JAPAN: Sea Noon

Dark clouded the Yellow Sea. Long swaying fingers pointed skyward—masts. Aboard the Japanese flagship Mikasa the captains of the fleet faced their admiral across a lacquer tray containing the instruments used in committing harakiri.

Heihachiro Togo, Admiral of the Fleet, spoke with low purring earnestness. When he fell silent his captains filed past the lacquer tray one by one. Their eyes met firmly the piercing glance of Togo.

None would allow himself to survive the disgrace of defeat in the coming action. . . . When battle came, the Admiral stood for a whole day unscathed on the bridge of his flagship, while half the officers who stood with him were hit by fragments of shells. . . . Forced to display a valor equally prodigious, his captains did not fail him. . . . Port Arthur fell.* Colossal Russia reeled. Minute Japan took rank among the mighty. From that day began in earnest the struggle for sea power which placed Japan at the Washington Conference (1921) on a 3 5-5† basis ± with the U. S. and Britain (see p. 11). Last week the Japanese Minister of Marine, Admiral Takeshi Takarabe, launched a campaign to secure, an additional expenditure next year of $60,000,000 on the Japanese fleet.

The Minister of Marine, speaking before 1,000 notables gathered to watch the launching of the cruiser Kinugasa last week at Kobe, spoke with feeling of great Admiral Togo, now 78, who lay at that moment ill—and perhaps dying— in the modest house which he occupies in a suburb of Tokyo. The fleet has been built up by men like Admiral Togo, samurai (“military nobles”) who went to England in their youth, drank at the authentic font of naval lore, and came home to instruct and inspire their countrymen. Japan requires a navy now as never before. The European nations, emerging from their mutual war preoccupation, will soon begin again to interpenetrate the Orient in earnest. Beside the problems of defense, Japan is faced with the eventual necessity of seeking new outlets for her population. Even if these be won by military conquest, on the adjacent continent the Occidental powers must be prevented from interfering by the warboats of Japan.

Reflections such as these moved the Minister of Marine to say last week: “Our budget for the year balances at 4,077,960,000 yen ($1,999,000,000). Of this only 469,200,000 yen ($230,000,000) is appropriated to naval replacements. . . . Remember that Germany’s defeat was due to an economic blockade! . . . We ask only 122,400,000 more yen ($60,000,000), this year, to replace auxiliary craft now ready to be scrapped. . . . Surely Japan is not so poor that she cannot pay this sum to maintain her present fighting strength! . . . The dawn of our modern naval history has been glorious. The high noon of Japanese sea power must be worthy of our naval heroes who walk with Count Togo through the twilight of life. . . .”

Togo. Though he lay abed last week, it is not long since Admiral Count Heihachiro Togo, short even for a Japanese, shy even for a hero, sat often in his garden of a morning, puffing his little silver pipe in the solitude which he loves.

A silent man, he reputedly took leave of his wife on the occasion of his departure for the Port Arthur action with the words: “Madame, be so good as to take excellent care of my dogs.” When he returned, a world hero, his one extravagance was to purchase from the court photographer the sole negative of himself then in existence in Japan. From this the photographer had been making prints of the Admiral which he sold at a high price. Togo, having purchased the negative, destroyed it, saying:. “I am shocked to find that people . . . spend money on the portrait of such a stupid person.”

Such words are characteristic of the man. His dogs were of paramount importance to him, for with them he delighted to go on long completely solitary hunting trips. He was shocked at the squandering of money on his portrait, for he himself spends every copper sen (.005c) with the utmost circumspection—and once squelched attempts to start a popular subscription from which he would hava received 1,000,000 yen ($487,000).

From the Tenno* to whom he is what von Tirpitz was to Wilhelm II, Admiral Togo accepted, perforce, The Grand Order of the Chrysanthemum, The First Order of the Golden Kite, and his creation in 1907 as a count. At the time of his capture of Port Arthur the State declared the victory due to “the Virtue of the Tenno.” The Tenno ascribed it to the intercession of his ancestors. Admiral Togo, asked which of these theories he favored, replied gravely and laconically: “Both.”

*January 2, 1905.

†The figures 3-5-5 represent the relative naval strengths in capital ships of Japan, the U. S. and Britain (TIME, May 26) at present. In 1905 the figures 1-2-6 represented the relative strengths of these nations in the battle ships then current. Russia, on this latter scale, would have been represented by the figure 2.

*Only foreigners refer to the Emperor by the poetic title “Mikado.”