Young Love

In Japan, the sovereign remedy for despair is suicide. Last week a young Japanese lover named Satoru Takayanagi, ill with tuberculosis, journeyed with his true love, Waitress Setsumi Endo, 59 miles south of Tokyo to the island of O Shima, site of famed "Suicide Point." As they climbed to the edge of the volcanic crater of Mount Mihara, they were met by a suspicious detective, who asked what was on their minds. "If you want to pry into our private lives," answered young Takayanagi, "get a warrant." When the detective had gone, the young lovers joined hands and leaped into the sulphurous cauldron where so many before them had met death.

Hours later a teahouse-keeper on the mountaintop heard cries for help and called the detective. With only damp towels as protection against the sulphur fumes, Detective Tomosaburo Suzuki and seven police volunteers began the rescue. Roped together, choking and almost blinded by the fumes, they let themselves down some 600 feet to an outcropping of rock on the very edge of the crater. The rock had broken the young couple's fall. There, covered with blood and bruises, her ankle smashed, but still unromantically alive, lay the little waitress Setsumi. Beside her, uninjured, was her impulsive lover.

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