Wordlessly, they led the bound girl up three steps onto the scaffold, still wet from the downpour an hour before. The damp wood creaked beneath her leather soles. Some people had gathered in front of it, maybe two dozen, dressed in Kimonos and Geta.

Josephine’s sandaled feet were ice cold in the fresh morning air. They did not need to force her, only one gently placed his hand between her shoulders. The silent crowd looked at her with serious faces, reverently, as if they were attending a church service.



In the center of the platform, the assistant signaled her with a brief pressure on the shoulder to go to her knees. Josephine obeyed and sank down trembling, holding herself on her knees and her toes, while the soles of her Waraji bent. The assistant’s hand touched her gently on the back of the head and made her lower her head slightly. He threw her blonde braid over her left shoulder, so that she offered the executioner her bare neck.



Three young women stood in the first row, in floral kimonos, their faces painted white, with blood-red lips and black accents around the eyes. They examined the girl kneeling before them, her blue eyes, her exotic blonde hair. Their eyes glittered, full of anticipation, as if they were waiting for a play. One could not suppress a grin and hid it behind her fan.



The quiet scraping of steel over wood behind her made her gasp. A moment later, a gentle splashing. The assistant carefully drizzled a few drops of water from a bamboo bottle over the length of the blade, which the executioner held out to him. Softly, the drops rolled down the blood groove. Then the swordsman turned toward the girl kneeling before him.



Josephine did not dare to move, but she saw some of the spectators synchronously lift their heads. Her breath came faster and faster in small clouds of mist as she felt the sword being raised above her neck.



Suddenly, the blade rushed down and slid through the nape of the young woman. Her head fell helplessly from her neck, hit the wooden boards with a dull thud, turned over once, and came to a stop.

Josephine stared with her mouth and eyes wide open at a headless body, still kneeling motionless before the executioner, blind, deaf, and mute, as if it had not yet understood that it was dead. She could not grasp what she saw. Her cleanly severed neck stump steamed in the cool morning air and pressed out thick jets of warm blood at rhythmic intervals, which poured over the wooden scaffold. Then the body began to twitch, its shoulders drew together, it lost balance and fell over to the left side.



Josephine saw the body drop to the side and all of a sudden she stared at the sandaled feet right in front of her face. Only when she recognized her golden toe ring on the right foot did she understand what had happened. Then her eyes wandered upward and she was gone.



The executioner bowed before her and the small group of spectators dispersed in silence. One of the women remained for a moment and watched how the red drops from the neck of the beheaded dripped through the boards of the scaffold. As if in a trance, she touched her own throat and smiled slightly.