

II. 

 

In contrast, I would not be so considerate of those involved in the illegal ivory trade. 

 

For if you wish to speak of monsters, then look no further than those who participate in the slaughter of African elephants and threaten them as a species with extinction. No wonder Joseph Conrad described the ivory business as the vilest trade that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.

 

It's chilling to recall that during the 1980s, 75,000 African elephants were killed annually for the ivory trade and their population was reduced in number from around 1.3 million to 600,000. 

 

Even more horrifying and depressing is the fact that the trade continues today, if on a reduced scale; approximately 20,000 elephants are now killed by poachers each year in Africa - more than the number of elephants being born - and the population now stands at around 415,000 individuals (to which one can add the remaining 50,000 Asian elephants).         

 

Of course there are other threats to the survival of the elephant, such as habitat destruction, the enclosure of farmland, and global warming. But poaching remains a real issue and there is an increasing demand for ivory in China and the Far East, where it is used for luxury items no one really needs.    

 

Apparently, ivory which is seized by the authorities is eventually destroyed, either by crushing or incineration, and this is believed to deter the poaching of elephants for their tusks, suppress the illegal trade in ivory, and foster public support for the conservation of elephants.

 

Whether that's true or not, I don't know (one might imagine it would simply push up the price), but over twenty countries have adopted this policy, including Kenya, which held the first high-profile ivory burning event in 1989, as well as the largest, in 2016, when 105 tonnes of ivory went up in flames. 

 

If it were up to me, rather than destroy the ivory I'd manufacture crosses and spikes from the material on which to crucify the bodies and impale the severed heads of poachers. I'm sure this savagely ironic method would prove a more effective deterrent and be something that the elephants would approve of in their ancient wisdom. 

 

For he who lives by the tusk must surely die by the tusk ...        

 

 

Gallows Corner (Reflections on Capital Punishment and Lessons in Paganism)

I.

Living as I do just north of the notorious road junction known as Gallows Corner - a large roundabout with five exits, a flyover, a nearby retail park, and an above average number of collisions -  mean my thoughts often turn to the subject of capital punishment; particularly in the wake of some ghastly local crime, such as the murder of Jodie Chesney ... 

I'm not suggesting that they should demolish the drive-thru KFC and re-erect the gallows as a place of public execution, but it has to be asked what should be done with violent felons who have placed themselves outside of the law and society and what role cruelty, punishment and death (as a form of truth) should play within the socio-legal space.


II.

Historically, as Foucault notes, public executions were always about more than justice; they were a theatrical display of force within a system founded upon a notion of sovereignty. But we, of course, no longer live in such a world; as citizens and as subjects, we are are constituted by a very different regime of power - one that has given itself the task (and the right) to administer life, rather than take it.

Such a regime - let's call it liberal humanism - prides itself on its ability to sustain and coordinate life within a system of law and order: "For such a power, execution was at the same time a limit, a scandal, and a contradiction." It's because this is the case - because having to execute a prisoner is an embarrassing sign of failure - that most Western democracies have abolished capital punishment (and why those states that still carry out executions do so behind closed doors as a joyless, bureacratic procedure witnessed only by officials and a few selected individuals). 

It's not that they - we - have become more humanitarian or more squeamish; death isn't carefully evaded or hidden away within our culture due to a heightened moral sense or some peculiar form of modern anxiety, but due to the fact that death is that which frustrates (bio-)power's desire to micro-manage every aspect of an individual's life. 

III.

Again, I'm not saying that we should attempt to turn the clock back and resurrect violent spectacles or what Nietzsche would term festivals of cruelty, though one suspects that here in Essex - home of the witch trials - there would be an enthusiastic audience for such.

I'm just reminding readers that, as Foucault suggests, public executions were once an occasion also for the exercise of popular power; a chance for citizens to directly vent their anger and make their views known; to not only rejoice in the execution of a criminal, but to mock those who act with pretensions of higher (universal) authority.   

Perhaps there is still something important to learn from Lyotard's lessons in paganism after all ...


IV.

By the term paganism Lyotard refers to a style of thinking which affirms the idea of incommensurable differences founded upon an ontology of singular events. For Lyotard, all things - including crimes - should be considered on their own terms, without attempting to arrive at a universal law of judgement that can make sense of (or do justice to) each and every unique happening.       

In other words, paganism is a kind of godless politics; one that abandons One Truth and One Law in favour of a multiplicity of specific judgements that have no pre-existing (ideal) criteria to refer back to. This would, arguably, allow us to develop a kind of post-Nietzschean legal sytem wherein judgement becomes an expression of an active and affirmative will to power.   

I have to admit that I find it difficult to see how this plurality of judgements would work in practice, but that might simply be because I lack the constitutive imagination to do so (a Kantian notion that Lyotard also invokes in his work on paganism).

See:

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998); see Part Five: 'Right of Death and Power Over Life'.

Jean-François Lyotard, 'Lessons in Paganism', The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin, (Blackwell, 1998). 

Elephants Can Be Murderous Too

Illustration from An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon (1681), by Robert Knox

I have received an email from someone who read the recent series of elephant posts published on Torpedo the Ark: the tragic tales of Tyke, Topsy, Mary and Chunee.

Describing themselves as an elephant lover and a passionate supporter of animal rights, they write to thank me for displaying "compassion with innocent, gentle and highly intelligent creatures forced to suffer needless cruelty at the hands of man".

Now, whilst it's true that I do sympathise with wild things in captivity and dislike all forms of cruelty to animals, I think it should also be mentioned that elephants - which are undeniably intelligent - are not always so gentle. And I'd never describe them as innocent; certainly not in the way in which I suspect my correspondent is using the term.

For not only are wild elephants - particularly the young males - prone to violent and aggressive behaviour (in India, they regularly enter villages at night, damaging property and causing human fatalities), but beasts co-opted into human society have long been complicit in warfare and capital punishment.

Execution by elephant, for example, was once common throughout SE Asia; the supposedly gentle giants happily crushing, dismembering, or impaling prisoners with weaponised tusks. The animals were not only smart and versatile enough to be trained in the sophisticated art of torture, but seemed to derive pleasure from the opportunity to exercise power, inflict pain and test out their deadly skills on unfortunate victims.

The point is this: you can throw someone to the wolves or to the lions if you simply want them to be torn to pieces; but if you really want to extend their suffering and have them murdered by an animal rather than merely killed, then you're going to have enlist the help of an elephant.    


Note: the spectacle of elephants executing captives both horrified and fascinated European travellers and there are numerous written accounts. The practice was eventually suppressed by the colonial powers that controlled the region in the 18th and 19th centuries.