MovieChat Forums > Ranpo jigoku (2005) Discussion > "Hell of Mirrors" by Edogawa Rampo

"Hell of Mirrors" by Edogawa Rampo

posted 9 years ago by rooprect
1 reply | jump to latest

Finding the original Rampo texts is very hard, so I figured I'd post a few here. Would love to hear what people think...

ONE OF THE QUEEREST FRIENDS I ever had was Kan Tanuma. From the very start I
suspected that he was mentally unbalanced. Some might have called him just
eccentric, but I am convinced he was a lunatic. At any rate, he had one mania
—a craze for anything capable of reflecting an image, as well as for all types of lenses.
Even as a boy the only toys he would play with were magic lanterns, telescopes,
magnifying glasses, kaleidoscopes, prisms, and the like.
Perhaps this strange mania of Tanuma's was hereditary , for his great-grandfather
Moribe was also known to have had the same predilection. As evidence there is the
collection of objects—primitive glassware and telescopes and ancient books on related
subjects—which this Moribe obtained from the early Dutch merchants at Nagasaki.
These were handed down to his descendants, and my friend Tanuma was the last in line
to receive the heirlooms.
Although episodes concerning Tanuma's craze for mirrors and lenses in his boyhood
are almost endless, those I remember most vividly took place in the laĴer part of his
high-school days, when he was deeply involved in the study of physics, especially optics.
One day while we were in the classroom (Tanuma and I were classmates in the same
school), the teacher passed around a concave mirror and invited all the students to
observe the reﬂection of their faces in the glass. When my turn came to look I recoiled
with horror, for the numerous festering pimples on my face, so greatly magniﬁed, looked
exactly like craters on the moon seen through the gigantic telescope of an astronomical
observatory. I might mention that I had always been extremely sensitive about my
heavily pimpled face, so much so that the shock I received on this occasion leĞ me with a
phobia of looking into such concave mirrors. On one occasion not long aĞer this incident
I happened to visit a science exhibition, but when I spoĴed an extra-large concave mirror
mounted in the far distance I took to my heels in holy terror.
Tanuma, however, in sharp contrast to my sensitive feelings, let out a shrill cry of joy
as soon as he got his ﬁrst glance at that concave mirror in the classroom. "Wonderful. .
.wonderful!" he shrieked, and all the other students laughed at him.
But to Tanuma the experience was no laughing maĴer, for he was in dead earnest.
Subsequently his love for concave mirrors grew so intense that he was forever buying all
sorts of paraphernalia—wire, cardboard, mirrors, and the like. From these he
mischievously began constructing various devilish trick-boxes with the help of many
books which he had procured, all devoted to the art of scientific magic.
Following Tanuma's graduation from high school, he showed no inclination to pursue
his academic studies further. Instead, with the money which was generously supplied
him by his easy-going parents, he built a small laboratory in one corner of his garden and

devoted his full time and effort to his craze for optical instruments.
He completely isolated himself in his weird laboratory , and I was the only friend who
ever visited him, the others having all given him up because of his growing eccentricity.
On each of my visits I began to feel more and more anxious over his strange doings, for I
could see clearly that his malady was going from bad to worse.
About this time both his parents died, leaving him with a handsome inheritance.
Now completely free from any supervision, and with ample funds to satisfy his every
whim, he began to grow more reckless than ever. At the same time, having now reached
the age of twenty , he began to show a keen interest in the opposite sex. This interest
intermingled with his morbid craze for optics, and the two grew into a powerful force in
which he was completely enmeshed.
Immediately aĞer receiving his inheritance he built a small observatory and equipped
it with an astronomical telescope in order to explore the mysteries of the planets. As his
house stood on a high elevation, it was an ideal spot for this purpose. But he was not one
to be satisﬁed with such an innocuous occupation. Soon he began to turn his telescope
earthward and to focus the lens on the houses of the surrounding area. Fences and other
barriers constituted no obstacle, because his observatory stood on very high ground.
The occupants of the neighboring houses, uĴerly unaware of Tanuma's prying eyes
peering through his telescope, went about their daily lives without any reserve, their
sliding paper windows wide open. As a result Tanuma derived hitherto unknown
pleasures from his secret explorations into the private lives of his neighbors. One
evening he kindly invited me to take a look, but what I saw made me blush a deep
crimson, and I refused to partake any more in his observations.
Not long after he built a special type of periscope which enabled him to get a full view
of the rooms of his many young maidservants while he was siĴing in his lab. Unaware of
this, the maids showed no restraint in whatever they did in the privacy of their own
rooms.
Another episode, which I can never erase from my mind, concerned insects. Tanuma
began studying them under a small microscope, deriving childish delight from watching
both their ﬁghting and their mating. One particular scene which I had the misfortune of
seeing was that of a crushed ﬂea. This was a gory sight indeed, for, magniﬁed a
thousandfold, it looked like a large wild boar struggling in a pool of blood.
Some time aĞer this, when I called on Tanuma one aĞernoon and knocked on his
laboratory door, there was no answer. So I casually walked in, as was my custom. Inside,
it was completely dark, for all the windows were draped with black curtains. And then
suddenly on the large wall ahead of me there appeared some blurred and indescribable
object, so monstrous in size that it covered the entire space. I was so startled that I stood

transfixed.
Gradually the "thing" on the wall began to take deﬁnite shape. The ﬁrst shape that
came into focus was a swamp overgrown with black weeds. Beneath it there appeared
two immense eyes the size of washtubs, with brown pupils glinting horribly , while at
their sides there ﬂowed many rivers of blood on a white plateau. Next came two large
caves, from which there seemed to protrude the black bushy ends of large brooms.
These, of course, were the hairs growing in the cavities of a gigantic nose. Then followed
two thick lips, which looked like two large, crimson cushions; and they kept moving,
exposing two rows of white teeth the proportions of roof-tiles.
It was a picture of a human face. Somehow I thought I recognized the features
despite their grotesque size.
Just at this point I heard someone calling: "Don't be alarmed! It's only me!" The voice
gave me another shock, for the large lips moved in synchronization with the words, and
the eyes seemed to smile.
Abruptly , without any warning, the room was ﬁlled with light, and the apparition on
the wall vanished. Almost simultaneously Tanuma emerged from behind a curtain at the
rear of the room.
Grinning mischievously , he came up to me and exclaimed with childish pride: "Wasn't
that a remarkable show?" While I continued to stand motionless, still speechless with
wonder, he explained to me that what I had seen was an image of his own face, thrown
on the wall by means of a stereopticon which he had had specially constructed to project
the human face.
Several weeks later he started another new experiment. This time he built a small
room within the laboratory , the interior of which was completely lined with mirrors. The
four walls, plus ﬂoor and ceiling, were mirrors. Hence, anyone who went inside would be
confronted with reﬂections of every portion of his body; and as the six mirrors reﬂected
one another, the reﬂections multiplied and re-multiplied ad inﬁnitum. Just what the
purpose of the room was Tanuma never explained. But I do remember that he invited me
on one occasion to enter it. I ﬂatly refused, for I was terriﬁed. But from what the servants
told me Tanuma frequently entered the "chamber of mirrors" together with Kimiko, his
favorite maid, a buxom girl of eighteen, to enjoy the hidden delights of mirrorland.
The servants also told me that at other times he would enter the chamber alone,
staying for many minutes, oĞen as long as an hour. Once he had stayed inside so long
that the servants had become alarmed. One of them mustered up enough courage to
knock on the door. Tanuma came leaping out, stark naked, and without even a word of
explanation, fled to his own room.
I must explain at this juncture that Tanuma's health was fast deteriorating. On the

other hand his craze for optical instruments kept increasing in intensity. Continuing to
spend his fortune on his insane hobby , he kept laying in bigger and bigger stocks of
mirrors of all shapes and descriptions—concave, convex, corrugated, prismaticas well as
miscellaneous specimens that cast completely distorted reﬂections. Finally , however, he
reached the stage where he could no longer ﬁnd any further satisfaction unless he
himself manufactured his own mirrors. So he established a glass-working plant in his
spacious garden, and there, with the help of a select staﬀ of technicians and workmen,
began turning out all kinds of fantastic mirrors. He had no relative to restrain him in his
insane ventures, and the handsome wages he paid his servants assured their complete
obedience. Hence I felt it was my duty to try and dissuade him from squandering any
more of his fast-dwindling fortune. But Tanuma would not listen to me.
I was nevertheless determined to keep an eye on him, fearing he might lose his mind
completely , and visited him frequently. And on each occasion I was a witness to some
still madder example of his mirror-making orgy , each example becoming more and more
difficult to describe.
One of the things he did was to cover one whole wall of his laboratory with a giant
mirror. Then in the mirror he cut out ﬁve holes; he would thrust his arms, legs, and head
through these holes from the back side of the mirror, creating a weird illusion of a
trunkless body floating in space.
On other occasions I would ﬁnd his lab cluĴered up with a miscellaneous collection
of mirrors of fantastic shapes and sizes—corrugated, concave and convex types
predominating—and he would be dancing in their midst, completely naked, in the
manner of some primitive pagan ritualist or witch doctor. Every time I beheld these
scenes I got the shivers, for the reﬂection of his madly whirling naked body became
contorted and twisted into a thousand variations. Sometimes his head would appear
double, his lips swollen to immense proportions; again his belly would swell and rise,
then ﬂaĴen out; his swinging arms would multiply like those found on ancient Chinese
Buddhist statues. Indeed, during such times the laboratory was transformed into a
purgatory of freaks.
Next, Tanuma rigged up a gigantic kaleidoscope which seemed to ﬁll the entire
length of his laboratory. This was rotated by a motor, and with each rotation of the giant
cylinder the mammoth ﬂower paĴerns of the kaleidoscope would change in form and
hue—red, pink, purple, green, vermilion, black—like the ﬂowers of an opium addict's
dream. And Tanuma himself would crawl into the cylinder, dancing there crazily among
the ﬂowers, his stark naked body and limbs multiplying like the petals of the ﬂowers,
making it seem as if he too were one of the flowery features of the kaleidoscope.
Nor did his madness end here—far from it. His fantastic creations multiplied rapidly,

[–] rooprect 9 years ago

each on a larger scale than the previous one. Until about this time I had still believed that
he was partly sane; but ﬁnally even I had to admit he had completely lost his mind. And
shortly thereafter came the terrible, tragic climax.
One morning I was suddenly awakened by an excited messenger from Tanuma's
house.
"A terrible thing has happened! Miss Kimiko wants you to come immediately!" the
messenger cried, his face white as a sheet of rice-paper.
"What's the matter?" I asked, hurriedly getting into my clothes.
"We don't know yet," exclaimed the servant. "But for God's sake, come with me at
once!"
I tried to question the servant further, but he was so incoherent that I gave up and
hurried as fast as I could to Tanuma's laboratory.
Entering that eerie place, the ﬁrst person I saw was Kimiko, the aĴractive young
parlormaid whom Tanuma had made his mistress. Near her stood several of the other
maids, all huddled together and gazing horror-struck at a large spherical object reposing
in the center of the room.
This sphere was about twice as large as the ball on which circus clowns oĞen balance
themselves. The exterior was completely covered with white cloth. What terriﬁed me was
the fantastic way this sphere kept rolling slowly and haphazardly , as if it were alive. Far
more terrible, however, was the strange noise that echoed faintly from the interior of the
ball—it was a laugh, a spine-chilling laugh that seemed to come from the throat of a
creature from some other world.
"What—what's going on? What in the world is happening?" I asked the stunned
group.
"We—we don't know," one of the maids replied dazedly. "We think our master's
inside. But we can't do anything. We've called several times, but there's been no answer
except the weird laughter you hear now."
Hearing this, I approached the sphere gingerly , trying to ﬁnd out how the sounds got
out of the sphere. Soon I discovered several small air holes. Pressing my eye to one of
these small openings, I peered inside; but I was blinded by a brilliant light and could see
nothing clearly. However, I did ascertain one thing—there was a creature inside!
"Tanuma! Tanuma!" I called out several times, puĴing my mouth against the hole. But
the same weird laughter was all that I could hear.
Not knowing what to do next, I stood, uncertainly watching the ball roll about. And
then suddenly I noticed the thin lines of a square partition on the smooth exterior
surface. I realized at once that this was a door, allowing entry into the sphere. "But if it's a

door, where's the knob?" I asked myself. Examining the door carefully , I saw a small
screw-hole which must have held some kind of a handle.
At the sight of this I was struck by a terrible thought. "It's quite possible," I told
myself, "that the handle has accidentally come loose, trapping inside whoever it is that
entered the sphere. If so, the man must have spent the entire night inside, unable to get
out."
Searching the ﬂoor of the laboratory , I soon found a T-shaped handle. I tried to ﬁt it
to the hole, but it would not work, for the stem was broken.
I could not understand why in the world the man inside —if indeed it was a man—
didn't shout and scream for help instead of leĴing out those weird chuckles and laughs.
"Maybe," I suddenly reminded myself with a start, "Tanuma is inside and has gone stark
raving mad."
I quickly decided that there was but one thing to do. I hurried to the glass works,
picked up a heavy hammer, and rushed back into the lab. Aiming carefully , I brought the
hammer down on the globe with all my might. Again and again I struck at the strange
object, and it was soon reduced to a mass of thick fragments of glass.
The man who crawled out of the debris was indeed none other than Tanuma. But he
was almost unrecognizable, for he had undergone a horrible transformation. His face
was pulpy and discolored; his eyes kept wandering aimlessly; his hair was a shaggy
tangle; his mouth was agape, the saliva dripping down in thin, foamy ribbons. His entire
expression was that of a raving maniac.
Even the girl Kimiko recoiled with horror aĞer taking one glance at this monstrosity
of a man. Needless to say, Tanuma had gone completely insane.
"But how did this come about?" I asked myself. "Could the mere fact of conﬁnement
inside this glass sphere have been enough to drive him mad? Moreover, what was his
motive in constructing the globe in the first place?"
Although I questioned the servants still huddled close to me, I could learn nothing,
for they all swore they had known nothing of the globe, not even that it had existed.
As though completely oblivious of his whereabouts, Tanuma began to wander about
the room, still grinning. Kimiko overcame her initial fright with great eﬀort and tearfully
tugged at his sleeves. Just at this moment the chief engineer of the glass works arrived
on the scene to report for work.
Ignoring his shock at what he saw, I started to ﬁre questions at him relentlessly. The
man was so bewildered that he could barely stammer out his replies. But this is what he
told me:

A long time ago Tanuma had ordered him to construct this glass sphere. Its walls
were half an inch thick and its diameter about four feet. In order to make the interior a
one-unit mirror, Tanuma had the workmen and engineers paint the exterior of the globe
with quicksilver, over which they pasted several layers of coĴon cloth. The interior of the
globe had been built in such a way that there were small cavities here and there as
receptacles for electric bulbs which would not protrude. Another feature of the globe was
a door just large enough to permit the entrance of an average-sized man.
The engineers and workers had been completely unaware of the purpose of the
product, but orders were orders, and so they had gone ahead with their assignment. At
last, on the night before, the globe had been ﬁnished, complete with an extra-long
electric cord ﬁĴed to a socket on the outer surface, and it had been carefully brought into
the lab. They plugged the cord into a wall socket, and then departed at once, leaving
Tanuma alone with the sphere. What happened later was, of course, beyond the realm of
their knowledge.
After hearing the chief engineers story, I asked him to leave. Then, putting Tanuma in
the custody of the servants, who led him away to the house proper, I continued to stand
alone in the laboratory , my eyes ﬁxed on the glass fragments scaĴered about the room,
desperately trying to solve the mystery of what had happened.
For a long while I stood thus, wrestling with the conundrum. Finally I reached the
conclusion that Tanuma, aĞer having completely exhausted every new idea in his mania
of optics, had decided that he would construct a glass globe, completely lined with a
single-unit mirror, which he would enter in order to see his own reflection.
Why would a man become crazy if he entered a glass globe lined with a mirror? What
in the name of the devil had he seen there? When these thoughts passed through my
mind, I felt as if I had been stabbed through the spine with a sword of ice.
Did he go mad aĞer taking a glance at himself reﬂected by a completely spherical
mirror? Or did he slowly lose his sanity aĞer suddenly discovering that he was trapped
inside his horrible round glass coffin—together with "that" reflection?
What, then, I asked myself again, had he seen? It was surely something completely
beyond the scope of human imagination. Assuredly , never before had anyone shut
himself up within the conﬁnes of a mirror-lined sphere. Even a trained physicist could
not have guessed exactly what sort of vision would be created inside that sphere.
Probably it would be a thing so unthinkable as to be utterly out of this world of ours.
So strange and terrifying must have been this reﬂection, of whatever shape it was, as
it filled Tanuma's complete range of vision, that it would have made any mortal insane.
The only thing we know is the reﬂection cast by a concave mirror, which is only one
section of a spherical whole. It is a monstrously huge magniﬁcation. But who could

possibly imagine what the result would be when one is wrapped up in a complete
succession of concave mirrors?
My hapless friend, undoubtedly , had tried to explore the regions of the unknown,
violating sacred taboos, thereby incurring the wrath of the gods. By trying to pry open
the secret portals of forbidden knowledge with his weird mania of optics he had
destroyed himself.