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Taijiro Chiuzi is the overarching antagonist of the Akimitsu Takagi novel The Noh Mask Murder. Taijiro was the ruthless patriarch of the Chiuzi family, who tore apart his brother Soichiro's family lines to secure the family's name and estate.
Biography[]
Taijiro's brother, Professor Soichiro Chiuzi, was an affluent nuclear scientist who was sought after during World War 2. After the war's end, Soichiro retired to his mansion with children, Hisako and Kenkichi, while taking in a son of a childhood friend, Koichi Yanagi, to have a place to stay and manufacture confections in Soichiro's lab. To gain the family's entire inheritance, Taijiro killed Soichiro, first by hospitalizing him from a lab explosion, then injecting him with an air bubble. Taijiro then bribed the director of the Oka Asylum to forcibly commit Soichiro's widow Kayako, then deliberately decline her state of mind over the coming years. Taijiro and his family inherited everything. As for Soichiro's children, Kenkichi suffered a heart problem from his trauma, and after Taijiro's eldest son Rintaro raped Hisako, she also lost her mind from trauma. Taijiro as also possessive of his wife, who briefly retreated to a village when she had pleurisy and had an affair with an old flame, a painter. Although they sired a daughter, Sawako, Taijiro prevented his wife from divorcing him and taking custody of Sawako, and the painter committed suicide. Mrs. Chizui died after that.
Koichi returned from Burma, where he fought in the war, to find Soichiro's family devastated. Out for revenge, Koichi called his friend, retired engineer Akimitsu Takagi, to consult for Taijiro under the lie the patriarch wanted to hire him to find out who was scaring the family by running around the house with a cursed hennya mask, as Takagi always wanted to solve a mystery. Koichi had already killed him with an air bubble in a locked room, then employed Kenkichi to call and pose as Taijiro to alert them both to the mansion, where Taijiro was found dead. Kenkichi left the script behind, so Koichi tried to divert suspicion on the rest of the family as much as possible. During the investigation, he also killed Taijiro's other son Yojiro and Taijiro's mother Sonoe. By this point, Rintaro called Oka Asylum to have Kayako killed, which would eventually be discovered by investigators. After a brief suspicion Sawako was guilty, which in part came from Tsuru Matsumo, a former housekeeper for the family, confirming the affair, Sawako killed herself in a failed murder-suicide she wanted to pull Koichi into. Takagi realized Koichi was guilty and left the ultimate decision to arrest him or not to Hiroyuki Ishikari, a prosecutor and a family friend of Koichi's father. Ishikari let Koichi frame Rintaro for the murders, of which he was assisted by Kenkichi, who poisoned himself shortly thereafter. Ishikari, wanting to punish Rintaro as well, had poisoned his tea with cyanide, which Rintaro was written up as having committed suicide from. Ishikari confronted Koichi and, after Koichi confessed, promised him to not arrest him. Koichi still, after Hisako died as well, killed himself when he was alone in the Chizui mansion he set on fire. Ishikari would also kill himself and send all documented records and evidence to publish in his first mystery book.