Prince's homemade stun device

Prince's homemade stun device is a crudely assembled electrical weapon that makes the Prince's rule over schoolchildren tangible and later enables him to incapacitate Kimura aboard the Shinkansen. Its resemblance to an ordinary appliance initially disguises its purpose; once understood, it becomes evidence of a system in which electric shocks help make resistance seem impossible.

Appearance and Construction

When Wataru takes the device from a bag, it looks low-tech, like a remote control for a toy car, with wires and switches. Kimura recognizes a resemblance to a model-train power pack, an impression reinforced by the dangling power cord and the wires protruding from the device. One end is taped. The object is not a sophisticated weapon: its improvised appearance makes its intended use seem all the more unsettling.

Kimura notices an electrical outlet low on the wall of a gas station and works out how the contraption is meant to be used. He concludes that someone would plug it in and press its wires against a person's body to deliver a shock. The schoolchildren do not answer when he asks whether this happens often, but the device looks purpose-built for the task. Kimura suspects it has been used regularly and identifies the Prince as the likely source of the idea. The evidence establishes his inference, rather than providing a record of how many times the device was used.

Intended Use Against a Child

Kimura's discovery connects the object to the Prince's treatment of children. The Prince later says that he wanted to test the effect of high-voltage shock on a young child. He points to the device in his backpack and explains that Kimura's intervention spoiled the planned experiment. The account makes the weapon more than an instrument of ordinary schoolyard intimidation: it was intended as a means of testing what electrical punishment would do to a child.

The device's appearance and purpose mark a contrast in Kimura's understanding of bullying. He recalls having hurt people when he was at school, but says he had not thought of using electricity. To him, the modified appliance represents a more severe form of abuse, approaching torture. His response focuses not only on the Prince's intention but also on how the threat might shape the pupils' behavior.

Fear and Learned Helplessness

Kimura interprets the children's apparent inability to oppose the Prince through the idea of learned helplessness. He remembers a kidnapped man he once guarded who was not physically restrained, yet did not try to leave; another guard explained that repeated, unavoidable shocks had taught an experimental dog not to attempt escape, even when escape became possible. Kimura connects that account to people who endure repeated violence and come to believe that they cannot change their circumstances.

He sees a similar pattern among the schoolchildren. They have witnessed classmates and adults suffer at the Prince's hands, and he considers the electric shocks part of the process by which their sense of powerlessness has taken root. The device therefore has an effect beyond any single use: its threatened or actual shocks contribute to an environment in which pupils anticipate punishment and do not imagine successfully challenging the person who controls them.

A later scene reinforces this atmosphere without identifying the device itself as the instrument used there. Kimura sees pupils preparing a different electrical experiment involving defibrillator pads, while Tomoyasu and his dog, Takeshi, are bound together. The students' fear of the Prince turns suspicion toward one another; Kimura compares this distrust with the mutual suspicion he had heard about in Terahara's organization. The episode extends the pattern associated with electrical punishment, but the evidence distinguishes the pads from the homemade device.

Use Against Kimura and Significance

Aboard the Shinkansen, the Prince uses the device against Kimura. As Kimura approaches, the Prince turns and presses it against Kimura's thigh. Kimura first mistakes the resulting sensation for an electrical fault on the train, then loses consciousness. When he wakes, he is seated by the window with his hands and ankles bound. The weapon has changed the immediate balance between them: Kimura came intending to confront the Prince, but the Prince anticipated him and rendered him unable to move freely.

The Prince later produces the homemade taser from his backpack and makes clear that he expected Kimura to come for him. The recurrence is significant: the same kind of improvised electrical weapon associated with the Prince's intended experiment on a child is now used to defeat an adult who had intervened against him. Its simple, portable form carries the Prince's methods from the school setting onto the train. What first appeared to Kimura as an odd power pack proves to be an instrument through which the Prince turns electrical control into both direct incapacitation and a wider discipline of fear.