Runaway Horses (57 page)

JUDGE
: Aren’t you just saying this in a hasty attempt to redress matters in front of your companions, who just heard from the mouth of Miss Kito testimony that portrayed you as weak and irresolute?

IINUMA
: No, Your Honor. That’s not it at all.

JUDGE
: It seems to me that the witness, Miss Kito, is not the sort of person who is easily deceived. On the night in question, while Miss Kito heard you out, didn’t you have the impression that she was merely pretending to be deceived?

IINUMA
: Not at all, Your Honor. I was being very serious about it.

JUDGE
: Well now, Iinuma . . . you have talked of “the action” and of your “belief.” You had much to say on this in the written testimony. But what do you think about the connection between thought and deed?

IINUMA
: Pardon, Your Honor?

JUDGE
: Put it like this: why isn’t belief enough? Can’t patriotism simply remain a belief? Why must one go beyond that toward illegal acts, such as you had in mind? I would like to hear your opinion on this.

IINUMA
: Yes, Your Honor. In the philosophy of Wang Yang-ming there is something that is called congruity of thought and action: “To know and not to act is not yet to know.” And it was this philosophy that I strove to put into practice. If one knows of the decadence of Japan today, the dark clouds that envelop her future, the impoverished state of the farmers and the despair of the poor, if one knows all this is due to political corruption and to the unpatriotic nature of the
zaibatsu
, who thrive on this corruption, and knows that here is the source of the evil which shuts out the light of our most revered Emperor’s benevolence—with such knowledge, I think, the meaning of “to know and to act” becomes self-evident.

JUDGE
: That’s extremely abstract, I’d say. Take as much time as you need, but explain the development of your feelings, your indignation, your resolution.

IINUMA
: Very well, Your Honor. I gave myself over to the practice of kendo from boyhood, but when I realized that around the time of the Meiji Restoration youths had swords with which they fought actual combats, struck down injustice, and fulfilled the great task of the Restoration, I felt an indescribable dissatisfaction with the bamboo sword and the kendo of the drill halls. But as yet I had formed no definite idea of the sort of action that was right for me.

In 1930 there was the London Naval Conference, and even in school I was told what humiliating conditions had been forced upon us and how national security was imperiled. Just as my eyes were being opened to the dangers threatening the nation, there occurred the incident of Sagoya shooting Premier Hamaguchi. I then realized that the dark cloud that covered Japan was not something to be lightly shrugged off, and from that time on, I listened to what the teachers and older students had to say about current events, and, on my own, I began to read all sorts of things.

Gradually, I became acquainted with the problems of society. I was shocked at the inaction of the government in the face of the chronic depression that had been dragging on since the worldwide panic.

A mass of jobless wage-earners that reached two million, men who had formerly worked away from home and sent money back, now returned to their farming villages to aggravate the poverty already reigning there. I learned that there were great crowds at Yugyo Temple in Fujisawa where the monks dished out rice gruel to the unemployed who were walking home to the country, lacking the money for train fare. And yet the government, despite the gravity of the situation, responded only with nonchalant indifference, Minister of the Interior Antachi declaring: “Relief measures for the unemployed would make people frivolous and lazy, so I will do all I can to avoid such a harmful policy.”

Then in 1931, bad harvests struck Tohoku and Hokkaido. Whatever could be sold was sold, land and homes were lost, and the situation was such that whole families lived in stables, and people held starvation at bay by eating acorns and roots. Even in front of the township hall one saw notices such as: “Anyone wishing to sell his daughters, inquire within.” It was not at all rare for a soldier on his way off to war to bid a tearful farewell to his younger sister being sold to a brothel.

Beyond the hardship of the bad harvests, the stringent economic policy of the government after the lifting of the embargo on the export of gold laid ever heavier burdens on the farmers, and the panic in agriculture mounted to new heights. The Land of Abundant Rice, which was ancient Japan, was transformed into a wasteland populated by people sobbing from the pangs of hunger. And then the importing of rice, when there was more than enough rice within Japan, caused the price of rice to plunge disastrously. Meanwhile tenant farming grew by leaps and bounds, and more than half the crop a tenant produced had to go as rent, with not a single grain of rice going into the mouth of the farmer himself. The farmers had not one yen of currency. Trade was carried out by bartering. A pack of Shikishima cigarettes went for two quarts of rice, a haircut was four quarts, a pack of Golden Bat cigarettes was a hundred bunches of turnips, and twenty-six pounds of cocoons would bring in ten yen. That was the situation.

As you know, Your Honor, the farmers are breaking out in protest everywhere. There is danger that the farming villages will go Red. Even in the breasts of the young men who are being called to the imperial colors as loyal subjects one cannot find unalloyed patriotism, and that evil is beginning to infect the armed forces.

Giving no thought to these crises, the government plods along in the path of corruption. The
zaibatsu
has amassed vast sums through dollar buying and other policies ruinous to the nation, and no one pays any heed to the wretched misery of the masses. As a result of my varied reading and other research, I came to feel strongly that what had debased Japan to this extent was not just the sins of politicians. Much of the responsibility lay with the
zaibatsu
, who manipulated these politicians to satisfy their greedy craving for profit.

I never thought, however, of going over to the leftists. For the ideology of the leftists bore hostility toward the most revered person of His Sacred Majesty.

Japan from ancient days has been a land whose character was to reverence His Sacred Majesty, a harmonious land where the Emperor was held to be the head of the vast family that was the Japanese people. Here, I need hardly say, is the true image of the Emperor’s Land, a national character as everlasting as heaven and earth.

But what of this decadent Japan filled with people suffering from hunger? Why has this become such a degenerate age despite the revered person of the Emperor? Isn’t it the unparalleled virtue of the Emperor’s Land that the exalted ministers who serve at his side and the starving farmers in the remote villages of Tohoku are alike his children without difference or distinction? At first I firmly believed that the day would certainly come when the poor would be saved by the benevolence of His Sacred Majesty. Japan and the Japanese had for the time being gone somewhat astray. With the passage of time, the Yamato Spirit would reawaken in the hearts of her loyal subjects, and the whole nation working together would make the Emperor’s Land what it had been before. Such were the hopes that I once held. I had faith that the dark clouds would one day be blown away and that a bright and clear future lay ahead for Japan.

Wait as I might, however, that day did not come. The longer I waited, the darker the clouds became. Then I happened to read a book that struck me with the force of a revelation. This was the book of Tsunanori Yamao:
The League of the Divine Wind.
After I finished it, I was a different person. I realized that to go on merely sitting and waiting was hardly the behavior proper to a loyal man. Till that moment I had known nothing of desperate loyalty. Nor had I known that, once the flame of loyalty blazed up within one, it was necessary to die.

Over there the sun is shining. We cannot see it from here, but even the turgid gray light around us surely has the sun as its source, and so in one corner of the sky the sun must be shining. This sun is the true image of His Sacred Majesty. If the people could only bathe themselves in its rays, they would shout with joy. The desolate plain would then become fertile at once, and Japan, beyond any shadow of a doubt, would become once more the Land of Abundant Rice.

But the low-lying cloud of darkness covers the land and shuts off the light of the sun. Heaven and earth are cruelly kept apart, heaven and earth, which have but to meet to embrace smilingly, cannot even view each other’s sad faces. The sorrowful cries of the people cover the land but cannot reach the ears of heaven. To scream out is in vain, to weep, in vain, to protest, in vain. But if their voices could reach the ears of heaven, the power of heaven, as easily as you move your little finger, could clear away those dark clouds, could transform a marshy wasteland to a shining countryside.

Who was to carry word to heaven? Who, mounting to heaven through death, was to take upon himself the vital function of messenger? I perceived that this was what the valiant men of the League of the Divine Wind intended by their faith in the Ukei.

If we look on idly, heaven and earth will never be joined. To join heaven and earth, some decisive deed of purity is necessary. To accomplish so resolute an action, you have to stake your life, giving no thought to personal gain or loss. You have to turn into a dragon and stir up a whirlwind, tear the dark, brooding clouds asunder and soar up into the azure-blue sky.

Of course I thought of gathering a vast number of arms and men and sweeping the sky clear of darkness before mounting to heaven. But I gradually came to realize that that was unnecessary. The valiant men of the League, wielding their Japanese swords, fought their way into a camp of infantry armed with modern weapons. All I had to do was to direct myself at that spot where the clouds were darkest, that point where their soiled texture was thickest and most filthy. All I had to do was to tear open a hole there, with all my might, and soar to heaven alone.

I never thought in terms of killing people, only of destroying the deadly spirit that was poisoning Japan. And to do so I had to tear away the robe of flesh with which this spirit was garbed. By this action the souls of those whom we cut down would also become pure, and the bright, wholesome Yamato Spirit would come alive in their hearts again. And they, with my comrades and me, would rise to heaven. For we in turn, after destroying their flesh, had to commit seppuku immediately. Why? Because if we did not cast aside our own flesh as soon as possible, we could not fulfill our duty as bearers of an urgent message for heaven.

Even speculating on the Imperial Mind is disloyal. Loyalty, I think, is nothing else but to throw down one’s life in reverence for the Imperial Will. It is to tear asunder the dark clouds, climb to heaven, and plunge into the sun, plunge into the midst of the Imperial Mind.