‘As for other matters not mentioned above, they are to be taken care of by Shizuko, and you are requested to consult her. During the lifetime of Shizuko, the name of the house of Count Nogi shall be honoured. But when her life is finished, the goal of extinction of the Nogi line shall be accomplished.’
The will is dated the First Year of Taishō, September 12, in the evening, signed ‘Maresuke’ and addressed to Yūji Sadamoto, Countess Nogi’s brother, Odate Shūsaku, the General’s brother, Masayuki Tamaki, the General’s nephew, and Shizuko. It appears evident from the will that the General previously confided his intention of committing suicide to the Countess and that she was to live on.
Day after day, Ryūnosuke kept buying the newspapers, all of the newspapers, and day after day Ryūnosuke kept reading account after account of the deaths of General Nogi and his wife:
HOW AND WHY THE GREAT HERO WISHED
TO DIE WITH EMPEROR
DEATH PLANNED FOR YEARS
WONDERFUL FORTITUDE OF THE COUNTESS
Baron Ishiguro, Surgeon-General and a close relative of the late General Count Nogi, gave an interview to the press representatives Monday afternoon. For the benefit of the public, Baron Ishiguro gave a detailed account of General Nogi and his wife.
‘General Nogi requested me in his will,’ said the Baron, ‘to offer his remains for surgical dissection or for some other use for the benefit of medicine. His body, however, is of but little medical value, as he died by cutting the artery in the neck and not from any other disease. But to carry out the special will of the General, I have offered his body to Dr Katayama and military surgeons Drs Tsuruda and Haga for medical examination.
‘General and Countess Nogi were found in the living room, which was locked within. And the questions are how General Nogi died and which died first, he or his wife. The customary way to commit seppuku, as performed by the bushi, is to cut the abdomen just deep enough to bleed, and then give a fatal thrust through the throat, because the cutting of the abdomen is not sufficient to put an end to life. General Nogi performed seppuku after this customary fashion. It appears that, having cut the abdomen, he readjusted his clothes, and then thrust, piercing it through to the left posterior, the sword in the right side of the neck part. This forceful thrust must have put an end to his life immediately as it completely cut the arteries.
‘At first we surmised that the General killed himself after assuring himself of the death of his wife. But that that was not the case is evident in his letter addressed to me, in which he says his wife is perfectly willing to follow him to death. Judging from the character of Countess Nogi, it seems that when he told her of his intention, she must have tried to dissuade him from the deed, but finding his resolution too firm she decided to follow her husband.
‘Countess Nogi was dressed in mourning, with a dull coloured gown and a hakama of light orange shade. The weapon she used was a dagger about a foot long. She inflicted four wounds upon herself. One wound was in her hand. First she appears to have thrust the dagger into the middle of her breast, and then into her right side between the ribs; this thrust was about an inch and a half deep. Perhaps still fearing that the wound would not be fatal, she must have given herself the third and last thrust, which went through the heart. By the time she gave herself this last thrust, she had been considerably weakened by the first two wounds. Not having the strength to drive the weapon into her breast, she fell prostrate upon it, thus pushing it almost up to the hilt.
‘Personally, I have seen not a few cases of seppuku, and know that in performing the act, if one fails to kill himself by the first thrust, he is not able to put sufficient strength into the second thrust to put an end to his life. However, Countess Nogi, woman as she was, gave herself three powerful thrusts, and died in a most noble and decorous way.’
General Count and Countess Nogi, having locked the door from within, sat side by side facing the portrait of the late Emperor, and killed themselves in the brave style described above. On a desk in the room were found a heap of letters and other papers, including General Nogi’s will. Among those papers, two poems by the General and one by the Countess were also found. General Nogi composed the following two poems just before he killed himself: ‘God-like has he now ascended, our great lord, and his august traces, from afar, do we humbly revere’ and ‘It is I who go, following the path of the great lord who has departed this transient world.’
Countess Nogi left the following poetical composition: ‘I hear there is no Sun to return, as He departed, So sad to face the august procession today.’
Day after day, Ryūnosuke kept reading account after account of the deaths of General Nogi and his wife, kept reading the accounts and kept staring at the photographs, day after day Ryūnosuke kept staring at the photographs of General Nogi and his wife, and day after day Ryūnosuke kept wondering, staring at the photographs and reading the accounts; the initially somewhat contradictory and contested newspaper accounts, accounts filled with the words ‘suicide’, ‘harakiri’, ‘seppuku’ and then, finally, ‘junshi’.
Ryūnosuke had never read the word ‘junshi’ in a newspaper before the death of General Nogi; he had only read of it in novels or history books. Ryūnosuke had learnt that the samurai practice of following one’s lord in death had been outlawed by the Tokugawa Shōgunate in the third year of the Kanbun era, in 1663. It scarcely seemed believable to Ryūnosuke that one of the most famous figures of Meiji, one of the very
