After the War

I.

HYōGO, May 5, 1895.

HYōGO, this morning, lies bathed in a limpid magnificence of light indescribable, — spring light, which is vapory, and lends a sort of apparitional charm to far things seen through it. Forms remain sharply outlined, but are almost idealized by faint colors not belonging to them ; and the great hills behind the town aspire into a cloudless splendor of tint that seems the ghost of azure rather than azure itself.

Over the blue-gray slope of tiled roofs there is a vast quivering and fluttering of extraordinary shapes, — a spectacle not indeed new to me, but always delicious. Everywhere are floating — tied to very tall bamboo poles — immense brightly colored paper fish, which look and move as if alive. The greater number vary from five to fifteen feet in length ; but here and there I see a baby scarcely a foot long, hooked to the tail of a larger one. Some poles have four or five fish attached to them at heights proportioned to the dimensions of the fish, the largest always at the top. So cunningly shaped and colored these things are that the first sight of them is always startling to a stranger. The lines holding them are fastened within the head ; and the wind, entering the open mouth, not only inflates the body to perfect form, but keeps it undulating, — rising and descending, turning and twisting, precisely like a real fish, while the tail plays and the fins wave irreproachably. In the garden of my nextdoor neighbor there are two very fine specimens. One has an orange belly and a bluish - gray back ; the other is all a silvery tint; and both have big weird eyes. The rustling of their motion as they swim against the sky is like the sound of wind in a cane-field. A little farther off I see another very big fish, with a little red boy clinging to its back. That red boy represents Kintoki. strongest of all children ever born in Japan, who, while still a baby, wrestled with bears and set traps for goblin-birds.

Everybody knows that these paper carp, or koi, are hoisted only during the period of the great birth festival of boys, in the fifth month ; that their presence above a house signifies the birth of a son ; and that they symbolize the hope of the parents that their lad will be able to win his way through the world against all obstacles, — even as the real koi,. the great Japanese carp, ascends swift rivers against the stream. In many parts of southern and western Japan, you rarely see these koi. You see instead very long narrow flags of cotton cloth, called nobori, which are fastened perpendicularly, like sails, with little spars and rings to poles of bamboo, and bear designs in various colors of the koi in an eddy, or of Shōki, conqueror of demons, or of pines, or of tortoises, or other fortunate symbols.

II.

But in this radiant spring of the Japanese year 2555, the koi might be taken to symbolize something larger than parental hope, — the great trust of a nation regenerated through war. The military revival of the Empire—the real birthday of New Japan — began with the conquest of China. The war is ended ; the future, though clouded, seems big with promise ; and, however grim the obstacles to loftier and more enduring achievements, Japan has neither fears nor doubts.

Perhaps the future danger is just in this immense self-confidence. It is not a new feeling created by victory. It is a race feeling, which repeated triumphs have served only to strengthen. From the instant of the declaration of war there was never the least doubt of ultimate victory. There was universal and profound enthusiasm, but no outward signs of emotional excitement. Men at once set to work writing histories of the triumphs of Japan, and these histories — sold by subscription in weekly or monthly parts, and illustrated with photo-lithographs or drawings on wood—were selling all over the country long before any foreign observers could have ventured to predict the final results of the campaign. From first to last the nation felt sure of its own strength, and of the impotence of China. The toy - makers put suddenly into the market legions of ingenious mechanisms, representing Chinese soldiers in flight, or being cut down by Japanese troopers, or tied together as prisoners by their queues, or kowtowing for mercy to illustrious generals. The old-fashioned military playthings, representing samurai in armor, were superseded by figures — in clay, wood, paper, or silk —of Japanese cavalry, infantry, and artillery, by models of forts and batteries and models of men of war. The storming of the defenses of Port Arthur by the Kumamoto Brigade was the subject of one ingenious mechanical toy; another, equally clever, repeated the fight of the Matsushima Kan with the Chinese ironclads. There were sold likewise myriads of toyguns discharging corks by compressed air with a loud pop, and myriads of toy-swords, and countless tiny bugles, the constant blowing of which recalled to me the tinhorn tumult of a certain New Year’s Eve in New Orleans. The announcement of each victory resulted in an enormous manufacture and sale of colored prints, rudely and cheaply executed, and mostly depicting the fancy of the artist only, but well fitted to stimulate the popular love of glory. Wonderful sets of chessmen also appeared, each piece representing a Chinese or Japanese officer or soldier.

Meanwhile, the theatres were celebrating the war after a much more complete fashion. It is no exaggeration to say that almost every episode of the campaign was repeated upon the stage. Actors even visited the battlefields to study scenes and backgrounds, and fit themselves to portray realistically, with the aid of artificial snowstorms, the hardships of the army in Manchuria. Every gallant deed was dramatized almost as soon as reported. The death of the bugler Shirakami Genjirō ;¹ the noble but fatal courage of Harada Jiukichi, who scaled a rampart and opened a fortress gate to liis comrades ; the heroism of the fourteen troopers who held their own against three hundred infantry ; the successful charge of unarmed coolies upon a Chinese battalion, — all these and many other incidents were reproduced in a thousand theatres. Immense illuminations of paper lanterns lettered with phrases of loyalty or patriotic cheer celebrated the success of the imperial arms, or gladdened the eyes of soldiers going by train to the field. In Kobe, — constantly traversed by trooptrains, — such illuminations continued night after night for weeks together, and the residents of each street further subscribed for flags and triumphal arches.

But the glories of the war were celebrated also in ways more durable by the various great industries of the country. Victories and incidents of sacrificial heroism were commemorated in porcelain, in metal-work, and in costly textures, not less than in new designs for envelopes and note-paper. They were portrayed on the silk linings of haori ²on women’s kerchiefs of chirimen,³ in the embroidery of girdles, in the designs of silk shirts and of children’s holiday robes, not to speak of cheaper printed goods, such as calicoes and toweling. They were represented in lacquer-ware of many kinds, on the sides and covers of carven boxes, on tobacco-pouches, on sleeve-buttons, in designs for hairpins, on women’s combs, even on chopsticks. Bundles of toothpicks in tiny cases were offered for sale, each toothpick having engraved upon it, in microscopic text, a different poem about the war. And up to the time of peace, or at least up to the time of the insane attempt by a soshi⁴ to kill the Chinese plenipotentiary during negotiations, all things happened as the people had wished and expected.

But as soon as the terms of peace had been announced, Russia interfered, securing the help of France and Germany to bully Japan. The combination met with no opposition ; the government played jinjutsu, and foiled expectations by unlooked - for yielding. Japan had long ceased to feel uneasy about her own military power. Her reserve strength is probably much greater than has ever been acknowledged, and her educational system, with its twenty-six thousand schools, is an enormous drilling-machine. On her own soil she could face any foreign power. Her navy was her weak point, and of this she was fully aware. It was a splendid fleet of small, light cruisers, and admirably handled. Its admiral, without the loss of a single vessel, had annihilated the Chinese fleet in two engagements, but it was not yet sufficiently heavy to face the combined navies of three European powers, and the flower of the Japanese army was beyond the sea. The most opportune moment for interference had been cunningly chosen, and probably more than interference was intended. The heavy Russian battleships were stripped for fighting, and these alone could possibly have overpowered the Japanese fleet, though the victory would have been a costly one. But Russian action was suddenly checked by the sinister declaration of English sympathy for Japan. Within a few weeks England could bring into Asiatic waters a fleet capable of crushing, in one short battle, all the ironclads assembled by the combination. And a single shot from a Russian cruiser might have plunged the whole world into war.

But in the Japanese navy there was a furious desire to battle with the three hostile powers at once. It would have been a great fight, for no Japanese commander would have dreamed of yielding, no Japanese ship would have struck her colors. The army was equally desirous of war. It needed all the firmness of the government to hold the nation back. Free speech was gagged ; the press was severely silenced; and by the return to China of the Liao-Tung peninsula, in exchange for a compensatory increase of the war indemnity previously exacted, peace was secured. The government really acted with faultless wisdom. At this period of Japanese development a costly war with Russia could not fail to have consequences the most disastrous to industry, commerce, and finance. But the national pride has been deeply wounded, and the country can still scarcely forgive its rulers.

III.

HYōGO, May 15.

The Matsushima Kan. returned from China, is anchored before the Garden of the Pleasure of Peace. She is not a colossus, though she has done grand things ; but she certainly looks quite formidable as she lies there in the clear light, — a stone-gray fortress of steel rising out of the smooth blue. Permission to visit her has been given to the delighted people, who don their host for the occasion, as for a temple festival; and I am suffered to accompany some of them. All the boats in the port would seem to have been hired for the visitors, so huge is the shoal hovering about the ironclad as we arrive. It is not possible for so great a crowd of sightseers to go on board at once ; and we have to wait while hundreds are being alternately admitted and dismissed. But the waiting in the cool sea air is not unpleasant; and the spectacle of the popular joy is worth watching. What eager rushing when the turn comes! what swarming and squeezing and clinging! Two women fall into the sea, and are pulled out by blue-jackets, and say they are not sorry to have fallen in, because they can now boast of owing their lives to the men of the Matsushima Kan ! As a matter of fact, they could not very well have been drowned; there were legions of common boatmen to look after them.

But something of larger importance to the nation than the lives of two young women is really owing to the men of the Matsushima Kan ; and the people are rightly trying to pay them back with love, — for presents, such as thousands would like to make, are prohibited by disciplinary rule. Officers and crew must be weary ; but all the crowding and the questioning is borne with charming amiability. Everything is shown and explained in detail : the huge thirtycentimetre gun, with its loading apparatus and directing machinery ; the quickfiring batteries ; the torpedoes, with their impulse-tubes ; the electric lantern, with its searching - mechanism. I myself, though a foreigner, and therefore requiring a special permit, am guided all about, both below and above, and am even suffered to take a peep at the portraits of their Imperial Majesties, in the admiral’s cabin ; and I am told the stirring story of the great fight off the Yalu. Meanwhile, the old bald men and the women and the babies of the port hold for one golden day command of the Matsushima. Officers, cadets, blue-jackets, spare no effort to please. Some talk to the grandfathers; others let the children play with the hilts of their swords, or teach them how to throw up their little hands and shout “ Teikoku Banzai ! ” And for tired mothers, matting has been spread, where they can squat down in the shade between decks.

Those decks, only a few months ago, were covered with the blood of brave men. Here and there dark stains, which still resist holystoning, are visible ; and the people look at them with tender reverence. The flagship had been twice struck by enormous shells, and her vulnerable parts pierced by a storm of small projectiles. She had borne the brunt of the engagement, losing nearly half her crew. Her tonnage is only 4280 tons ; and her immediate antagonists were two Chinese ironclads of 7400 tons each. Outside, her cuirass shows no deep scars ; but my guide points proudly to the numerous patchings of the decks, the steel masting supporting the fighting-tops, the smoke-stack, and to certain terrible dents, with small cracks radiating from them, in the foot-thick steel of the barbette. He traces for us, below, the course of the thirty-a-half centimetre shell that entered the ship. “ When it came,” he tells us, “ the shock threw men into the air that high ” (holding his hand some two feet above the deck). “ At the same moment all became dark : you could not see your hand. Then we found that one of the starboard forward guns had been smashed, and the crew all killed. We had forty men killed instantly, and many more wounded ; no man escaped in that part of the ship. The deck was on fire, because a lot of ammunition brought up for the guns had exploded ; so we had to fight and to work to put out the fire at the same time. Even badly wounded men, with the skin blown from their hands and faces, worked as if they felt no pain, and dying men helped to pass water. But we silenced the Ting-yuen with one more shot from our big gun. The Chinese had European gunners helping them. If we had not had to fight against Western gunners, our victory would have been too easy.”

He gives the true note. Nothing, on this splendid spring day, could so delight the men of the Matsushima Kan as a command to clear for action, and attack the great belted Russian cruisers lying off the coast.

IV.

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.” ⁵

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 lost 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 Masashigé. 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 in gold, and on its summit a terrestrial globe surmounted by a hawk with outspread pinions.⁶

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, 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.) Some Japanese women in the crowd were visibly affected, feeling the reason of the change. But, for all that, the soldiers were better soldiers now ; and they were going to find welcome, and comforts, and gifts, and the great 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 Chösen, and out of the bitter sea, all our dead have come back, — all! They are with us now. At dusk they gather to hear the bugles that called them home. And they will hear them also in that hour when the armies of the Son of Heaven shall be summoned against Russia. ”

Lafcadio Hearn.