at the temple of Saitokuji in Tōkyō. Following the routine customary in such cases, Lieutenant Ōhara left a paper setting forth the motives of his act, the only innovation being that this document was directed to be forwarded to the Tōkyō News Agency for publication in all the newspapers. The writer, it seems, had brooded for eleven years over the likelihood of Russian encroachment, and feeling that his living words and efforts were doomed to fruitlessness, resolved to try what his death might effect. In this particular instance no immediate result was obtained. Nevertheless Ōhara's self-sacrifice, its origin in political considerations, and the expectation that an appeal from the grave would move men's hearts more surely than any arguments urged by a living voice,—all this was in complete accord with Japanese ways of thinking. The government had no sooner yielded to the pressure of France, Russia, and Germany in 1895 by giving up the conquered territory of Liao-tung, than forty military men committed suicide in the ancient way. As we sit correcting these proofs in June, 1904, news comes of many officers and men on board a captured transport ripping themselves up rather than surrender to the foe. Even women are found ready to kill themselves for loyalty and duty, but the approved method in their case is cutting the throat. Nowise strange, but admirable according to Japanese ideas, was it that when, in 1895, the tidings of Lieutenant Asada's death on the battle-field, were brought to his young wife, she at once, and with her father's consent, resolved to follow him. Having thoroughly cleansed the house and arrayed herself in her costliest robes, she placed her husband's portrait in the alcove, and prostrating herself before it, cut her throat with a dagger that had been a wedding gift.
The courage to take life—be it one's own or that of others—ranks extraordinarily high in public esteem. It would appear as if political assassination were at once forgiven, when the desperado seals it with his own blood. Nishino Buntarō, the Shintō fanatic who stabbed the Minister of Education, Viscount Mori, on the day of the proclamation of the Constitution in 1889, and who himself perished in the fray, was worshipped almost as a god,
