Free Biogenesis by Tatsuaki Ishiguro Page A

in an article published in the German medical journal
ARZT
, the symptoms of a woman whose standard body temperature was 82.4°F. Normally, at that temperature, the heartbeat becomes irregular then ceases altogether, and respiration stops completely as well; the report flaunted the conventional medical wisdom of the era. Immediately after its publication, Imperial University Professor Koin Aoyama and Nursing Institute Director Iwao Otsuki, along with many other doctors considered to be authorities, offered to examine and shed light on the condition, but refusing all such requests Yuhki attempted to treat the woman on his own at a small clinic.
    The all-too-shocking content of Yuhki’s objective evaluation of the condition, which included the possibility of an extended lifespan due to lower metabolism and the presence of hibernation-related substances, elicited a negative reaction and the title of “fraud” for the army doctor, who was denied public funding and forced to finance the treatment out of his own pocket. Then, on February 22, 1927, only one year after the paper was published, the evening edition of the
Hokkaido Daily
reported Yuhki’s death, along with that of the woman, from unknown causes. The truth of the matter, which some deemed a lovers’ suicide, remained obscure, but on February 22, 1997—exactly seventy years after his death to the day, oddly enough—a massive number of military medical documents that had been sealed subsequent to World War II at the former Army Library (now the Korin Museum) were found, and Yuhki’s treatment logs and journal saw the light of day along with other documents such as the autopsy reports on the victims of the Mt. Hakkoda March. In addition to diary-like entries he must have written each day, glosses on parts that he considered important at a later date appear in the same journal, makingfor a rather unbalanced whole, but the record goes into great detail regarding the events of that time and could almost be considered a type of prose. What is more, after years of abiding by Yuhki’s order to keep her mouth shut, Nurse Tae Sugita (who still resides in Shinjo) was prompted by the stunning revelations to break her silence at long last, thereby supplying numerous new facts that have reconfigured the truth of what happened. Sugita, whose father had served as military support staff, was only sixteen at the time and more of a nursing apprentice than a nurse, but having witnessed the events as the doctor’s close assistant, she was able to leave behind valuable testimony prior to her death earlier this year. The following account of the incident that occurred in Shinjo, Ashibetsu Village, Hokkaido Prefecture, in 1926 is based on Yuhki’s diagnostic charts and journal and Sugita’s testimony.
    Dr. Koho Yuhki, aged thirty-seven, was assigned to Army 7th Division in Asahikawa on October 1, 1925. A clinic had opened in Shinjo, where training for winter marches took place, and he had been ordered to head it. His job description, according to the recently discovered commission papers, was simply, “special medical research in the north.” Shinjo, a mountainous area in the vicinity of the village of Ashibetsu, had once been home to a military logging site and doubled as a training facility for new recruits. By Surgeon General Soraji Ishiguro’s orders, Yuhki was to research clinical treatments for frostbite, at the time a nearly incurable malady for which hardly any measures had been established. Although development of the prevention and treatment of frostbite was a significant priority for troops to be dispatched to northern fronts such as Russia, it was a condition rarely seen on the mostly temperate main island of Honshu. There were few researchers, and the need to experience colder climes is thought to have ushered the decision to post Yuhki there.
    Thanks to nearly daily examinations of frostbitten soldiers brought to the clinic, Yuhki produced a string of research