“An eye for an eye”

“An eye for an eye” is a contested principle in the novel’s debate over capital punishment: Kido interprets it as a limit on retaliation, while Kawamura uses it to argue for the immediate execution of death-row prisoners. Their exchange distinguishes proportional punishment from vengeance and leads into Kido’s insistence that the state must not answer murder with another killing.

Meaning in the Punishment Debate

Kido explains that Japan’s approach to punishment is based on proportional retributivism rather than absolute retributivism. The familiar expression “an eye for an eye,” he argues, is not permission for retaliation to expand with anger; it is a precept for keeping punishment from exceeding the original harm. In modern penology, bodily retaliation has given way to restrictions on freedom, calibrated to the severity of the crime. If a victim is blinded, the offender is not blinded in turn: the victim’s loss cannot be undone by reproducing it as punishment.

Kido sees the death penalty as incompatible with that reasoning. It is corporal punishment, he argues, and cannot be treated as a harmless exception to a system that otherwise punishes by restricting freedom. His explanation separates recognition of a victim’s suffering from the claim that the state should reproduce that suffering through punishment.

Kawamura’s Retaliatory Reading

Kawamura rejects the distinction Kido draws. He agrees that death-row prisoners should be executed immediately, describing every additional second they live as a luxury in relation to murdered victims. His response turns the principle from a restraint on retaliation into an argument for more severe punishment, exposing the emotional conflict Kido had hoped the discussion would address without losing sight of victims.

Kido had already been troubled that no one in the abolition movement had mentioned the victims. He thought the audience should have raised the omission and planned to tell Sugino afterward; that gap was among the reasons he hesitated to become actively involved. His concern does not bring him closer to Kawamura’s conclusion. Instead, he supports the condemned person’s right to create art while proposing that advocates for victims organize an exhibition of their own, so citizens can encounter both bodies of work and decide for themselves.

From Retribution to State Responsibility

The expression’s moral stakes return in Kido’s conversation with Kaori. She presses him to say whether the murderer should be executed if the victims were her and Sota. Kido answers that eradicating the evil of murder requires rejecting the idea that killing becomes acceptable in extreme cases. He holds offenders responsible and says they will not be forgiven, but also argues that the state must accept responsibility for the social conditions underlying crime and provide substantial support to victims rather than pandering to punitive feeling.

Kaori responds with anger and disappointment, and the conversation stops before it can cause an irreversible break in their relationship. The exchange leaves the question unresolved between them, but clarifies Kido’s position: acknowledging victims does not, for him, require endorsing state execution. The expression “an eye for an eye” marks precisely the boundary he wants punishment to observe—the boundary between recognizing harm and repeating it.