五十六

I had all but forgotten the word *junshi*—death by following one’s lord in death. It is a word with no place in ordinary life, and it seems to have sunk to the bottom of my memory, half-rotted there. When my wife’s jest brought it back to me, I answered her that if I were ever to commit such a death, it would be in following the spirit of the Meiji era. My answer was of course no more than a jest, yet at that moment I felt as though I had managed to pour some new meaning into an old, useless word.

Then about a month passed. On the night of the great state funeral, I sat as usual in my study and heard the signal cannon. To me it sounded like the announcement that Meiji had departed forever. As I thought later, it was also the announcement that General Nogi had departed forever. Newspaper in hand, I found myself crying out to my wife, “Junshi! Junshi!”

In the papers I read what General Nogi had left behind before his death. When I came upon the line saying that ever since the enemy took his flag during the Satsuma Rebellion he had thought he must die to atone, and had thus lived on until this day, I unconsciously counted on my fingers the years Nogi had survived while resolved to die. The Satsuma Rebellion was in the tenth year of Meiji, so there is a distance of thirty-five years to the forty-fifth year of Meiji. It seemed General Nogi had spent those thirty-five years thinking he must die, waiting for the chance. I wondered which was the harder for such a man: the thirty-five years he lived, or the single instant he drove the blade into his belly.

Then two or three days later, I at last made up my mind to kill myself. Just as I could not fully grasp why General Nogi died, you too may not clearly understand why I am to die; but if so, it is simply the difference between people brought on by the drift of the times, and there is no help for it. Or perhaps it is more truly the difference in the character each person is born with. I have done my utmost in the account so far to make this incomprehensible self of mine intelligible to you.

I leave my wife behind. It is fortunate that even without me she need not worry over food, clothing, or shelter. I do not wish to give my wife a cruel shock. I mean to die without showing her the color of blood. I will slip out of this world quietly, while she knows nothing. After I am dead, I want my wife to think I died suddenly. Even to be thought mad would satisfy me.

It has been more than ten days since I resolved to die; think of most of that time as spent writing this one chapter of a long autobiography for you. At first I meant to meet you and speak, but once I began to write, it felt rather as though I could depict myself more clearly, and I was glad. I do not write on a whim. The past that bore me is, as a fragment of human experience, something no one but I can tell; my effort to leave it written without falsehood, I believe, will not be in vain for you or for others who would know humankind. Only the other day I heard that Watanabe Kazan delayed his death by a week to paint the picture *Kantan*. Seen from outside it might be taken for needless trouble, yet for the man himself there was a demand suited to him, and one might say he could not help it. My effort too is not merely to keep my promise to you. More than half of it is the result of being moved by a need of my own.

But now I have met that need. There is nothing left to do. By the time this letter reaches your hands, I will no longer be in this world. I will be dead. My wife went about ten days ago to her aunt’s in Ichigaya. The aunt is ill and short of help, so I urged her to go. During my wife’s absence I wrote most of this long account. When she came home now and then, I hid it at once.

I mean to offer my past, good and bad alike, for others’ reference. But understand that my wife alone is the one exception. I want to tell her nothing. My only wish is to let her keep, as pure and white as may be, the memory she holds of our past; so even after I am dead, so long as she lives, keep all as a secret confided to you alone, and lock it in your breast.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”