The Grand Desire to Die for the Emperor

Not only were Japanese soldiers encouraged by the military and society at large to go off to war to die on behalf of the Emperor, there was apparently an ardent desire on the part of soldiers to achieve this lofty yet morbid aim. Countless examples of soldiers aspiring a self-sacrificing death can be found in the fictional narratives of the pre-Pacific War era. Soldier authors who wrote during the battles on the China mainland expressed in passionate terms almost a craving to die. In the Russo-Japanese War tale Nikudan [Human Bullets, 1906], the author Sakurai Tadayoshi (1869-1965) refers to the determination of soldiers to ‘turn into dust’. This narrative is an account of soldiers who declare that they ‘stand ready to die!’ and who believe that ‘by these actions, the soldiers had never forgotten our desire to return the Imperial favour and beneficence with death, and death only’. Three decades later, in the novel Mugi to heitai [Wheat and Soldiers, 1938], Hino Ashihei (1907-1960) wrote of the protagonist's wish to shout ‘Banzai’ at the point of death. This work, wildly popular at the time of its publication, also expressed the notion that soldiers were above the average human in their ability to face death. ‘Soldiers have passed beyond the banal philosophy humans hold. They have passed beyond death itself’. Taking on the persona of the protagonist of his novel, Hino himself expressed his own willingness to die when, referring to himself by one of his pennames (Kappa), he wrote, ‘Now I am ready to die, so the road for Kappa is very bright’.

Written during the harsh censorship regime of the pre-war era, the two narratives referred to above were indisputably produced to comply with official requirements and undoubtedly served a propaganda purpose. As we have seen, much of the rhetoric surrounding death as honour was rehashed from the code of the samurai, Bushidō. Zen master and military chaplain Seki Seisetsu (1877-1945) wrote in his work ‘The Promotion of Bushidō’ [Bushidō no Kōryō, 1942] that Bushidō was said to ‘prize military prowess and view death as so many goose feathers [… and that samurai] revered their sovereign and honored their ancestors […]’.