EFFECTIVE ABSURDITY

The logic of the illogical has never penetrated the American mind. Judging by the less subtle standards of Western civilization, no act seemed more certainly doomed to a fruitless failure than that of the anonymous Japanese who several months ago committed hara-kiri near the American Embassy in protest against the exclusion law. In this country a man who committed suicide, however elaborately, in rebuke to the foreign policy of Japan would rightly be regarded as a fool; one active worker would be of more value to the cause than a thousand mute inhabitants of the grave. Yet in Japan the illogical and unknown hero is now to be interred in a military cemetery where lie the bodies of Marquis Okuma and of General Nogi, the hero of the Russo-Japanese War.

It is not probable that the Japanese would soon have forgotten the so-called insult under ordinary circumstances, but this incident will only intensify the opposition. The popular mind will be more impressed by a concrete example of voluntary martyrdom than by countless exhortations as to the sanctity of National honor. It was no vulgar suicide that the patriot committed but the appeal through a recognized ritual to the sentiment of his countrymen. The appeal has not been forgotten, as the removal of his body to a more sacred resting place testifies. No one can deny that the memory of his deed will be a stimulus to haired of the United States nor that nationalists and militarists will make the most of the tradition to kindle the spirit of war. Americans may never be able to comprehend the tangled heritage of poetry and religion that gives hara-kiri such a control over the Eastern imagination, but at least they may see the results of such control. A hint may even filter through to the effect that what to one nation may seem nothing but a diplomatic incident to another may become an issue of national importance.