TRAINING FOR DEATH

Commonwealth and Foreign

By WILLARD PRICE

YOU cannot assess the Japanese army numerically. Japanese officers have often protested to me with a smile that the Japanese soldier is not a whit superior mentally, morally or physically to the soldier of the West. Yet they insist that he is, in fact, " a better soldier," because, unlike other soldiers, he courts death as his greatest honour.

The training of men who will go to their doom with the unswerving directness of robots is a weird and unworldly process. It begins two thousand years before the soldier is born. Bushido has taught the Japanese race to think well of itself, and the Japanese individual to regard himself as nothing but dirt to be ground under the chariot wheels of the progress of his race. The One must give himself for the All. What better racial tradition could there be for the making of die- easy soldiers ?

Active military training begins at the age of six. Boys in the first year of primary school are taught to march, drill, do the goose-step, sing war songs and marshal platoons of wooden soldiers. When they reach middle school at twelve years of age they are provided with light rifles and a uniform with brass buttons. Military instructors take them in hand and drill them thoroughly in the manual of arms. There is a parade ground and drill hall in connexion with every middle school. Also there is a sacred vault containing the pictures of the Emperor and Empress, and these are taken out upon special occasions and venerated by the assembled students. There are frequent excursions to military shrines and war memorials.

Each year there are military manoeuvres of schoolboys. In a recent demonstration of this sort ten thousand students participated. They were divided into two opposing " armies," the one intrenching itself along a river-bank, the other attack- ing the position an hour before dawn. The " armies " were equipped with blank-loaded rifles, machine guns, grenades and field guns, and were commanded by regular army officers.

Perhaps more important than all this is " Morals." It is a required subject in every primary and middle school. From age six to seventeen the future soldier is drilled, not in morals as we would understand the subject, but in " Morals " with an imperial M—loyalty to the immediate family, the larger family which is called the nation, and the Emperor who is the Father of all. This goes on until many students when asked " What is your dearest wish ? " will sincerely enough set down this answer : " To die for my beloved Emperor." After graduation, the Young Men's Association continues the work. It has a branch in every village, and its aim is to make patriots. Then comes conscription. The young Japanese must put forth his best effort to be conscripted, and does so, for it is considered an honour. He must first pass a stiff examination. Those who pass are further weeded down by a ballot so arranged that only one out of eight can succeed. The others are drafted into the Reserve.

The new recruits are acclaimed by the commanding officers in special ceremonies, and letters of instruction are sent to their homes so that their families may know the conduct becoming to the relatives of a soldier. His life, which as been claimed by the Emperor, they must consider before their own. They must in no circumstances be a handicap to him in the performance of his duty. Many a mother has committed suicide rather than be a burden upon her soldier-son. No great sensation was created recently when two small boys who would have no one to care for them if their father obeyed the call to active service in Manchuria bared their bodies to his sword and died with the Emperor's name on their lips.

The conscript's required two years with the colours are spent in a graduated course of hardships. Whatever topo- graphical features the country round may possess are used to the greatest possible disadvantage. If there are mountains, they must be climbed where the climbing is hardest. If there are marshes, they must be waded. Rivers in flood are crossed by raft or improvised bridge. Deep snow is an invita- tion to an exhausting " snow march." The bitterest days in winter and the hottest in summer are seized upon as appro- priate times for field exercises. When the ground is frozen, trench-digging is the order of the day.

All this is intended to give not merely physical training, but moral stamina It does breed a fighting machine that is obtuse to discomfort, seeks always to submit itself to new tests, and looks upon self-sacrifice as the normal way of life. Or of death. Death rather than surrender is no platitude in the Japanese army, but a strict rule of conduct. To be taken prisoner is " a dishonour of the greatest magnitude." During the Shanghai incident, Major Koga, lying unconscious on the field, was taken prisoner. When released he went to a military shrine and committed seppuku. Fellow officers approved, in spite of the fact that his capture had been no fault of his own. General Araki praised Koga as a hero. " Whatever the circumstances," he declared, " one cannot expect to live after being taken prisoner by the enemy."

It is always a simple matter in the Japanese army to get volunteers to serve as human bombs, or to ride within tor- pedoes to certain death, or to wedge their bodies into the muzzles of cannon so that the obstruction may blow the artillery to bits before it may fall into the hands of the enemy.

This does not mean that the Japanese soldier is braver than any other. It is the natural outcome of the ever-preached doctrine of self-immolation for the public good.

Because the army is the chief exponent of this doctrine of sacrifice it has some right to be called, as University students have solemnly described it to me, " the greatest spiritual force in Japan." The army is Japan's church and religion. Buddhism is weak in comparison. As for Shinto, it has become largely identified with the army. Many of its shrines are war memorials. When, Christian students objected to bowing before Shinto shrines the Education Minister issued a state- ment to the effect that such obeisance was not to be inter- preted as an act of religion, but of patriotism. He might have said, " the religion of patriotism."

The army is the will of the nation. While deeply sympa- thetic with the people, the military appear to believe as Hegel did that " the people is that portion of the state that does not know what it wills." Benignly and boldly the army thinks for the people. Is it best for the people to have Manchuria ?

The army decides. The army and navy are responsible to no Parliament or Cabinet. They are answerable to the throne alone. They are in a peculiar sense the people's high priests to the God-Emperor.

" The cherry is the best of flowers, the soldier the best of men." So runs the Japanese proverb, and so also runs the conviction of the average citizen. The Chinese consider their best too good to put into the army ; the Japanese consider that no one can fully measure up to this sacred trust.

They provide their defender with modern military equip- ment and a perfectly useless sword. And the sword is more important than all the modern machinery of war. It clanks and rattles like something real, but it is actually a psychological sword, a sword of the spirit, the sword of Galahad. It may never be unsheathed, yet it gives the soldier power over his enemies. It is the old samurai symbol of devotion and sacrifice. With it beside him he feels that his strength is as the strength of ten ; because the honour of bearing it permits him no thought except the service of his Emperor, and its sharp blade assures him of death rather than dishonour.