Eventually, however, the project became redundant. After a time Tojo ceased to trust the Purple Machine and decided to replace it with that famous Nazi invention, the Enigma Machine. (On that one, Ken had added with a touch of irony, Toshi Noda was well vindicated. The Enigma Machine code had already been cracked by the Allies long before Hitler—declaring it unbreakable—delivered it to Tokyo.)
Toshi Noda resembled his older brother Matsuo physically, but he differed radically in outlook, being a devout Buddhist and a pacifist. After the stunning Japanese bloodbath at Saipan, which demonstrated the war was clearly lost, he'd been one of those imprudent citizens who'd spoken out publicly for peace. Not surprisingly, he was immediately placed under surveillance by the Kempei Tai, Japan's secret police, and shortly thereafter jailed.
After three months' internment he was released a broken man. A week later he committed ritual seppuku, disemboweling himself for the crime of having disgraced the family.
Toshi Noda's diaries, published posthumously and read widely in Japan, revealed his deep repugnance for the wartime
government. He believed that Prime Minister Tojo had become, in effect, a neo-shogun. Although the shogunate supposedly had been abolished when Emperor Meiji took control and opened Japan in 1867, Toshi Noda saw it restored with Tojo, another "shogun" who had come along and isolated the country once again. Nonetheless, he'd been a man of few words. His death poem, written only moments before he put the knife to his stomach, was as simple and intense as his life.
Darkness upon Yamato,
Land of the gods,
Awaits the new dawn—
Ten-no-Heika.
That last was a traditional phrase that, simply translated, meant "son of heaven." For a Japanese, though, the overtones are more; they say "the way of the emperor."