It is significant of the very different spirit with which the Japanese and the Russians entered on this war that an intensely poetic, imaginative and musical people like the latter have no songs about the conflict save one very long and very dull ballad written by an Orenburg Cossack; while the Japanese, a materialistic people without music, have produced a considerable number of rousing war songs. Many of these songs are written to European and American airs, but the style is typically Japanese — that is, the hearer is generally left to guess at the meaning, for even Kipling himself is not as cryptic sometimes as a Japanese ballad-maker. One song, a great favourite among the soldiers, goes to the air of" Marching through Georgia." The chorus runs like this: —
Heerah! heerah! to goon kan kee! Heerah! heerah! to nisho kee! Itsu tzu no chayenju fu setsu ritzu shee Kai beewo genishay you ya!
A rough and ready translation of the above would be:
Hurrah! hurrah! for our sun-burst flag! Hurrah! hurrah! for our rising sun flag! Five naval camps have been formed! Five impregnable war-ports are ready.
Another, beginning "Ana uray-shee yoriko-bashi," may be translated as follows:
O! gladly, gladly, I welcome the battle!
We are victorious!
Many foemen fell before us!
All the enemy are gone.
Glorious, glorious, this victory for my country, for my
Emperor! Happy any of us whom death awaits!
Chorus.
Fight for country! Fight for Emperor!
Mother said to me, " Be patriotic! "
Joyful will my father be to hear of this great day.
Homeward, full of honours, shall we finally return.
The happy day of meeting with our parents is not far.
These songs indicate that the Japanese are coming into line with the rest of the nations. In fact, they are now introducing regimental singing and shouting after the Russian fashion. The officers are even beginning to drink Scotch whisky. Like all novices, they dislike it, but the time will come when they cannot do without it. I have, therefore, said a good deal about them as they now are, because in their next war they will have lost all the charm of originality which they now possess.
As we watched the sea one day we saw a whale spouting, and the Japanese officers described to me with great vivacity the way the fishermen capture whales at a certain island called Oshima, not far from Kobe. The animal is first lured into shallow water, and made fast. Then follows a scene the description of which reminded me of gory Bacchanalian rites. All the people of the village swarm round the great helpless beast, and, while it is still alive, make huge wounds in it, into which bloody openings naked men plunge bodily, emerging again covered from head to foot with blood, and evidently intoxicated by the experience, for they shout and dance like madmen and
slash the still quivering body with their knives. The Japanese seemed to revel in these horrible details; but I, on the contrary, rather sympathised with the poor whale, just as I had sympathised with Russia while that gigantic and unwieldy Empire was receiving stab after stab from these fanatical little islanders. To make the parallel more exact, the Japanese had often during the great heats of the previous summer charged the Russian positions in a state of total nudity. At Haicheng, hundreds of them had fallen before a strong Russian position on which they had rushed with no clothing save rifles, bayonets, a belt for carrying cartridges, and a cap to protect their eyes from the sun. The pile of naked corpses which lay in front of that Russian trench reminded me of a mediaeval battle-field after the corpse-strippers had done their work.
Japan! Japan! Seventh Great Power! Enfant mystdrieux of the world! The keel of the Awa Maru cuts at last through the deep narrow seas which intervene between the innumerable, green, tumbled, rocky islands, amid the gnarled pines on whose slopes and summits is bred this extraordinary race of soldiers. We are now in the lion's mouth. We have entered the one country in the world where the white man has not prevailed.
We are now among those ultimate, mysterious islands wherein the forlorn hope of Asia is fashioning its thunderbolts. And what a beautiful land it has chosen for that deadly work! How lovely are these volcanic peaks emerging from the most profound abysses of Ocean! The Japanese do not believe in Adam's sin, and I do not blame them for their disbelief, for theirs is the world before the Fall. I can well believe their legends which say that these beauteous isles were born of the gods, and grew up, little by little, like children.