Chapter 29 Section 5

Kozo Yamashita, this is the person we inquired about at Uehara Hospital. His home is located in a residential area with rolling hills.The road is well paved, but there is not much traffic.As such, it should be a good place to live.It's just that there is a distance from the station, and it's not easy to get a taxi. Once you miss the bus like a hero, you can only walk and sweat. Kozo Yamagami is said to be very close to Masari Uehara. After finally arriving at Yamagami's house, Yusaku puts on the suit he took off on the way, and rings the doorbell at the entrance.It was an antique house full of flowers and trees in the front yard.

A woman with an oval face and elegant temperament greeted me at the porch.Yusaku had already called to make an appointment, and as soon as he gave his name, the woman immediately invited him in with a smile on his face. "It's really embarrassing to make such an unfeeling request." Seeing Yong's regret, the woman shook her head with a smile on her face. "Since receiving the call from Mr. Criminal Police, my grandfather can hardly sit or stand. He is very happy to be able to talk about the past." "That's good." After walking a few steps along the corridor facing the backyard, the woman stopped in front of the second room and announced Yusaku's arrival through the sliding paper door.

A hearty voice came: "Please come in." "excuse me." "Oh, hello hello." Kosan Yamagami looks like an aging literary youth.He wore gold-rimmed glasses and his thinning white hair was brushed back. After Yusaku took out his business card and introduced himself again, he saw what looked like a photo album or an old diary spread out on the low table. "I heard that you wanted to ask about Uehara, so I dug this out of the closet. I haven't thought of him much recently, but looking at the old photos like this is still very nostalgic." "You and Mr. Uehara are classmates?"

"It has always been." The old man on the mountain narrowed his eyes, "We are partners in the pursuit of medical knowledge. However, our talents are completely different. He was born to study medicine. He was born in a family of doctors and was destined to be the heir of the hospital. The benefactors also sighed in vain." The old man turned the old photo album to Yusaku, pointing to a black and white photo pasted on the far left page.The yellowed photo shows two young men in white robes. "This is me, this is Uehara." The one on the left seems to be a mountain.Yong Zuo compares the photos with himself, and there is indeed a resemblance.

The old man smiled as if he understood his thoughts. "After all, it's almost sixty years ago." From his open mouth, Yusaku accidentally saw a mouthful of white teeth, probably all false teeth. "Actually, what I want to ask today is not so long ago." Yong Zuo decided to get to the point, "However, it was more than 30 years ago. You know that Mr. Uehara was once stationed in a company called Guaran Industry. stand?" "Gua Sheng Industry." The old man repeated it as if savoring every word carefully, and said, "You mean that he used to stay in the employee infirmary of that company?"

"It seems to be, I don't know too well." "Hmm..." The old man on the mountain crossed his arms, "I've heard about that incident, but I don't know much about it. In his later years, he once mentioned something casually." "Did you have little contact at the time?" "That's not true," Shan Shang blinked, "because I'm also very busy, and I don't have time to show concern for each other's work. But I remember, when I heard about that incident, I asked him why he obviously had a big room. Hospital, why go to do that kind of work? He seems to answer, because there are many things that cannot be done in the hospital.”

"It can't be done..." Yong Zuo wondered, what can't be done in a hospital, how can he be done in a company's medical station? "Speaking of which, Uehara Hospital was remodeled after that, right? From the original wooden house to a majestic building made of red bricks." The old man on the mountain seemed to be recalling the scene back then, his eyes squinted upwards, and he murmured: "That's right, that's right, that's true. He said that the next thing to do is to focus on the hospital. Before that, compared to Treating patients, he spent more energy on research."

"What kind of research?" "Cranial nerves." The old man said briskly, pointing to his head, "He wants to analyze human emotions or physiological phenomena from the signal system of the brain, which is almost his lifelong ambition, but unfortunately he was born too early .If only he was born in this era. Today's society not only agrees with that kind of research, but also has a considerable understanding of the brain. Did you know that humans have left and right brains?" "I still know this common sense." The old man nodded. "What about patients with brain separation? That is, patients with separation of the left and right brains."

"I don't know, is there such a person?" Yusaku asked in surprise. "There is a method of treating severe epilepsy patients, which involves surgically cutting off the corpus callosum that connects the left and right brains. We call such people divisive brain patients. Such people usually live the same life as ordinary people. So, what is the surgically removed corpus callosum? Why does it exist? After conducting various experiments on such people, the medical community now believes that there may be different consciousnesses in the right brain and left brain.” "Really? I don't know about that." Yong put his hands on his head.

"It's useless for ordinary people to know this kind of thing. Anyway, this kind of theory has only appeared in the past twenty years, and it is quite shocking. In fact, Uehara put forward this hypothesis when he was a student. Unfortunately, he has no place to experiment. " "What research results does Mr. Uehara have?" Yusaku asked because he thought of something. The old man on the mountain groaned. "As I said earlier, it was a time of scarce resources, and I don't remember him having any impressive research. Of course, he did a good job. He once implanted electrodes in the brains of rats, Investigate the brain's response to electrical stimulation..." Shan Shang patted his knee, and said, "He once said that he did a lot of interesting things while staying in the nursing home, because there are all kinds of patients there."

"nursing home?" "National Suwa Sanatorium. A sanatorium established in Showa 16 (1941) that only accommodated wounded soldiers with head injuries, allowing them to receive professional medical care and develop employability. In that At the same time that the sanatorium was established, Uehara received a duty order and worked there for several years.” "But, the purpose there is to treat patients, right? It really can't be associated with research..." Shan Shang smiled and shook his head. "That's not the case. War will produce patients beyond imagination. Although they are all head injuries, everyone's situation is different. Even those who have been engaged in brain surgery for many years often encounter strange cases. Uehara wrote me a letter saying that there is a treasure trove of research objects.” Yuzuo nodded, that's why. "Any significant results?" "Whether the results are big or small, he has benefited a lot. He once told me that he has rediscovered the greatness of human life. After all, all he sees every day is a gunshot wound in the head, trying to survive. patients. The idiosyncratic reactions and symptoms they exhibited go a long way toward explaining brain function.” Speaking of this, as if thinking of something, he picked up an envelope from the documents on the low table, pulled out the letter paper from it, and spread it out in front of Yusaku, only to see beautiful words written on it with a black pen. "It's written here, right?" By the way, I found a more interesting thing from the patient mentioned earlier, the electrical stimulation will bring unexpected effects. Regarding this point, further investigation is required, and it may be an epoch-making event. Discovery.’ This was the last letter Uehara sent me from the nursing home. After World War II ended, we didn’t have time to write to each other.” "What happened to this epoch-making discovery?" Yusaku asked, turning his gaze from the letter paper to the old man. "It seems to have been published, but it has hardly received any attention. There were many such cases in those years. He also let me read the paper. Because of insufficient information, it gave the impression that it was not convincing. I hardly remember the content. Looking at it now, maybe it is a great research." The old man on the mountain replied a little shyly. Yusaku asked about the relationship between Masari Uehara and Kazuaki Kazuo, the founder of Kuso Industry.The old man widened his eyes and said, "I don't know. After all, our fields of expertise are far apart." "Too." Yong Zuo heard some old stories from the old man again, then took his leave and left.When walking down the steep slope, he looked back at the old house. The field of expertise is miles and miles apart... is it? Yusaku remembered what the old man had said.As it should be, but... just some people don't think so, don't they? A hypothesis gradually took shape in Yusaku's mind.