Suicidal Honor: General Nogi and the Writings of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki (review)

Most people with a general knowledge of modern Japan's history are familiar with how General Nogi Maresuke's act of seppuku in 1912 engendered a mixture of shock, admiration, awe, and revulsion among the Japanese of the day. We know, too, that its effects continued to reverberate in a variety of ways in Japanese culture throughout Taishō and beyond. Unfortunately, for most of us, that tends to be the limit of our knowledge.

Nogi's suicide is normally explained as a manifestation of his sense of guilt and obligation to the Meiji emperor, harbored for thirty-five years after his unit lost the imperial flag during the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion; the emperor refused his request to die by his own hand at the time, but Nogi finally fulfilled his wish as a form of "following one's lord into death" (junshi) at a moment that coincided with the departure of the emperor's funeral cortege from the imperial palace. While Doris Bargen does not dissent from this interpretation, her book's major contribution is to deepen our understanding of Nogi's act significantly by locating it in its broader context. Through this contextualization, Bargen suggests why this essentially public display of loyalty should have taxed so deeply the private imaginations of some of Japan's most important writers; she explores in particular its influence on the writings of two literary giants of the day, Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki. Her decision not to concentrate on Nogi's place in popular culture by examining how his death was portrayed in contemporary newspapers and magazines is a pity, but, given the amount of material she already draws from, perfectly understandable, and it leaves open the opportunity for another book at a later date.

Bargen may be correct in her assertion that her aim has not been to seek out new historical facts, but the existing historical data related to Nogi that she has collected is nevertheless impressive and highly informative. In particular, she points out that, notwithstanding the debt he felt towards the Meiji emperor, more personal circumstances also contributed to his decision to kill himself. We learn, for example, that in the tumultuous 1870s, Nogi, whose family was aligned to the Chōshū domain, was involved in quelling various uprisings against the new Meiji government, and he felt deep responsibility for the deaths of two people that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The first took place during the Hagi Rebellion, when he was forced to fight his own brother in a civil uprising in 1876, leading to the latter's death in battle. As if this were not bad enough, Nogi's brother's death induced Tamaki Bunnoshin, not only a distinguished scholar and uncle of Yoshida Shōin but also Nogi's own spiritual mentor, to commit suicide. We also learn that Nogi's decision to take up a military life was more due to pressure from his father than the result of personal ambition. In fact, his real aspiration was to become a poet-scholar who "envisioned himself farming the land and reading and writing in a pastoral setting" (p. 42). This desire was realized several times in his life when he resigned from military service and retired, albeit temporarily, to the countryside. Such additional insights humanize what is normally a rather austere image of Nogi and, more generally, serve as a welcome corrective to a popular misconception that the Japanese somehow have a particular predilection for suicide.

Bargen notes that she hoped to place the event "within the context of Japanese culture, from anthropological and religious as well as psychological perspectives" (p. 4). One way she does this is by a comparison with self-sacrificial acts in other cultures. Intriguingly, she suggests that the Aztec custom of sacrificing an outstanding warrior by cutting out his heart might have parallels with Nogi...