Japanese naval officers, like as they are to European ones in many
characteristics, are yet of a more distinct class by themselves than
any other body of men in the world. The likeness to European officers
is superficial, a first impression; the real Japanese officer is not to
be known or understood at a casual glance; he needs knowing.
Whether the Western brain can ever get to truly comprehend the Oriental
is a favourite question, usually answered in the negative. But, true as
the negative may be in a general way, it is only true to that extent.
Sea service marks all its votaries as a class apart; and additionally
apart as the Japanese may be by race, they are not more so than
Russians or Frenchmen. It is just as easy or just as impossible to
“bottom” a Japanese as a Russian. Still, Japanese officers as a class
are, as before stated, a unique class.
Their primary and principal characteristic is that they are utterly
different to the Japanese that we read about in books. Art books
tell us of Japanese art instinct, of their feeling for decorative
art, and so forth. Japanese artists may possess, or have possessed,
this feeling, but it is conspicuous for its absence in Japanese naval
officers, who are as “Philistine” as British officers—if possible, more
so. The decorative art that their nation is supposed to live for they
cordially despise. I have never heard one admire a picture for its
colour, but light and shade (that decorative art knows not) appeals
to many. Effects, action, motion, sentiment they will understand, but
abstract art, never. They are truly and healthily “Philistines.”
So much for art, which I have touched on because it is said to be,
over here, the keynote of Japanese character. Illustrated as a good
deal of this work is with Japanese drawings and photographs, selected
for the book by Japanese officers, this matter deserves mention apart
from the question of artistic influence on national life. We may
note, therefore, that “art-instinct” was the first thing flung behind
him by the Japanese when he “advanced.” If the so-called taking to
civilisation of the Japanese means anything, it means having abandoned
art for something more utilitarian and more forceful.
Some slight recapitulation is now necessary. When Japan, as the
saying goes, “adopted Western civilisation,” she did little but adopt
Western methods of war and business, and, in the strictly ethical
sense, discarded a good deal of civilisation rather than adopted it;
she abandoned all those forms of civilisation that have a decadent
tendency. Her advance was not the birth of a new empire with a new
civilisation, but the awakening of an old nation that for centuries had
been sleeping, steeped in ultra-civilisation. In this fact lies her
strength and her weakness.
A forgotten history was studied, and with that study slumbering
ambitions were revived. The man of action, relegated to the background
by ultra-civilisations,[30] again began to loom upon the stage.
Disputes with foreigners called him on to it; Japan awoke determined
to be again a nation. “Let us have intercourse with foreigners, learn
their drill and tactics, and ... we shall be able to go abroad and give
lands in foreign countries to those who have distinguished themselves
in battle,”—this sentiment every Japanese officer has imbibed with his
mother’s milk. The introduction of Western social institutions, such as
newspapers, railways, telegraphs, the new criminal code, the abolition
of torture as a punishment, all these things are side issues. They have
contributed to build commercial Japan; but they have had small part in
making her Navy; the Navy, indeed, would perhaps have been stronger
without them. The mechanical arts and _the food_[31] of the West, not
its social institutions, have made the new Japan an empire.
[30] The drift of ultra-civilisation is towards peace and the arts. The
man of action must embody something of the savage, and the seeker after
universal peace draws his chief recruits from the ranks of those who
supply those luxuries of life that civilisation makes into necessaries.
[31] See p. 310, where the food question is fully gone into.
Now, having decided to adopt Western methods, the Japanese sought
Western instructors. The British being the premier navy, they sought
naval instruction from us, and were chiefly supplied with officers of
what even then was the “old school.” In one of Major Drury’s books
of naval stories[32] there is a British admiral who always read his
Bible in his shirt-sleeves, because the sight of his uniform made it
difficult for him to realise the existence of a Higher Power! Absurd,
no doubt; but this seemingly far-fetched yarn exactly represents the
“old-school” sentiment, and the sentiment upon which every Japanese
officer has been dry-nursed. Even to-day a British admiral is encircled
with a halo of pomp, formula, and etiquette equal to that of any Court;
in the old days the reverence was greater still. The young Japanese
officers’ first lessons in “sea-power” were in reverence to its chief
practitioners. With their reverential loyalty to their Emperor, they
proved apt pupils. As the seat of power the quarter-deck is revered in
the British service; lesson number two taught this to the Japanese,
and included the bridge and a few other places. Practical work they
were taught on our model; the theoretical they more or less taught
themselves. Japanese naval strategy and tactics are much less the
result of European tuition than we suppose. What they learnt from the
West was after the Nelson model.
[32] “The Tadpole of an Archangel,” by Major Drury, R.M.L.I.
To understand a Japanese naval officer at all, we must fully realise
that he has been brought up with the things mentioned above as his
religion—indeed, it is the only religion he knows. Whether a professed
atheist, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, the only semblance of reality
in his creed is this religion of “Sea-Power,” and the worship of its
visible embodiment. Such god as he has is the navy to which he belongs.
We are more or less given to understand nowadays that Japan has
adopted Christianity. A Japanese told me that, to a certain extent,
they have. “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,” struck
him as an excellent text for the common people—Cæsar being translated
Emperor of Japan. He preferred Christianity too, he said, “because it
was more modern and general.” Had the leading Powers been Mahomedan,
I have no doubt that official Japan would revere Mecca. It was, I
think, this same officer who told me that some friends of his who had
become Christians were anxious that he should do the same. He agreed,
therefore, to go and be baptised on a certain date _if it were fine_.
The day was wet, so he did not go. Some other friends were anxious that
he should embrace Buddhism. “As their temple was much nearer, I went
there,” he said; “so I am a Buddhist. But, of course, I do not believe
in any religion really.”
A Christian Jap, on the other hand, once asked me whether Santa Klaus
was one of our gods—the combination of monotheism and pantheism of the
Doctrine of the Trinity being altogether outside their philosophy.
Actually the Japanese are members of that “Agnostic Creed” which
some of our greater materialists have preached, plagiarising both
Christianity and Buddhism. “Do unto others as you would that they
should do unto you.” And in a great measure they live up to it. Where
they seem not to, the difference between ideals of the Orient and the
West explains the omission. Our particular type of hypocrite is not
known in Japan. But, as I have said before, the only “Power” that they
recognise and worship is their fleet. To grasp the true inwardness of
this is not over and above easy to our mental processes, but it is the
keynote.
One might imagine that a far-seeing administrative brain had evolved
this most utilitarian religion, but I have never detected evidences
of purpose. The seed was planted by our “old-school” naval officers;
it fell on fruitful soil, and grew of its own accord into a weapon of
almost indescribable potency. It is not on the lines of fanaticism
exactly—the case of the Mahomedan is not altogether analogous. Rather,
it is on all fours with Calvinism.
“If people don’t like being killed, why do they fight?” a Japanese
officer remarked when discussing war. Individually and physically, a
Japanese officer is not at all brave, if we define “bravery” in our
sense of the word, but he will fight harder and die harder than any
Westerner. To him a wound taken in action is on a par with a toothache
or more serious ailment in ordinary everyday life; death in battle he
views as we view ordinary death in our beds. The risk of death in
action is an idea that moves him about as much as an actuary’s table
affects us. Unlike the Mahomedan warrior, death in battle entails no
Paradise with beautiful Houris as a reward; nor does _dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori_ seem to weigh much. Death is an incident, nothing
more. “If people do not like being killed, why do they fight?” is the
beginning and end of their ideas on the subject.
In every navy there are men who work at their profession and men who do
not. The Japanese Navy is no exception to the rule, but the proportion
of those who are casual is very small.
“Working at their profession” has, however, a very liberal meaning in
the Japanese Navy. It means the absolute ignoring of everything else. I
once inquired of a Japanese naval officer over here what the Japanese
military attaché was called. “I cannot tell you,” was the answer,
“_because I work at my profession_.”
And, judging by his expression, my friend was proud of this little bit
of evidence that he wasted no time on extraneous matters. This, too,
was in England. His ship was then in an elementary stage at Elswick; he
was at Portsmouth on leave.
The “working at his profession” in this particular case, of an officer
with his ship a mere skeleton on the building slip, consisted in
spending the day poring over naval books. I generally found him deep in
Mahan, with halma-pieces on sheets of paper to work out the tactics.
Speaking generally, a Japanese naval officer’s (in England) idea of a
holiday appears to be to come to Portsmouth, spend the day going over
the dockyard, with a visit to my house to play naval war-game into
the small hours as a kind of subsequent dissipation and relaxation!
Whatever naval Kriegspiel may or may not be, it takes a Japanese to
regard it as a dissipation.
In person, Japanese officers are very short, but the generality of
them are far more “physically fit” than popular opinion imagines. The
narrow-chested, sloping-shoulder variety is the exception, not the
rule. Many are very well proportioned indeed. Height averages about
five feet, or an inch or two over. In type of feature there is an
immense variety; though black hair, high cheek-bones, and narrow eyes
are common to all, general resemblance ends there. Colour varies much.
Some have the same pale, yellow complexion that one often meets with
in Russians; others have the more olive Italian tint. The former type
have the _nez retroussé_, usually small; the latter have a more or less
hooked nose. Features vary much according to the province or island
from which the owner hails.[33] Occasionally one encounters a swarthy
officer, hailing from the Northern islands, while here and there one
meets a face almost typically European.
[33] Those who come from the South are usually nicknamed “Russians.”
In character they are all more or less after one model. Taking them in
the lump, they are the merriest lot I ever came across. No one enjoys
the “At Homes” which Japanese officers invariably give before their
ships leave England more than the givers of them; they make the best
of hosts for that reason. These “At Homes” are a distinctive Japanese
feature; no other foreign visitors in our harbours ever give them. The
usual foreigner arrives, official calls are made, one or two of us
may perhaps be entertained on board, and there the matter ends. With
a Japanese ship, on the other hand, that is about where it begins. As
an old waterman on Portsmouth Hard observed, “One Japanee is worth a
dozen bloomin’ Rooshians and Eyetalians. Give me a Japper here once
a month and I’ll make my bloomin’ fortune,” the fact being that the
civil population, who never dare venture near a Russian, crowd on board
a Japanese ship in season and out, sure that, even if they are not
wanted, their invasion will be forgiven. I suppose the Japanese derive
some pleasure from watching the enjoyment of these self-invited guests,
though their good nature must be a trifle strained at times.
When the Shikishima was docked at Portsmouth, I happened to call,
with an officer of ours in uniform. In company with several of the
Shikishima’s officers, we were doing the round of the upper deck, when
a tripper of the regulation type suddenly confronted us, and addressed
my companion.
“One moment, sir!” he cried. “I want to see over the ship.”
My companion indicated the Japanese officers, telling the man to apply
to them.
[Illustration: THE SHIKISHIMA ENTERING PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD.]
“Bother the foreigners!” returned the man. “I was told that if I went
on board the officials would show me round. Can’t you send one of ’em?
You can tell ’em I ain’t a spy. I don’t mind showing ’em my card—at
least, no; I find I haven’t any about me. But here’s my return ticket
from London; they can see that if they want to. I assure you I’m not a
spy, or connected with the Press in any way.”
As all the Japanese understood and spoke English perfectly, this was
not the happiest of introductions. However, one of them volunteered to
show the tripper round, for which the tripper tendered thanks to _our_
officer. He then called out to a party of his friends on the jetty that
he had “managed to make one of the silly foreigners understand,” after
which he devoted himself to patronising his guide. He meant no harm,
doubtless, but it was a good deal of a tax on Japanese politeness,
and had he been kicked off the ship he would have only had himself to
thank for it. There are, unhappily, a good many of these tripper-folk
who, given an inch in the way of being allowed on board at all, grab a
good many ells in the way of taking advantage of it. Nor is it only the
tripper-folk who take undue advantage of Japanese hospitality. At the
“At Homes” I have seen women, who certainly ought to know better, armed
with scissors, with which they cut down any decoration that takes their
fancy. The sight of the decorations does not make the Tenth Commandment
easy to observe. At the close of the “At Home,” the paper flowers are
always all given away to the guests. But this sort of thing would
never happen on board an English ship in a Japanese harbour.
For an “At Home” the Japanese officers put all the men to work making
paper flowers. Chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms are the favourites,
but convolvuli and iris are also made, as well as a few others. All
are singularly beautiful and realistic reproductions—very different
things to the ordinary artificial flower of commerce. With these
flowers the greater part of the ship is profusely decorated, numbers
of lanterns are hung about, and here and there a “Welcome” is stuck
up. In addition, each ship hits on some device of its own; thus the
Kasagi went in for a host of Japanese and British naval ensigns, while
the Shikishima turned diving-dresses into decorative uses. Generally,
as in the illustration of the Kasagi’s “At Home,” some sports make a
programme, fencing, single stick, conjuring tricks, and so on, with
some Japanese songs in between the turns. The Shikishima, however,
before she left England, capped all these things by rigging up a
stage, scenery, platform, and all, upon the quarter-deck, and here
old Japanese plays, with the proper costumes and everything, were
performed, while the entire upper deck was transformed into a paper
flower-garden. I have attempted in the illustration to give some idea
of the fairyland thus created, but it needs colour to give anything
like the real effect.
[Illustration: “AT HOME” ON BOARD THE KASAGI.]
I have dwelt thus upon Japanese “At Homes,” because the way in which
the officers put themselves out to enjoy these, and make their guests
do the same, is an index to one of their leading characteristics. It
is a curious thing that no descriptions or illustrations of these gala
days of the Japanese war-god ever find their way into print. The whole
thing is essentially Japanese, and shows that Western drill and weapons
have not killed Oriental charm.
Beyond relegating art to its proper and inferior position, I do not
think that Western influence has altered Japanese character to any
great extent. A Japanese naval officer of some note, in relating
to me his experiences during the war against China, referred to a
combined naval and military operation in which he was engaged. Cholera
killed them off like rats. “It was one of the funniest sights I have
ever seen,” he said, “to see the soldiers all doubled up and rolling
about by the side of the road as we marched.” This frame of mind is
distinctly Oriental; it is also distinctly useful for a fighting-man.
A British bluejacket might have contrived to see the humour of the
situation also,[34] but no other Westerner is so blest—for it is a
case of blest; the toughest warrior is the one that wins. Japan is not
going to collapse in a war while this sort of sentiment can obtain.
Modern warfare is becoming more and more a matter of acting on the
_morale_ of the _personnel_; it is on nerves rather than on bodies that
shell-fire is intended to have its most powerful effect, and it will
take a good deal of it, and a very deadly deal, to affect those who
can see the humorous side of what is primarily a very terrible thing.
Probably the root of the “war-instinct” lies somewhere hereabouts, and
we should think many times ere we endeavour to “humanise” such ideas
out of our own Mark Tapleys.
[34] The following I can vouch for, as I heard it myself:—A certain
warrant man in one of our destroyers came off leave one morning a
little late, and thus explained himself to his skipper: “I was waiting
for the train all right, sir, when some silly fool walking across the
line got run over by a train coming the other way. It took both his
legs off, and there was he and the legs lying on the line. _I stood
there laughing so that I clean forgot my train._” This is not exactly
typical, but we have a good many such Mark Tapleys in the R.N.
The Japanese also retains his old native dignity; European uniform has
not abated one jot of that dignity which we have all read about as
having been beneath the Kimino. Mostly, though not invariably, they are
the descendants of the old fighting men, the Samaurai.[35] In the midst
of the new order all the best of the old traditions live, just as, in a
few cases in our new social order, pauper members of old families scorn
the wealthy mushroom aristocracy around them. Whatever he may do, in
whatever position he may be placed, the Japanese officer never forgets
his dignity, and, further, is always a _gentleman_. I believe this is
the first impression that he creates; it is also the last.
[35] These Samaurai, or officer class—there were three classes in
Japan: (1) the nobles, descendants of rulers of provinces; (2) the
officer class; (3) the common people—for generation after generation
lived very uncertain lives; they were liable to be killed at any moment
once they left their homes. In addition, they were used to killing,
having the right to do so at pleasure. If they unsheathed their swords,
they could not replace them until they had killed some one. Possessing
this power, it is little wonder that a strong sense of dignity was
acquired with it.
On the whole, though their politeness generally hides it completely,
the Japanese are a very “touchy” and sensitive people. Quite
unwittingly one is apt to tread on tender corns, without in the least
realising it, until one gets to know them a good deal more than
casually. They are sensitive about any infraction of the extended laws
of etiquette, which they themselves observe most punctilliously. There
are numbers of little things to be learnt and observed by one who would
come to be on friendly terms with them, and I doubt if any Westerner
can acquire all. Still, if he offends through ignorance he will never
learn his fault from his hosts.
They carry this sensitiveness a considerable distance, and into a
variety of things. For instance, to see themselves represented in
print in broken English and queer pronunciation annoys them intensely.
An Englishman, seeing his rendering of a foreign language guyed,
would laugh at it; but not so the Japanese. I remember well the
indignation of a Japanese at reading in a Portsmouth local paper that
his countrymen had talked about their vessel as a fine “_sipp_.” He
did not like it at all. Incidentally, I may mention that “sipp” was
phonetically inaccurate; the majority say the word “ship” just as we
do, while the rest would merely give the “i” the same phonetic value
that it has in French, Italian, or Russian. On their part, I have known
Japanese deliberately pronounce many of their own ship-names wrongly,
so as not to offend English ears by emphasising an English error.
It is a legend in our navy that the first English word learnt by a
Japanese is always _Damn!_ but I have only once heard a Japanese use
it. His own language is singularly defective in swear words. Japanese
learn English very rapidly, and soon grow to speak it remarkably well.
After a year, or less, in England they acquire not merely a mastery
of the English, but also a far more difficult thing for a foreigner—a
mastery of our _slang_. Ability to pick this up argues a singularly
quick brain, as dictionaries are of no avail here. It is characteristic
of them, too, to set about it with a serious thoroughness, essentially
Japanese. Recently a sub-lieutenant, not long from the Far East, who
had learnt school English out there, took to studying a novel of mine,
“The Port Guard Ship,” a book that deals solely with social naval
life, and so is loaded to the muzzle with current naval slang and
phraseology. Every time I met this sub. he used to haul a notebook
from his pocket, and reel off a list of slang and, possibly, now and
again, profanities culled from its pages, the exact import of each of
which I had to explain! In consequence that sub. is now able to join in
any conversation without difficulty, or without the talk having to be
suited for him. The Frenchman’s dilemmas over such expressions as “Look
out!” do not bother him at all. In fine, he knows “English as she is
spoke,” by virtue of adopting a method.
Curiously enough, Japanese never learn to write English so well as they
speak it—thus reversing the condition of all other foreigners. Their
caligraphy is fine and bold always, but the phraseology as invariably
formal. Possibly it is due to the etiquette of letter-writing in their
own country that their letters here almost always begin with a “Thank
you for your kind letter,” and continue formal all through.
Mentally, the Japanese is adaptive, not originative. If one is
explaining anything to a Japanese, he will have seized on the idea and
absorbed it while a European is still struggling with the externals
of it. Japanese invention has extended to a small quickfirer and a
water-tube boiler, but in both cases the invention is merely a change
of some existing mechanism. Even so, neither is of great moment; their
abilities do not lie in that direction at all. If an entirely new
system of naval tactics is ever evolved, it will not be by a Japanese;
like their British _confrères_, they shine better at practical work
than in the regions of theory.
They are not, however, devoid of views. Every Japanese gives time to
thinking of the future, and were any lieutenant suddenly made into an
admiral, I fancy that he would acquit himself quite as well as if he
had reached his rank by orthodox gradations. He is apt to fail now and
again at his present task from this trait, which is in many ways his
chief defect, and one that may lead to trouble in war. It is sometimes
dangerous to reason before proceeding to obey. A Japanese tends to do
this. It is details that they think about. For instance, I once got a
Japanese officer to give me his views on the conduct of a naval war.
They are worth quoting _in extenso_, because naval opinions invariably
run more or less in grooves.
His primary detail was strategical, and referred to the Press. “I
shall have no correspondents with my fleet when I am an admiral in
war,” said he. “If they insist on coming, directly we get out to sea
I shall set them all adrift in a boat. If they do their duty to their
papers they are a hindrance to me; if they do not they are no good at
all.”
Detail number two referred to his fleet. “I shall hoist the signal, ’No
ship is to surrender; if beaten, it must sink.‘ If any ship hoists the
white flag, the rest of my ships will open fire on it till it sinks.”
I shall watch this officer’s career with interest if ever he commands a
war fleet in the future, for he will go far; every detail was similarly
thought out. I fancy every Japanese who stands any prospect of being an
admiral in the future does the same, though the matter is not one upon
which they talk at all readily to a stranger.
It is also, however, their weakest point, this fondness for thinking
of the future. Too often they think of it unduly, and to the detriment
of the present. Not invariably, of course, still there is, I fancy, a
fair sprinkling of lieutenants who devote as much or more thought to an
admiral’s duty twenty years hence than to lieutenant work of to-day.
It is not, primarily, a bad thing so much as a good thing overdone;
but that is a Japanese naval characteristic all through. They are
always in more danger of overdoing a good thing than anything else.
Curiously enough, this tendency to think for the admiral does not lead
to any great evil in the way of an undue corresponding tendency to be
critical.
On the other hand, a Japanese naval officer never underrates his own
abilities. Every junior officer feels in his inmost soul that he is
fully as capable and as fully able to do anything as his senior. None
of them suffer from false modesty. On the whole, this, within due
bounds, is by no means a defect; self-confidence is a fine thing for
begetting ability; but, as before stated, they are prone to overdo many
good things. Some of them, doubtless, overdo the confidence in their
own abilities.
They are, in a way, a discontented lot of men as a whole, despite
all their fatalism, their enthusiasm, and their joviality. Every
civilian officer fumes over to himself that he is not an executive;
every lieutenant curses the time that must pass before he is a
lieutenant-commander, and so on all through. Wherever they are in the
professions, they want to be better and higher. Sometimes this is a
defect, sometimes not. When it is a defect, it is again a case of the
good thing overdone.
With all this, however, they are not ambitious in the exact way that
we define the word. A friend of mine was appointed skipper of a
destroyer, to take her out to Japan. He had worried everything and
everybody for the post. Now, he could have gone back to Japan as a
passenger in a steamer, drawing more pay, and without the risks and
heavy responsibilities of being a destroyer captain; but, having got
his wished-for ship, there the matter ended. There was no “another
rung in the ladder” about it; it was simply “a good opportunity to get
experience.”
He got it. He left the Thames in a blizzard. Down Channel he had a
gale, a head sea, and a thermometer well below freezing-point. Not
having been to sea for some time, he was seasick continually, and
the weather gave him neuralgia and bronchitis in addition. Having a
crew new to the ship, he had to spend nearly the whole trip from the
Thames to Portsmouth on deck, and when he snatched a brief watch below
a defective cowl gave him shower-baths in his bunk. Yet, when he put
into Portsmouth Harbour to coal, I found him sitting in the wardroom,
expatiating to his officers on his good luck in having thus early been
favoured with some bad weather experience.
“Duty,” in the sense in which one finds it in the British or Russian
navies, is not much of a motive-power to Japanese officers. The
religion of war, the interest of their profession, the longing to put
theories to a fuller practical test—here lie the springs of their
motive-power. To quote one of them, they “like being killed.” I believe
they do.
Personal glory is, again, discouraged rather than otherwise; a
solidarity of glory is rather aimed at. In the torpedo attacks at
Wei-hai-wei some boats “got in,” some failed. No Japanese officer who
participated will tell you his share. I once asked one of these, whom I
met, about the famous action. “Oh yes,” said he, “I was there. It was a
very cold night.”
Subsequently I learnt from another officer that this particular one had
commanded the boat that sank the Ting Yuen. “But,” added my informant,
“he would not tell you, and you should not ask. All did well; some were
lucky, some not; since all did well, they agreed not to speak of it
after and say who did this or did that, _for all were equally worthy of
praise_.”
Ethically our socialists theorise on this sort of thing, but only the
Japanese have actually practised it. Such are Japanese naval officers.
To sum up, they have little ambition, little thirst for personal glory,
but a good deal of thirst for the thunder of battle. The only religion
that they wot of is the worship of their fleet; their only heaven,
that fleet in action. They cannot originate, but they are peerless at
practising the things that they have learnt. And there is only one
possible way of beating a Japanese fleet—by sinking it.
In many of these things the trail of Samaurai may be visible. The
Samaurai were trained to kill and to be killed; it was the thing they
lived for. Take the case of the old Japanese duelling laws, which
ceased to exist quite recently comparatively. No French _affaire_ about
these duels. To a Japanese serious European duels are as comic as
French duels are to us. With the Japs the vanquished had to die, only
death or a mortal wound stopped the duel, and the victor had then to
commit suicide.
_Hari-kari_, though now illegal, is not yet entirely dead. It is not
very many years ago that a Japanese sub-lieutenant disembowelled
himself because of the disgrace of some affront that he felt had
been put on him; in the war with China there were one or two cases.
_Hari-kari_ is not a nice thing to describe, and has been described in
detail often enough before to-day. It has altered somewhat from the
orthodox manner. The torpedo-gunner who, after his frozen-in torpedo
failed to leave the tube at Wei-hai-wei, committed _hari-kari_, slit
his stomach across with a knife, and then fired a pistol at his
throat—according to the captain of his boat, who told me about it. This
was not quite after the orthodox manner, but it was a singular painful
means of death for a man to choose of his own accord. The ancestors
of Japanese officers, near and remote, lived for centuries under the
_hari-kari régime_. In other ways human life was cheap, and torture
was common. Their descendants reap the results in an age when war has
become so much a matter of “moral effect.” And this is one great reason
why a Japanese fleet will have to be sunk _en masse_ for it to be
defeated.
I will close this chapter with one anecdote, a trifle shocking to our
convictions possibly, but so eminently characteristic that I must give
it. One Japanese I know was studying naval history, noting the most
effective dying words of great commanders (the distant future in his
mind’s eye very probably). “They are pretty, some of them,” he said,
“but I do not think them very useful. Now, if I get killed, I think I
shall say, ‘I die a good Christian, and shall soon be an angel with
very pretty wings.’”
I can quite imagine him saying it, and his comrades finding the jest
useful.