Foreign News: Honorable Suicides

Died. General Korechika Anami, Army bureaucrat and War Minister in the Suzuki Cabinet; and Vice Admiral Takejiro Onishi, originator of Kamikaze (“divine wind,” i.e., suicide) tactics; both by harakiri, induced by the Japanese surrender; in Tokyo.

General Anami was a military mystic. He once called on Japan’s soldiers “to defend the Imperial land even after death with your souls.” When he heard the news of his son’s death in battle, his only visible emotion was to crush a flower bud in his hand. He held out against surrender. Before committing harakiri, he wrote a farewell to his Emperor (“I humbly beg . . . pardon … for my great sins”) and a poem:

Not even a half word

To be left behind

For benevolence has been bestowed upon me

By His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor.

Vice Admiral Takejiro Onishi, who was apparently elevated for the suicide from vice chief to chief of the Navy general staff, left a note to the “spirits” of his Kamikaze corps: “With my death I desire to make atonement to the souls of … you who fell gallantly as human bullets. … I also have a message to the young men at large. . . . You are the treasure of the nation. Attend properly to your peacetime circumstances. . . . Maintaining steadfastly the spirit of the Special Attack Corps, do your utmost for the revival of the Japanese race.”

There is a right and a wrong way to commit harakiri. In the case of General Anami and Vice Admiral Onishi, it is presumed that they donned the usual ceremonial robes, knelt on a dais, surrounded by friends and officials. When the jeweled hara-kiri dagger had been handed to them, they would have made many bows to the Emperor. Then they would have plunged the razor-like dagger into the left side below the waist, at the same time drawing it toward the right. They would thus have fulfilled the hara-kiri command: to die with honor, when it is no longer possible to live with honor.