The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-04-12

Eye to Prove His Courage ana
Saved Canary Birds In the Midst Of
Battle.
It is announced that the Russian SOL
diers moving out to meet the Japanese
forces carry holy icons, or images, and
that General Kuropatkin on leaving
st. Petersburg to take command OF the
imperial army in Manchuria carried
with him more than forty icons and q
jeweled shrine, all gifts from his
friends and admirers, says James
Creelman in the New York World.
One does not hear much of that sort
Of thing from the war correspondents
in Japan. The moral inspiration OF the
Japanese soldier, which makes him
unique among the fighting men of the
world, does not derive from Buddhism
nor from Shinto, the state church OF
Japan, but from bushido, or the way
Of the warrior, af ethical cult prevail
ing among the samurai, or military
caste. AS the mikado is a sort OF
warrior demigod and the profession of
arms outranks every other occupation
In Japan it is natural that the stern
spirit of the way Of the warrior should
survive all changes in Japanese civ
ilization.
General Yamagi, whose division cap
tured Port Arthur and Talienwan ten
years ago, plucked one Of his eyes out
at school as a reply to a playmate who
doubted his courage. And yet at the
battle OF Talienwan l was present
when he ordered the canary cages
found in the forts to be opened and the
birds set free, lest they should starve
to death. That order was given while
the Chinese cannon were still thunder
ing. 1t was he who was mainly re-
sponsible for the great massacre Of
unarmed Manchurians at Port Arthur.
In many respects Yamagi is a type of
the samurai spirit fighting in a modern
dress.
1t is impossible to understand what
1t is that makes the Japanese army SO
formidable without taking into &C
count the traditional heroics of the
way of the warrior. 1t is a stole
rather than a fatalistic creed. TO the
soldier 1t stands in the place Of a re
ligion or a moral system. 1t is founded
on the virilities, on devotion to 8
sword bearing caste, whose highes'
obligation is to die without question
for the divinely ordained warrior lord.
1t is true that many of the grewsomt
practices of the bushido have faller
into disuse, but it's underlying spiri
animates the Japanese army today.
> Captain Brinkley, the well know
writer ON Japan, says in explanation o
the way of the warrior:
Because b~readwinning was original,
the business of those not physically quail
fed to be soldiers the bushi regarded
money with Indifference and even con
tempt. To be swayed in the smallest de
gree by mercenary motives was despica
, BILE in his eyes.
This tradition largely, accounts TO
; the ordinary aversion of the japanese
: army to the practice of footing. Cap
e tain Brinkley, continuing, says:
The bushi was essentially a stole. H
/ made self control the ideal of his eX
istence and practiced the courageous en-
: durance of suffering so thoroughly tina
' he could without hesitation infiict on hi
e own body pain Of the severest description
The power of ~surrendering life with he
rotc calmnes has been developed by me
> in all ages and is regarded by philoso
= piers as an elementary form of hulna
virtue, practiced with most success in a
uncivilized state of society before the line
appropriations of the imaginative and in
= tellectual faculties nave been develope
by education. But the courage of tn
bushi cannot justly be ascribed to blunt
ness of moral sensibility resulting fror
= s~emisavage conditions of life. The cul
rent Of existence in Japan, from the Mar
q epoch onward, set with general steadines
q in the direction of artistic refinement an
voluptuous luxury, amid which men coul
J scarcely fail to acquire habits and taste
inconsistent with acts of high courage c
great endurance. The bushi's mood, there
fore, was not a product of ~semibarbarou
" conditions, but rather a protest agains
e~masculating civilization.
He schooled himself to regard deaf
inflicted by his own HAND as a norma
: ~eventuality. The story of other nation
shows epochs when death was welcome
as a relief and deliberately invited as
refuge from the mere WEAKNESS of Ii,
ing. But wherever there has been libert
to choose and leisure to employ a painles
j. mode of exit from the world men have II
variably selected it.
The bushi. however, deliberately adop
ed a mode of suicide SO painful and s
n shocking that to school the mind to n
r. gard it with Indifference was a feat nj
n easy to conceive. His method was
4 plunge a short sword into the left side
~ the abdomen, sweep it across to the RICH
re giving it a sharp turn upward at the er