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YAMATO DAMASHII.

THE SPIRIT OF THE JAPANESE SOLDIER.

Full well I knew that this must end in death

It was the Yamato spirit urged me on

To do what e'er betide.

-Yoshida Shoyen, on the day before his execution. URING the last decade the soldiers of Japan have taken part in three wars and have shown themselves to be fighters of almost unexampled brilliancy, possessing traits that are seldom seen in combination. They display the most reckless daring, yet in the most trying moments a willing obedience to orders. Death to them seems to have lost its terrors. In the Boxer campaign, the allied armies lay before a certain walled city into which, in the absence of artillery, they were unable to force their way. Every ruse had failed, yet the Japanese commander promised to make the breach. Under his orders a corporal and three men, carrying dynamite, managed to reach a sheltered spot under the masonry. There they set off the charge by hand and were scattered to the four winds of Heaven by the blast, throwing away their lives to insure immediate and certain success. Many a young Japanese "dons the white kimono," thereby avowing his intention on the battlefield to dedicate his life for the cause of his country. This attitude of sacrifice is entirely at variance with western ideas, and it is interesting to note the conditions that have evolved a point of view so different from our own.

The cause of a man's attitude on most questions is hard of access; likewise this essence of the warrior's existence, yamato-damashii-the spirit of Old Japan--had its springs hidden deep down below the surface of the nation's life. Many diverse forces contributed to its growth. Shinto in that it developed patriotism; feudalism in that it trained a fighting class; and the social revolution of the last half century in that it gave to the nation unity, awakening forces

long dormant; these three may be considered as the most important sources for the spirit of the modern Japanese soldier.

Shinto, the only religion the Japanese developed by themselves, according to Inazo Ni-obe taught three things: loyalty to sovereign, reverence for the ancestors' memory, and filial piety. The individual is of little importance except as a unit in the family. A son obeys his father, the father the daimyo, the daimyo the shogun, and the shogun the Mikado, while the Son of Heaven is always conscious of the presence of his divine ancestors. Through the first of these enumerated above, loyalty to the sovereign, was expressed love of country. The two are synonymous in the public mind. Shinto teaches that it is a privilege for the Japanese soldier to die for his sovereign and country, and as the great historian Chickafusa has said, "Let no one suppose for a moment that there is any credit due to him for doing so." A few years ago the present Czar of Russia, then a Prince, while travelling in Japan, was attacked by a fanatic. The mortification of the Mikado and the nation was overwhelming. One girl of Northern Japan felt more deeply than most the insult to the Son of Heaven and his people. Putting on her gala day kimono, she went to the Kioto, had her hair dressed, and in the evening went quietly to the gate of the palace and there, hoping by her death to atone for the insult to the hospitality of the Son of Heaven and his people, committed suicide. The assumption of responsibility for the action of a fellow countryman, the desire to expiate an insult to Dai Nippon (great Japan), and the idea of making amends by a direct sacrifice of life to the Emperor himself, all are typical of the religion of loyalty. Besides the devotion to the Emperor and his ancestors, Shinto also teaches that the same devotion is due to the head of the family and the family ancestors. To them an honorable action is especially pleasing. The name of every soldier that dies on the battlefield is recorded in the temple of Shokonsha in Tokio, and twice a year the Emperor and all his court

hold a high festival of prayer for the souls of the departed warriors. A father feels that the loss of his son is compensated by the inscription of the family name among the famous dead, and the son knows that the honor of long generations reposes in his hands. This tendency to make heroes of great warriors is carried to an extent absolutely unknown in the West. Mr. Griffis tells us that the grave of Nitta Yoshisado, a great general and hero of old time, five and a half centuries after his death in battle was daily strewn with flowers. Thus Shinto, although until quite lately almost superceded and absorbed by Buddhism, has had an immense influence on the spirit of the Japanese from the country girl to the soldier at the front. It has preserved a line of emperors intact for twenty-six centuries; it has made these rulers the godhead of the nation; it has deified their heroes, handing down their reputation from generation to generation as a pattern to the youth of the land; in truth, it has fostered a spirit of patriotism incomparable in intensity to any that exists on the earth to-day.

But it is more than mere willingness to sacrifice life that has characterized the conduct of the fighters of Japan. They have shown the influence of high standard of fighting ability set by the samurai, those men who had been brought up under the feudal system. Japan of sixty years ago has been compared to Europe in the fifteenth century. Two million samurai, or knights, dominated thirty-eight million farmers, artisans and merchants. Feudalism first began to take form after the defeat of the Taira clan by Yoritomo at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Like the same institution in Europe, its birth was a signal for a long period of bloodshed. The country was torn by the attempt of one clan after another to obtain possession of the person of the Emperor, from whom emanated the supreme authority. However, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, under the strong hand of the Shogun Ieyasu, the turmoil ceased and feudalism was crystallized. In four centuries of almost continual warfare Japan had developed a fierce and warlike

nobility. Their power was paramount and, unlike that of the European barons, was disturbed by no peasant revolutions. "As among the flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang the populace. The samurai had the right to cut down at his pleasure one of the lower class should he be offended by even a breach of etiquette, but in turn he was subject to a discipline that makes the Spartan régime seem futile. As a boy he was raised to deeds of arms, obedience and self-control. His mother hushed his baby cries as she told him of the courage necessary to commit Hara-Kiri. As soon as he could walk he was given the two swords, katana and wakizashi, symbolical of Loyalty and Honor. In the words of Ieyasu, "A girded sword is the living soul of a samurai.” When he became older he was sent on black nights to graveyards, haunted houses and execution grounds, and made to spend the dark hours beneath the creaking chains of the gallows. He was half starved, and we are told of the famished little Prince of Sendai, who says to his page, "Seest thou those sparrows in their nest . . . their mother comes with grain to feed them; how eagerly the little ones eat, but for a samurai when his stomach is empty it is a disgrace to feel hungry." As a man his first duty was to his daimyo, "for whose sake the retainer was bound not only to lay down his own life cheerfully, but to sacrifice the lives and honor of those nearest and dearest." "To rush into the thick of battle and be slain in it," says a Prince of Mito, "is easy enough, and the merest churl is equal to the task." The following story is an illustration of what was expected by the Prince. Michizane is an exile and his son's death is demanded by his enemies. The inspector to ratify the deed is one of the absent daimyo's old samurai. Imagine his horror when, instead of the expected victim, he recognizes the head of his only son, whose life had been taken to save that of the young Prince. But the iron self-control of his race enabled him to hide his grief, and he gravely accepted the ghastly evidences of execution. That night he returns home and greets his wife, "Rejoice

our darling boy has proved of service to his lord." Bushido, the moral code of the samurai, instilled this spirit of yamato-damashii even in the women. They were not only taught to ride and fence with the two-handed sword, but "like the women of Sparta to show signs of joy on hearing that their sons or husbands had fallen in battle.” Doubtless the lonely wife, on hearing of her boy's death for his lord, did her best to feel that there was cause for joy in the now silent house. Thus education, position and practice in warfare gave to the fighters of Japan the ability to make their yamato spirit of some avail in the coming social revolution. This matchless band of warriors, attached to their lords by bonds closer than that of man and wife, were naturally to have an immense influence on the warlike spirit of the nation.

But the samurai and the daimyos, the knights and barons of feudalism, were a small class. The people pursued the peaceful acts of manufacture and agriculture. It is to the social revolutions of the sixties and seventies that the great body of the Japanese largely owes its share of the martial spirit. Out of a warrior's class was to come a warrior's nation. With the revival of pure Shinto, the advent of the foreigner and foreign influence and the gradual decline and lapse into effeminacy of the dynasty of the Tokugawa Shogunate, founded by Ieyasu, again came bloody times for Japan. The Shogunate fell, and the Emperor, after nearly seven centuries of seclusion, again took his place before the people as the actual ruler of the nation. Once the change had been effected, the importance of the consequent events to the spirit of the Japanese cannot be overestimated. By one decree the Emperor annihilated feudalism, placing the Etas, or the lowest and most despised class in the empire, on the same basis as that of the samurai. One of the chief ministers of the nation paved the way by taking a seat in the public school beside the children of the despised, whose presence heretofore had been a pollution. The elevating influence of such a change on the lower class cannot be

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