Kobe, June 9.
Last year, while traveling from Shimonoseki to the capital, I saw
many regiments on their way to the seat of war, all uniformed in
white, for the hot season was not yet over. Those soldiers looked
so much like students whom I had taught (thousands, indeed, were
really fresh from school) that I could not help feeling it was
cruel to send such youths to battle. The boyish faces were so
frank, so cheerful, so seemingly innocent of the greater sorrows
of life! "Don't fear for them," said an English fellow-traveler,
a man who had passed his life in camps; "they will give a
splendid account of themselves."
"I know it," was my answer; "but I am thinking of fever and frost and
Manchurian winter: these are more to be feared than Chinese rifles(1)."
The calling of the bugles, gathering the men together after dark,
or signaling the hour of rest, had for years been one of the
pleasures of my summer evenings in a Japanese garrison town. But
during the months of war, those long, plaintive notes of the last
call touched me in another way. I do not know that the melody is
peculiar; but it was sometimes played, I used to think, with
peculiar feeling; and when uttered to the starlight by all the
bugles of a division at once, the multitudinously blending tones
had a melancholy sweetness never to be forgotten. And I would
dream of phantom buglers, summoning the youth and strength of
hosts to the shadowy silence of perpetual rest.
Well, to-day I went to see some of the regiments return. Arches
of greenery had been erected over the street they were to pass
through, leading from Kobe station to Nanko-San,--the great
temple dedicated to the hero spirit of Kusunoki Masashige. The
citizens had subscribed six thousand yen for the honor of serving
the soldiers with the first meal after their return; and many
battalions had already received such kindly welcome. The sheds
under which they ate in the court of the temple had been
decorated with flags and festoons; and there were gifts for all
the troops,--sweetmeats, and packages of cigarettes, and little
towels printed with poems in praise of valor. Before the gate of
the temple a really handsome triumphal arch had been erected,
bearing on each of its facades a phrase of welcome in Chinese
text of gold, and on its summit a terrestrial globe surmounted by
a hawk with outspread pinions(2).
I waited first, with Manyemon, before the station, which is very
near the temple. The train arrived; a military sentry ordered all
spectators to quit the platform, and outside, in the street,
police kept back the crowd, and stopped all traffic. After a few
minutes, the battalions came, marching in regular column through
the brick archway,--headed by a gray officer, who limped slightly
as he walked, smoking a cigarette. The crowd thickened about us,
but there was no cheering, not even speaking,--a hush broken only
by the measured tramp of the passing troops. I could scarcely
believe those were the same men I had seen going to the war; only
the numbers on the shoulder-straps assured me of the fact.
Sunburnt and grim the faces were; many had heavy beards. The dark
blue winter uniforms were frayed and torn, the shoes worn into
shapelessness; but the strong, swinging stride was the stride of
the hardened soldier. Lads no longer these, but toughened men,
able to face any troops in the world; men who had slaughtered and
stormed; men who had also suffered many things which never will
be written. The features showed neither joy nor pride; the
quick-searching eyes hardly glanced at the welcoming flags, the
decorations, the arch with its globe-shadowing hawk of battle,
--perhaps because those eyes had seen too often the things which
make men serious. (Only one man smiled as he passed; and I
thought of a smile seen on the face of a Zouave when I was a boy,
watching the return of a regiment from Africa,--a mocking smile,
that stabbed.) Many of the spectators were visibly affected,
feeling the reason of the change. But, for that, the soldiers
were better soldiers now; and they were going to find welcome,
and comforts, and gifts, and the great warm love of the
people,--and repose thereafter, in their old familiar camps.
I said to Manyemon: "This evening they will be in Osaka and
Nagoya. They will hear the bugles calling; and they will think of
comrades who never can return."
The old man answered, with simple earnestness: "Perhaps by
Western people it is thought that the dead never return. But we
cannot so think. There are no Japanese dead who do not return.
There are none who do not know the way. From China and from
Chosen, and out of the bitter sea, all our dead have come
back,--all! They are with us now. In every dusk they gather to
hear the bugles that called them home. And they will hear them
also in that day when the armies of the Son of Heaven shall be
summoned against Russia."
(1) The total number of Japanese actually killed in battle, from
the fight at A-san to the capture of the Pescadores, was only
739. But the deaths resulting from other causes, up to as late a
date as the 8th of June, during the occupation of Formosa, were
3,148. Of these, 1,602 were due to cholera alone. Such, at least,
were the official figures as published in the Kobe Chronicle.
(2) At the close of the great naval engagement of the 17th of
September, 1894, a hawk alighted on the fighting-mast of the
Japanese cruiser Takachiho, and suffered itself to be taken and
fed. After much petting, this bird of good omen was presented to
the Emperor. Falconry was a great feudal sport in Japan, and
hawks were finely trained. The hawk is now likely to become, more
than ever before in Japan, a symbol of victory.