On that long-looked-for day, we were ordered to assemble on the parade ground at six o’clock in the morning.
Our joy was boundless, the time had come at last for the greatest action of our lives. “The brave man is not without tears, but those tears are not shed in the moment of separation,” so the expression goes. Of course, we were as ready and willing to welcome the worst as the best, but because of this very resolve and expectation we could not help thinking of eternal separation,—parent from child, man from wife, and brother from sister. “Tears even in the eyes of an oni.”[17] How could we be without unseen tears, though valiantly forced back under a cheerful smile!
On the night previous to departure, I took out my old friends’ photographs to look at, made tidy the drawers of my desk, and so arranged everything that my affairs would be quite clear to my surviving friends. And then I went to sleep my last sleep on the mats peacefully and contentedly.
At three o’clock in the morning, the cannon roared three times from the tower of the castle. I jumped out of bed, cleansed my person with pure water, donned the best of my uniforms, bowed to the east where the great Sire resides, solemnly read his Proclamation of War, and told His Majesty that his humble subject was just starting to the front. When I offered my last prayers—the last, I then believed they were—before the family shrine of my ancestors, I felt a thrill going all through me, as if they were giving me a solemn injunction, saying, “Thou art not thy own. For His Majesty’s saké, thou shalt go to save the nation from calamity, ready to bear even the crushing of thy bones, and the tearing of thy flesh. Disgrace not thy ancestors by an act of cowardice.” My family and relatives gathered around me to give me a farewell cup of saké, and to congratulate me on my joyous start.
“Don’t worry at all about your home affairs—put into practice all your long-cherished good resolutions. For your death your father is quite ready. Add a flower of honor to our family name by distinguished service to the country.” This from my father.
“Please, sir, don’t be anxious about me. This is the greatest opportunity a soldier can possibly have. Only, do take good care of your delicate self.” This from myself.
Such an exchange of sentiments between father and son must have taken place almost simultaneously in a great many families.
When the time had come for me to start, I took up and put on the sword that had been placed in the family shrine, drank the farewell cup of water[18] my dear mother had filled, and left my home with light heart and light feet, expecting to cross its threshold no more.
One officer was just going to the front in high spirits when, on the night previous to his departure, his beloved wife died, leaving a little baby behind. He had, however, no time to see her laid in her last place of rest. Bravely, though with tears hardly suppressed, he started early in the morning. Private sorrow must give way before national calamity, but human nature remains the same forever. This unfortunate officer’s sad dreams in camp must have frequently wandered around the pole[19] marking her burial-place, and about the pillow of the baby crying after its mother.