The Conversion of Tokichi Ishii

The ropes bit into my wrists where they had lashed me to the post two cells down. I could see only the lower half of Ishii through the narrow grate. His toes scraped the stone floor by inches. They had gagged him after the last time he spat at the warder’s face. The warden stood with arms folded, waiting for the word that never came.

Ishii’s shoulders trembled from the strain, yet his eyes stayed open and fixed on the ceiling beam. Four hours passed that way. At dusk the warden cut him down. Ishii dropped to his knees, coughed once, and said nothing. They dragged him back to the six-by-nine cell at the end of the row. The rest of us listened to the silence that followed.

Two days later a woman’s voice echoed along the corridor. Miss West had come again. She spoke through the bars for perhaps ten minutes. When she left, a thin book wrapped in brown paper rested on the ledge inside Ishii’s cell. He did not touch it until the lamps were turned low.

I heard the pages turn that night. Slow at first, then stopping for long stretches. Near morning the turning stopped altogether. I pressed my ear to the wall. He was not moving. The next afternoon the pages began again, but the rhythm had changed. He read the same lines over and over.

On the third morning the warder found him sitting upright against the far wall, the book open on his knees. Ishii asked for paper and a brush. The request was refused. He asked again the following day. This time they brought a single sheet and a stub of pencil. He wrote without lifting his head for nearly an hour.

The change showed first in the way he answered when spoken to. Before, every reply had been a curse or a silence sharp enough to cut. Now he gave his name when asked and added the single word “thank you.” The warder who had suspended him stood outside the bars for a full minute, staring. Ishii met the stare without flinching or looking away.

Miss West returned on a Tuesday. She stood where the light from the corridor fell across the open page. Ishii pointed to one line and asked what it meant in ordinary speech. She read it aloud once, then again more slowly. He nodded and asked her to leave the book open at that place when she went.

The sentence stayed with him. He repeated it under his breath while pacing the nine-foot length of the cell. The words were not loud, yet they carried. Other prisoners began to repeat them too, sometimes mocking, sometimes not. Ishii never corrected them.

When the death sentence was read, he listened without expression. After the officials left, he folded the paper they had given him and placed it inside the New Testament at the same page. That night he spoke through the wall to me for the first time in months.