Stop, you beast!
EPISODE 44 - BROWN BEAR MAN
This Ainu chise is such a fresh breath of "Hokkaido," ain't it?
Yeah.
We finally made it back to Hokkaido.
So what now?
Got a plan to search for the gold with just us?
Will we have to steal the tattooed skins from Hijikata and Tsurumi?
We'll pit them against each other, then nab the skins!
The "fisherman's profit," yeah?
That's easier said than done.
Hey, nispa.
Got any ideas on a quick way to make some cash for travel expenses?
There's a kotan villager to the south
who needs a wenkamuy taken care of.
-A wenkamuy? You mean a man-eating bear? -Yes.
It's been killing off people prospecting for gold in the river.
Gold?
Everyone's afraid of the wenkamuy, so nobody goes near the river.
A river with gold deposits?
I didn't think there were any left.
HERE - URYU RIVER - ABASHIRI
Rumor has it there's a prospector in the Uryu River.
They say he's making a fortune.
You could look for gold while the wenkamuy is not looking.
I hear he made something like 50 yen per day once.
50 yen?
Help me!
Help me! Father! Taka! Jirou!
Quickly!
I'm falling!
I can't hold on…
Somebody!
We made it.
Thank you very much.
You saved me.
You're injured. Are you okay?
Oh, that's from something earlier…
Such a nice man.
Heita, thank goodness you're all right.
Taka.
Are you the gold prospector?
Yes. How did you know?
We've come to search for gold as well.
We heard there was gold in the Uryu River.
Oh, is that so?
There's plenty to be found if you know where to look.
Oh, my. What an odd group of people.
How fun!
How do you know each other?
Oh, and a foreigner as well.
You could say we're… friends?
No, we're just rabble.
Noriko! Go back inside.
We look for cracks in the river bedrock with this glass box.
That's why we call it "glass-box sniping."
You scrape the gold out of the crack with a scraper.
It's a good way to get the big ones.
Looks like you've come prepared with the panning method.
It's not easy to find a good location with the panning method.
I knew it.
I couldn't find anything the last time I tried.
Could you give us a hint as to where to pan?
Please?
Well,
you could try beneath that large boulder.
No more!
Asirpa-chan! I need hot water!
Heaven!
At this time of year,
you can only search for gold for four hours around midday.
And panning for gold is the least effective way to do it.
Are you serious? We're not going to get anywhere!
Was the man who made 50 yen a day in Uryu River just a load of bull?
No, it's true.
That's how much I made.
What?
Oi, Heita! Watch your mouth!
You saved my life, so I'll let you in on it.
Do you know what haku is?
What's haku?
I'll show you.
It's this.
Prospectors call the gold they dig up aka.
The white stuff mixed in with the aka is called haku.
This is actually placer platinum.
It's very hard.
It's also resistant to heat, and acid won't melt it.
Nobody likes it because it damages goldsmithing tools.
You don't get as much money with haku mixed in.
You have to take the time to chip it away.
It takes a really long time.
Hokkaido is the only place that has haku,
and Uryu River in particular has a lot of it.
That's no good.
But…
there are people out there who will pay a lot of money for it!
Up to three yen per unit!
What?
That's as much as a gold nugget!
The munitions factories have nothing to do since the end of the Russo-Japanese War,
so some of them have started producing domestic fountain pens.
Imported fountain pens
have a hard, non-abrasive metal on the tip.
They found that the tip is made from platinum.
Then they realized placer platinum can be found here in Hokkaido.
Everyone thought haku was useless, but demand has gone through the roof!
There's even increasing international demand!
Everyone used to just throw their haku away.
They threw it all away in Hokkaido's rivers!
This is the second gold rush!
It's him! It's the bear.
-What? -Where? Where is it?
Over there!
It's watching us.
It hid itself.
It's getting closer.
And it was so far away yesterday.
It's the wenkamuy.
What do you think, Asirpa?
Can you see its tracks?
No, I can't.
Did it get away by jumping from tree to tree?
I wonder.
Is that the chakchak kamuy?
If there were a bear nearby, the chakchaks would be chirping
to let us know where it is.
They're quiet.
Here! This is the place…
that should have lots of platinum deposits.
We should be able to get at least ten units with a day's work.
We'll split the spoils evenly.
That's more than 15 yen in a day!
That's worth way more than hunting brown bears.
That's exactly why people stopped hunting and sullied the rivers by prospecting.
Master Heita, we are in your hands.
That tobacco pouch is Ainu, isn't it?
Oh, this?
I used to go prospecting with some Ainu people.
One of them gave it to me as a gift.
I see. Is that why you know what a wenkamuy is?
They told me about the wenkamuy when I was a kid.
I was too afraid even to sleep!
I was so, so, so scared.
I wet the bed every night.
Poor little Heita.
I was so, so, so, so scared…
We've heard of the wenkamuy as well.
We heard that it's been attacking gold prospectors in the Uryu River.
Never fear!
We come with a specially trained brown bear hunter,
so you can focus entirely on prospecting for gold!
You said it was getting closer?
How long has it been loitering around for?
For years.
Are you drawing?
Having fun?
Say, could you draw me as well?
Draw… me?
Come this way.
It's cold. You should come inside.
Come in.
Do it good.
Do you like my body?
There it is again!
I thought I threw that away!
Noriko! What are you doing?
But it's so boring out here.
That doesn't mean you can act like this! You've only just met the man!
I'm not interested in him.
All I wanted was to have my beauty endure on paper.
All I ever do is wait for you to find gold.
I'll become an old woman soon enough…
I'm sorry.
It's okay. It won't be much longer now.
Once I've found enough haku,
we'll settle down in Tokyo with a business.
Hey, where's Master Heita?
Did he go off on his own?
That's not a good idea with a man-eating bear on the loose.
Asirpa! Master Heita's missing!
Can you go look for him?
If the bear gets him, we'll lose out on the gold!
That's if there really is a bear.
Hey, you.
This way. Come here.
Can you see it?
Over there on the fungus,
aren't they your binoculars?
Maybe Noriko's trying to play a prank on you.
An amappo. That was close.
You can tell where an amappo is used by signs such as scraped tree trunks.
You should learn the signs, Zukin-chan.
I wonder if someone set it up to catch deer.
Brown bears are usually hibernating in their dens by now.
I've searched beyond where Heita says he saw the bear,
but I couldn't find a single trace of a matakarip not in its den.
Why is Heita lying about a bear?
Hey, Sugimoto, what's that?
Asirpa! The bear's here!
We saw it!
Master Heita was right. It's close by!
We have to protect Master Heita from the wenkamuy!
That's weird.
It was definitely around here.
Stop walking around!
I won't be able to tell your steps from the bear's!
There's no way a bear could be here without leaving any tracks.
Right.
I'll kill the bear, so Shiraishi, you go find Master Heita.
Take Zukin-chan with you.
Got it.
Father, Jirou…
Namu Amida Butsu…
A prayer?
Namu Amida Butsu…
-Are you okay? -Heita!
Taka… Taka is…
Stop it!
I'm sorry!
Please don't tell Taka! He'll hit me again…
This is Noriko's fault!
Master Heita! What's wrong? Did you see the bear?
I have to get out of here!
I have to run, or I'm next!
It's okay. You're with us now. We'll protect you.
Where did the bear go?
You can't protect me!
It's going to get me.
You have to get as far away from me as you can!
What do you mean?
Father, Jirou, Taka-- It got them all.
Zukin-chan, can you come over here?
It even got Noriko…
It's all my fault.
I led the wenkamuy to them.
Master Heita,
who are you talking about?
Noriko! Go back inside.
Oh, my. What an odd group of people.
Do you like my body?
That there by your feet, Heita.
It's a bear pelt, isn't it?
When did that get here?
When did it get here?
You've been holding on to it with great care all this time.
No! I threw it away so many times!
I've burned it, thrown it in the river, so why does it keep coming back to me?
The bear that Sugimoto and Shiraishi saw--
Could it have been this bear pelt?
Quickly! Everyone run!
I think Heita's wenkamuy…
lives inside his head.
Master Heita! What's wrong?
Heita Matsuda, convicted prisoner on death row at Abashiri Prison.
Oh, yeah. That guy. I remember him well.
He had this weird habit of changing the way he speaks.
Sometimes he'd start acting like he thought he was some hot babe.
Man, he was creepy!
He shared something with me this one time.
He said, "I've got a bunch of different people inside of me."
And he would harp on
about being terrified of a bear roaming around outside the cells.
It's there. It's right outside.
A something-kamuy, he called it.
Some kind of evil, man-eating god.
Wenkamuy.
Yeah, a wenkamuy.
He said it attacked and ate the people in his head one by one.
It saves me for last. Then it takes over my body.
Then I attack someone else.
I have to kill, or else it won't stop.
Then once I've killed them,
my body explodes into chunks of flesh, and they fly off into the mountains.
And then I go back to normal.
That's how it goes. Over and over again.
Where I'm from, when we kill a wenkamuy, we don't take its meat or its pelt.
We chop it up and scatter it in the mountains.
That must be what he's talking about.
The wenkamuy controls me.
It conspires to make me break out of here.
Look at this!
I've got tattoos on my body all of a sudden!
We all thought he was just making it up.
The records from the trial where Heita Matsuda was sentenced to death
say that he wore a bear pelt
and tore apart his victims' bodies to get to the flesh…
Heita Matsuda, the Brown Bear Man.
If what he says is true,
he's probably out there somewhere doing it all over again.
Sugimoto!
This guy's Herculean!
Good. The wenkamuy is growing weak.
Now I can…
Sugimoto! Are you all right?
I did it.
I got him.
This is the same place.
I lured him here so that he wouldn't notice.
We gotta get that arrow out!
Can you do anything, Asirpa?
It's all right. Leave me be.
I've been afraid of the wenkamuy
ever since that Ainu told me as a child.
It's haunted me ever since.
I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into prospecting for gold,
but my family squandered the money in a single day.
They were blinded by greed and gold.
I wanted them to be punished.
One day, I found the leftovers from a bear's kill.
I took it home and hid it where everyone was sleeping.
An Ainu hunter killed the bear that killed my family before it ate me
and scattered its remains around the mountain.
The wenkamuy kept coming back after that
as a punishment for my family.
Then it punished me for being too greedy.
I fell to the wenkamuy and attacked innocent people.
I wanted somebody to stop me.
You fought against me, Sugimoto,
so the wenkamuy inside me can finally disappear.
Where I'm from, when someone is killed by a wenkamuy,
we say the kamuy took them from us because they liked them.
We don't believe wenkamuy kill to punish.
He must have only heard part of the Ainu story.
And so a distorted wenkamuy grew inside his head.
It's so important to pass our stories on properly.
Was it his lust for gold that sent him hurtling over the edge?
Does gold even have that power?
Don't die, Master Heita!
You gotta tell us where to pan next!
Master Heita!
Next episode: Complicity.