The Background to a Parting

English translation of the prose

AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 2024-09-21

This material was published on the Japanese website. Dates and notices in the text reflect the original publication.

Prose-only translation. Quoted song lyrics remain in Japanese.

The Background to a Parting

As seen in the song 『夜のプラットホーム』 (“Night Platform”)
橘かほり

　　壱．星はまたたき　夜深く
　　　　鳴り渡る　鳴り渡る
　　　　プラットホームの　別れのベルよ
　　　　さようなら　さようなら
　　　　君　いつ帰る

Songs of parting are poignant. When someone is being sent to a battlefield, the feelings are especially complicated. You are sending someone you love into a world where they may live or die.

War is a matter of luck: the person beside you may die while you escape unhurt. Young people today, who know nothing of war, may think this way. There was plenty of such optimism during the war with China and around the time of the surprise attack on Hawaii. Those seeing the soldiers off were therefore cheerful too. People would sing without hesitation even lyrics such as 「手柄頼むと妻や子が、ちぎれるほどに振った旗」. In 『露営の歌』 they sang: 勝ってくるぞと　勇ましく　誓って故郷を　出たからは　手柄立てずに死なれよか　進軍ラッパ聴くたびに　瞼に浮かぶ　旗の波…

Yet, following the crushing defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan suffered one defeat after another in the war of intelligence. However loudly Imperial General Headquarters proclaimed great victories, the news leaking out from returning soldiers was of nothing but disastrous lost battles.

A people stirred up by such a nationwide campaign of manipulation is unfortunate. But even today there are various countries that manipulate their people through policies of this kind. I would advise people in Japan, too, to question official policies more closely, rather than assuming that everything is true.

To return to history: there was a strong belief that the good thing about army life was being able to eat one’s fill. Poor farming families sent their second and third sons to volunteer one after another, hoping to make fine soldiers of them, and dispatched them to the battlefield. University students had been granted deferment from military service, but this was abolished as unfair. When “Night Platform” appeared, in the tango style so beloved of intellectuals, war between Japan and the United States had not yet begun. But the military was on edge: was it implicitly anti-war?

　　弐．人は散り果て　ただ一人
　　　　何時までも　いつまでも
　　　　柱によりそい　佇むわたし
　　　　さようなら　さようなら
　　　　君　いつ帰る

When reports arrived almost daily of men being mown down by machine guns, and of a man saying, “I was the only one who came back alive,” the will to become an infantryman with a single-shot rifle faltered. A call-up notice, however, was absolute. Even boys who had passed the entrance examination for preparatory naval aviation training pleaded with their families, “I don’t want to go, I don’t want to,” before joining up. Suicide attacks in the name of dying for the country were also widespread. The background to a “parting” divides in two. In those days it was largely public, bound up with duties unimaginable within today’s individualism. People “smiled on the outside and wept within.” By the second half of 1944, many suspected that the claims of an indestructible divine Japan and victory after victory were lies, but they could not say so, which made it all the more painful. Smiles vanished from the young men being sent away; those sending them off no longer sang 「勝ってくるぞと勇ましく…」. By 1945, however much the military forced NHK to broadcast news of repeated victories, Tokyo, Osaka and other urban areas had been reduced to scorched wasteland. Empty falsehoods formed the background to parting.

　　参．窓にのこした　あの言葉
　　　　泣かないで　泣かないで
　　　　瞼に焼き付く　さみしい笑顔
　　　　さよなら　さようなら
　　　　君　いつ帰る

The song appeared before the war between Japan and the United States. In Japan at that time, “going to the front” meant being forced off somewhere around the Soviet-Manchurian border. In later years, overseas service meant the South. But many men were sleeping packed into ships’ holds when, bang! A submarine blew a hole in the ship, they were thrown into the dark sea, and that was the end.

That darkness, too, clung to the partings between life and death. I believe national defence is absolutely necessary, but no sound defence is possible in a country whose internal affairs conceal such “darkness.” In all probability, our only means of survival is to continue exercising a national strength recognized in both East and West, respected throughout the world for a bushidō spirit of winning without fighting. That is what I think, although whenever I hear the third verse of “Night Platform,” I cannot help crying. 淡谷 was supposed to sing it during the war but was unable to do so. After the war, recalling those days, she performed it on an NHK stage. It was heartbreaking, but sublime. (End)