A Great Warrior’s Last Sacrifice

The recent death of Admiral Togo brings to mind an extraordinary experience of this writer in connection with the death of Togo’s great counterpart, General Nogi.

On September 11, 1912, two days after my arrival in Yokohama Harbor in command of the U. S. armored cruiser Maryland, conveying our Secretary of State, Hon. Philander C. Knox, as Ambassador Extraordinary to the funeral of the Emperor Meiji of Japan, a young Japanese Lieutenant Commander, Denzo Mori, reported on board bearing orders from the Japanese Navy Department, framed exactly as such orders are by our own, assigning him to me as a naval aide. He was a young man of engaging personality, speaking English fairly well. I endorsed his orders and asked if he would like to be assigned quarters on board, but he said not unless I wished it; that he would prefer to remain domiciled in Tokyo and report to me daily in person. I regarded that an unnecessary hardship and we compromised on an arrangement by which he would meet me at the railroad station in Tokyo whenever I visited the capital on ceremonial occasions.

Mori’s guidance and services were invaluable to me throughout the many unusual ceremonial calls preceding the funeral, and the marvelous funeral ceremony itself, but that event, the like of which may never be seen again, I must here pass over.

On the afternoon of the 13th, I found myself in Tokyo free from ceremonies and official engagements and decided upon a shopping tour alone, but, immediately after lunch at our Embassy, Mori came with the big Admiralty car. I protested that I did not need him at all until evening but he begged to take me out for a preview of the Aoyama Parade Ground arranged for the funeral ceremonies. Of course I yielded, and after we had been admitted by special permit to the sacred enclosure and had visited the temporary pavilions, Mori asked if there were not some other places I would like to see. I told him that I had explored the city pretty thoroughly on previous occasions but that there was one temple I would like to visit which had been erected since I was last in Tokyo—the shrine to the dead who died in Japan’s war with Russia. With unmistakable gladness he drove me to that temple, and together we entered the enclosure and stood before the temple steps. I removed my cap and, carrying it across my left breast, bowed for some moments in silent reverence. Nothing was said by either of us and we departed.

The two great heroes of that time in Japan were Admiral Togo and General Nogi. Togo I had met on a previous visit to Tokyo, but Nogi I had never seen, and this I happened to mention to Mori as we drove back to the Embassy.

At the funeral ceremonies that evening I was honored with a seat immediately in front of the pavilion bearing the Emperor’s remains, and Mori was at my side. When the Japanese military and naval notables were going up singly into the pavilion, saying a last farewell prayer before the Emperor’s casket and filing down again, Mori suddenly nudged me and said “There goes Nogi.” I scanned intently but did not see him, although his striking resemblance to our Admiral Sims would have made his features unmistakable to me.

“Where?” I asked. “You must be mistaken. I’ve been watching for him but have not seen him.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mori, “he was there. I saw him.”

The further features of the remarkable pageant blotted this incident for a time from my mind.

Mori’s services terminated at our Embassy at 1:00 a.m., September 14, when he had driven me there after the funeral. I endorsed his orders “duty completed,” gave him an affectionate farewell, for I had become very much attached to him, and retired for the night.

While at breakfast in the morning the butler announced to me very quietly that Commander Mori was in the hall and wished to see me privately. Much astonished, I went out and found Mori standing. I was about to protest that he should not let me impose any further upon his time when something in his manner arrested me, and instead I said:

“What is the matter, Mori? What has happened?”

“General Nogi died last night,” he replied.

I was genuinely shocked and told him so.

“Countess Nogi died last night,” he added in the same dull tones.

At this I was shocked to speechlessness, and Mori continued:

“I have been sent to you and would like to talk to you alone.”

“Come into the garden, then,” I said, and led the way to a rustic bench in a secluded portion of the Embassy grounds.

Then, in a voice choking with emotion, Mori said:

“General Nogi and Countess Nogi took themselves away last night at eight o clock when the gun was fired for the Emperor’s funeral.”

Then the truth dawned upon me—they had committed suicide, possibly as we in the West call it, harikari. I could find no words for reply, and Mori went on. If I could quote his speech in his eloquent but imperfect English it might be more intensely impressive, but I can only clumsily paraphrase it. He said:

I will try to make you understand. In your country you think it is a very bad deed but in Japan we think it is a very great deed. Human lives are like many candles. Some are very tall and just beginning to burn, some are burned half way down, and some are about to go out; but the ones about to go out can be made useful for lighting other candles. So it was with General Nogi. He had led a life in great deeds for Japan and his candle was about to go out. But there was one act left by which he could light new flames of valor and self-sacrifice in the candles of young Japan, and that was the act he did.

After a few moments of silence I said: “Mori, you have made me understand.”

He brightened up.

“I am very glad,” he said. “I would like you to go with me and say good-bye to General Nogi.”

“Indeed I will,” I replied, and we returned to the Embassy, Mori waiting by the car while I went in to inform the Ambassador. He expressed great astonishment but agreed that as it was not an official matter I could use my own judgment. He advised me first, however, to see Secretary Knox; so I walked around to the Imperial Household, where Mr. Knox was staying, and saw his secretary, Mr. Miller. He in turn was much astonished and said Mr. Knox had been informed of General Nogi’s death but told to take no cognizance of it, and had departed on a sightseeing trip to Nikko.

“Nothing in my long experience in Japan,” Mr. Miller said in effect, “explains your situation, but to my mind you should certainly do as they wish.”

So I returned to the Embassy, and with Mori we drove to General Nogi’s modest home in the Akasaka section of Tokyo. We passed on foot through a tori in a paling of split bamboo partially concealed by shrubbery, into a small Japanese garden in which stood a modest bungalow type of dwelling. A number of Japanese gentlemen in both native and European dress were talking in groups here and there much as groups of Englishmen would do at an afternoon outdoor reception, and others were filing into the house. All were strangers to me, but I seemed to attract only kindly and casual attention.

Mori and I entered a small reception room and presented our calling cards to a distinguished looking master of ceremonies, who thanked us, and then we filed out. An atmosphere of cheerfulness pervaded the whole procedure.

As we drove away I said, “Mori, do you remember telling me last night that you saw General Nogi saying good-bye to the Emperor? That was long after eight o’clock.”

“Yes,” he said, “I saw him. I do not understand!”

As I again took leave of Mori at the Embassy he said:

“You are invited to attend the funeral of General Nogi on the 18th, and may select an aide from among your own officers to accompany you.”

As soon as he left I telephoned Lieutenant Commander Cotton, our naval attaché, and arranged that he should be my aide on that occasion.

That evening I dined with Lieutenant and Mrs. Burnett. He was a young American Army officer on duty in Tokyo in the capacity of what was then known as a “language officer.” Mrs. Burnett was a deep student of Japanese customs and had become very intimate and intensely popular in the late Emperor’s household. She had, I think, won the annual prize for the best poem on the last birthday of the Emperor Meiji. General Nogi’s death was immediately a topic of conversation. From what Mrs. Burnett told me and what I afterwards gleaned in clippings from the leading Tokyo newspapers still in my possession, I will reconstruct briefly the career of this remarkable man.

Maresuki Nogi was born a samurai and indoctrinated from childhood in the ancient ethics of Bushido, which holds that failure should be atoned for, or a degenerate national tendency protested by the self-sacrifice of one’s life. He lost the Japanese colors in a brave but rash charge in the Satsuma Rebellion, and believed that he should, if he survived that war, take his own life in accordance with Bushido, but his Emperor commanded him to live, and that command could not be disobeyed.

His marriage to the daughter of Mr. Sadayoki Yoji was quite romantic. As a young girl, Yoji Shizu-ko watched him pass her house in Tokyo one day at the head of his soldiers and fell in love with him. Her father discovered her attachment, but in spite of Nogi’s admiration for her he deemed that his military career precluded marriage. The father, however, knew Nogi’s commanding general and induced the latter to dispel Nogi’s military inhibition. The result was lifelong devotion, and they had two sons who also became Army officers.

The war with China gave Nogi little chance to hazard his life, but when the war with Russia came he seemed to be convinced that the time had come when he would atone with his life for the loss of the colors in the Satsuma Rebellion. When he left for the front with his sons he said to his wife:

The three of us are determined to die for the cause of the Empire, so prepare three coffins for us. If one corpse should be sent home, never bury it. Wait till the two others shall arrive, and then let the three of us be buried at the same time.[1]

But instead of his life sacrifice which he would have regarded as the ethical climax to his career, both his sons were killed and he survived to return to Japan as the hero of Port Arthur and received the highest acclaim ever accorded to a distinguished warrior. To a man of his temperament this reception was an astounding surprise. He said:

I had never expected such an honor and welcome. I had caused so many youths to perish that I was prepared to incur the wrath of many fathers and to be stoned to death on my arrival in Japan. Instead of that this remarkable welcome—surely my two sons who perished for their country have done their poor father much filial service, for their deaths have, it seems, mitigated the wrath of the people against me.[2]

It would seem that Nogi returned from the Russian war with a deep conviction of personal failure. He, who considered that he had disgraced Japan by the loss of the colors in the tenth year of Meiji, had in this last opportunity for redemption, after sacrificing the lives of thousands of young Japanese, failed to set any personal example of sacrifice and had come home unscathed. Yet at the command of his Emperor, whom he worshipped, he had to live on. It is probable that no one understood this more intimately and sympathetically than Meiji Tenno.

One of Nogi’s most marked characteristics was tender-heartedness. He loved children, he loved his soldiers, and he loved animals. The only special preparation made by Countess Nogi for his homecoming from the Russian war was to put the stables in apple-pie order for her husband’s beloved horses.

General Nogi was put in charge of the construction and organization of the Nobles College in Tokyo, founded largely to animate and perpetuate the unselfish patriotism of old Japan, and he put his whole soul into the indoctrination of the young students, but here again he seems to have met disappointment, for he found in them a modern trend of thought and a liberality of personal living which he could not reconcile with his austere conceptions.[3]  He must then have felt that his only ties to earth were his wife and his beloved Emperor.

Then came the Emperor’s illness and death. General Nogi was in devoted attendance throughout this last illness. Then, on the morning preceding the funeral, he motored to the Imperial Palace in full uniform, accompanied by Countess Nogi in deep mourning, and together they said their last prayers over the Emperor’s remains. Upon their return home they retired to an inner room, informing the servants that they were indisposed and not to be disturbed.

At eight o’clock that evening, when the gun announcing the departure of the Imperial cortege from the palace was fired, the servants heard strange sounds in the General’s room, and a maid went there but found the doors fastened. In alarm she called their ricksha man who in turn called a policeman, and the room was broken open. General Nogi, still in full uniform, lay face downward in front of a small desk upon which stood portraits of the late and the new Emperors. It was found that he had made incisions in his abdomen in the form of a cross and then stabbed himself in the throat with his sword. Countess Nogi, seated on the opposite side of the desk and still in her mourning gown, had fallen forward after plunging a short dagger into her throat. Two short poems, one by each, lay in front of the portraits of the Emperors.[4]

These poems found in the death chamber indicate that shortly before the end it must have been mutually agreed that they should go together. It may be, as intimated by Mrs. Kaitsu, Director of the Female Commercial School in Tokyo, that Countess Nogi endeavored by her act of self-sacrifice to rekindle in the women of the Japanese younger set the austere devotion to their husbands which prevailed in medieval times.

When I told Mrs. Burnett about my visit with Mori to General Nogi’s home that morning she was intensely interested. “There has been some special reason for this,” she said. “Tell me everything you have done while with Mori since you arrived in Yokohama.” This I did, and when I came to our visit to the shrine of the Japanese who had died in the Russian war she exclaimed, “There! That was it! Of your own volition you have paid homage at the shrine of their hero dead, and Nogi’s sons were among those dead.”

On the 18th, I lunched with the Cottons, and afterward Lieutenant Commander Cotton and I motored to the Funeral Pavilion of Aoyama Cemetery. It was well we started early, for not only was our route itself packed to its utmost capacity but all cross streets were jammed with human populace as far as eye could see.

Two prominent generals were masters of ceremonies at the pavilion and we were ushered to our seats with distinguished courtesy. The arrangement of the pavilion closely resembled that of occidental churches. The caskets of Count and Countess Nogi, covered with evergreen wreaths, rested behind a low chancel railing. Seats were arranged like pews on each side of a central aisle and other seats rose in tiers at the sides of the pavilion. We were seated in a front one of these. All seats were filled, those admitted apparently being entirely by invitation. As far as I could see there were but two other foreigners present, Prince Arthur of Connaught and an aide. Great Britain was then in close alliance with Japan and General Nogi had been assigned as a senior aide to Prince Arthur during his stay in Tokyo.

The ceremony was conducted according to the Shinto ritual, the priests in their ancient robes looking very picturesque, impressive, and devotional.

At the end of the service all present were guided in single file past a large pile of sacred evergreen branches at the main entrance. Everyone took two branches and, filing up the aisle, laid one on each of the caskets. Those in the body of the pavilion, probably relatives, companions in arms, and representatives of different branches of the government, went first, then Prince Arthur of Connaught and his aide, and behind them myself and Lieutenant Commander Cotton. As I placed my evergreen branches on the caskets of Count and Countess Nogi there welled up within me a feeling of personal bereavement.

Count and Countess Nogi were then interred beside their two sons.

Two days later I received from Mori a photograph of the tomb which unfortunately was seriously marred when my cabin was flooded by a heavy sea when the Maryland encountered a typhoon on the way home.

The unexpected suicide of General Nogi produced profound distress and a perplexing problem in Japan, and great apprehension as to what the occidental reaction to it might be. Editors, educators, high officials, and government spokesmen, some voluntarily and some through interviews, published interpretations of the act. While the ancient doctrines of Bushido were held in profound respect, its feature of self life sacrifice was regarded as too medieval for the modern mind and had been in abeyance for many years. The wide variations of interpretations given were remarkable:

Atonement for his loss of the colors in his youth;

Atonement for the sacrifice of so many lives at Port Arthur;

Protest against modernistic ideas;

Protest against moral laxity;

Frustration in an important military reform;

Disappointment at the trend of thought in the Nobles School;

Desire to follow his Emperor;

A spiritual impulse not understandable in the West.

None of these, to my mind, interpreted the act as simply, accurately, and eloquently as did young Denzo Mori in his talk with me in the garden of the U. S. Embassy. Could Nogi have heard that speech he would have known that his last sacrifice had indeed lighted new flames of patriotism in the youth of Japan and had not been in vain.