Talk:The Weathered Head at Onigashima/@comment-4698889-20151204224549/@comment-4698889-20151205032210

Sorry, I replied in a hurry. What I get from samurai movies is that writing takes a long time, and during a crisis, people tend to inform each other through word of mouth. When the Mirokus were mysteriously murdered, it wasn't the first instinct of the Enbizaka townspeople to write it all down. They needed to tell each other, and that's where the hysteria started. That hysteria snowballed and escalated until all out chaos broke out.

But then there was an investigation. Someone or a group of people decided to look into the issue. They figured out it was Kayo. And they had to kill her to stop more violence from happening.

Because that's the thing. Riliane was free, but the masses needed to see bloodshed, which is why Allen took her place. In the same way, Kayo may have been pitiful, and may have not even knew what she was doing, but a public execution was the only way to end the madness. Because when you're acting on fear, you're not acting rationally. So someone had to decide to sacrifice Kayo for the sake of everyone else.

The execution took place on a hill. I imagine that Kayo looked at the faces of the people she grew up around, puzzled as to why they're staring at her. And then when she gets to the top of the hill, she sees Len pull out a sword and tell her that he's going to kill her. It doesn't sink in yet, because Kayo always pretends everything is normal.

Kayo's head was on display on a hill in the middle of the island for a reason. It's as if to say, there was a tragedy here. And someone had to pay the price. So enter someone who's never been there before, Gakusha, wanting to know what happened. He asks around, since the incident is probably fresh in everyone's heads. Len tells him the story of Kayo.