“The Night of a Thousand Suicides” by Teruhiko Asada is a fiction that shows the pressure and expectations of the Japanese society placed on its soldiers forcing them to commit acts of suicide then to come home as coward. Because of the peoples dedication to the Emperor and their belief in him as a living God they fallowed him blindly.
The Japanese Emperor expected his military to bring him total victory through the war and failure was only meet with death. In 1940 the Japanese War Department wrote a Field Military Code which they later printed it and distributed it to the public in 1941.
“The spirit of the soldier is best exemplified by those who silently do their duty, joyfully braving death in obedience to a command given at a time…
We shall go head of you to the Yasukuni Shrine.” So saying, three of the sick faced the north, gave three cheers of “Banzai” for the Emperor, and suicided by cutting their carotid arteries with razor blades” (Asada pg09)
This is what led others to hang themselves before the Japanese prisoners set the buildings on fire. While others unable to successfully kill themselves died in the fire. This part of the story affected me the most because of the needlessness of the situation because they were not in danger of being harmed even taking in the account of the others trying to escape.
This story affect me deeply with its senseless death of the Japanese in the POW camp because it could have been prevented. The prisoners were being well treated by the Australians but because they were prisoners the Japanese men felt that they would be perceived by their own people as cowards. It would be better for them to die trying to get free. There was no shame to be a POW but because their Emperor felt that it was better to have them die then to be capture they followed suit. The men from the camp were brave knowing that they were about to die and still tried to escape. They did what they thought was the right thing to do even if it was…
