A Random Visit to Nogi's

Things are going well. I am getting busier and busier, so I suppose that's good. Camille is coming soon too, so that's good. Abi's mother Francoise is also here right now, so that's good. Yep, no complaints. I thought that today I would explain who General Nogi is. To put it briefly General Nogi Maresuke was a pretty high ranking general (but the kind that still had to work, not the kind who got to spend all day drinking tea and telling stories) who had lived through the Meiji Restoration and the Meiji period. When in 1912, the Meiji emperor, Mutsuhito, died of natural causes (I mean he'd been the emperor since 1868, first of all; second of all, if you'd been the emperor who saw Japan shoot up from a slightly connected feudal archipelago to an ultra-unified constitutional monarchy with navies, armies, and industries that were outshining European and American forces, you'd probably have eventually worn out your pacemaker too...), Nogi committed ritual suicide or seppuku. I believe that his wife also did this, but her picture was not up and I'm not going to take time now to verify. Anyway, in a letter that he wrote, Nogi explained that because he was loyal until death to the Meiji emperor, he could have no other lord and would be better following his true lord into death. Many Japanese and non-Japanese historians have explained that this suicide was also a response to a Japan that had changed so much and that Nogi knew would be too much for him (like the Beatles for people who were in their 70s during the 1960s SCARY!!!). What also surrounded his suicide was a large debate about the legality of committing suicide to follow a lord into death, outlawed since the 1600s, and about whether Nogi should truly be made into an example. There were not many other suicides like this, so my guess is that the Japanese decided to let him be an example; hence he gets his own Shinto Shrine wherein lie the walkways, photos, and memorabilia that I put up on the photos page. I am sort of starting to collect pics so that I can make my history classes a little more interesting. These photos will be good for that sort of thing I think:)