Based on the provided text of Yusuke Kishi's novel From the New World (Shinsekai Yori), here is a detailed chronological summary focusing on the events and the moral lessons and quandaries they present from the perspective of the civilization.


A Detailed Summary of *From the New World*

The novel is framed as a memoir written by Saki Watanabe, a woman in her late thirties, looking back on the tumultuous events of her life. She writes this account for a future generation, a thousand years from her time, to serve as a warning and a historical record, questioning whether humanity can ever truly learn from its past mistakes.

Part 1: The Gilded Cage of Kamisu 66

The story begins in a seemingly utopian future, a thousand years from our time, in a town called Kamisu 66. Humanity has developed psychic powers known as "Juryoku" (Cantus), which allows them to manipulate matter with their minds. Society is agrarian, peaceful, and deeply rooted in tradition and religious rituals. The town is protected by a sacred boundary rope called the Hacchoujime, which children are forbidden to cross for fear of monsters and evil spirits.

The Moral Foundation of a Fragile Peace:
The children of Kamisu 66 are raised on cautionary tales of the "Akki" (Fiends) and "Gouma" (Karma Demons)—psychics who lost control and brought about catastrophic destruction. These stories serve as a powerful tool for social control, instilling a deep-seated fear of misusing one's Juryoku.

Saki and her close-knit group of friends—the intelligent and gifted Shun, the rebellious Satoru, the beautiful and charismatic Maria, and the timid Mamoru—live a happy childhood. However, cracks in this idyllic world soon appear. Saki notices that some children from their school, the Harmony School (Waki-en), simply disappear. The unspoken truth, which she later understands, is that children who show signs of instability or an inability to control their Juryoku are "disposed of" by the adults.

  • Moral Quandary 1: The Price of Stability. From the adults' perspective, this culling is a terrible but necessary sacrifice. The memory of the "Dark Ages," when psychics nearly destroyed the world, is so profound that the potential rise of even one Akki or Gouma is considered an existential threat. The lives of a few "problematic" children are deemed a justifiable price to pay for the survival and peace of the entire community. This establishes the core moral conflict: the suppression of the individual for the perceived good of the collective.

Saki's own Juryoku awakens late, causing her and her parents immense anxiety. Her awakening is a chaotic, poltergeist-like event. She then undergoes an intense initiation ceremony where a monk, Mushin, psychologically torments her to instill empathy and then uses hypnotic suggestion to "seal" and "re-grant" her power with a personal mantra. This reveals that their psychic abilities are not just innate but are controlled by deep psychological conditioning.

Part 2: The Truth of the Past

At the age of 12, Saki's group embarks on a summer camping trip, their first unsupervised journey outside the Hacchoujime. They encounter a "Minoshiromodoki" (False Minoshiro), which reveals itself to be a self-propelled library archive from the previous scientific civilization. This machine imparts two devastating truths:

  1. The Dark Ages: The first psychics (0.3% of the population) used their powers to dominate, enslave, and slaughter non-psychics, leading to centuries of global warfare and the collapse of civilization. Power, the group learns, corrupts absolutely.
  2. The Genetic Chains: To prevent this from ever happening again, the founders of their new society genetically engineered humanity. They installed two fundamental biological safeguards:
    • Attack Inhibition: An unbreakable psychological block that prevents a human from consciously attacking another human.
    • Death Feedback (Kishi): If a psychic does manage to kill a human, a psychosomatic reaction triggers their own death (e.g., heart failure).
  • Moral Quandary 2: Freedom vs. Enforced Peace. This revelation shatters their worldview. Their peace is not a result of moral superiority but of a biological prison. They are incapable of violence against each other, not unwilling. This raises the question of whether a peace built on the removal of free will is true peace at all. For the founders of their society, the horrors of the Dark Ages made this choice not just justifiable, but essential for survival.

Part 3: The Unraveling of the Present

The group's world continues to unravel. They learn that the creatures they know as "Bakenezumi" (Monster Rats) are not simple beasts. Saki and her friends save a Bakenezumi named Squealer from a rival colony and are shocked to discover they possess a complex, hierarchical society, advanced language, and strategic warfare capabilities mirroring human history.

Tragedy strikes when Shun begins to show signs of becoming a Gouma. His Juryoku leaks uncontrollably from his subconscious, warping the world around him into a beautiful but terrifying landscape of nightmares. He realizes he is a danger to everyone and, in a heartbreaking act of self-sacrifice, takes his own life to protect his friends and the town. His death is a direct consequence of the society's inability to handle anything that deviates from the norm.

Part 4: The Truth of the Bakenezumi

Two years later, Mamoru, fearing he will be "disposed of" for his anxiety and perceived weakness, flees the village with Maria. Saki and Satoru's search for them leads them back to Squealer, who has now become the leader of his colony, Yakomaru. He betrays them, and in captivity, they learn the final, most horrific truth of their society from a captured rival Bakenezumi general, Kiroumaru.

The Bakenezumi are the descendants of the non-psychic humans from the ancient world. The psychic founders, unable to kill the non-psychics due to Death Feedback, used their powers to genetically alter them. By splicing their DNA with that of naked mole-rats, they transformed them into a subservient, physically distinct species that would no longer trigger the Attack Inhibition/Death Feedback mechanisms. The creatures they have used as slaves and dismissed as monsters are, in fact, their own kin.

  • Moral Quandary 3: The Definition of Humanity and the Sin of the Founders. This is the ultimate moral abyss. Their entire civilization is built on an act of unimaginable cruelty and dehumanization. Squealer's rebellion is not the uprising of a monster but a slave revolt—a desperate fight for freedom and dignity against the "gods" who created and oppressed his people. His actions, though brutal, are cast in the tragic light of a freedom fighter.

Part 5: The Final War and the Messiah

Twelve years later, Saki and Satoru are adults working for the town. Squealer (Yakomaru) returns, leading a massive Bakenezumi army. His ultimate weapon is a human child he refers to as the "Messiah"—the offspring of Maria and Mamoru. Because the child was raised by Bakenezumi, it identifies as one of them. It possesses immense Juryoku but lacks any Attack Inhibition or Death Feedback towards humans, whom it perceives as the enemy. It is a perfect, unstoppable Akki.

The war is devastating. The humans are powerless, as they cannot attack the child without triggering their own Death Feedback. The town's greatest psychics, including the powerful Kaburagi Shisei, are killed. In a last desperate act, the town's leaders task Saki and Satoru with retrieving the "Psycho-Buster," an ancient biological weapon (a strain of anthrax) capable of killing the child.

In the final confrontation, Saki faces the child. Seeing the face of her lost friends in the innocent, manipulated boy, she cannot allow Satoru to use the weapon and destroys it with her own Juryoku. Just as all seems lost, the Bakenezumi general Kiroumaru makes the ultimate sacrifice. He allows the child to kill him. Believing it has killed a fellow Bakenezumi, the child's own Death Feedback is triggered, and it dies. The war ends.

Conclusion: The Burden of Knowledge

The war is over, and the Bakenezumi rebellion is crushed. Squealer is captured and, in a mock trial, makes a final, defiant cry: "We are human!" He is sentenced to an eternity of pain, but Saki, now a leader in the community, secretly euthanizes him out of a sense of shared humanity and mercy.

In her epilogue, Saki, now married to Satoru and expecting their first child, reflects on the lessons learned. The greatest threat was never the Akki, the Gouma, or the Bakenezumi. It was humanity's own fear, which led them to create a system of oppression, genetic manipulation, and the elimination of those who are different. She ends her memoir with the hope that future generations, armed with this terrible knowledge, can finally break the cycle. The final, enduring moral lesson of the story is encapsulated in a motto from her school: "Imagination is what changes everything." It is the power to empathize, to see oneself in the "other," that holds the only true hope for a better world.

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Pub: 10 Jul 2025 18:03 UTC

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