Both the Sino-Japanese War stories, which focused on the heroism of the fighting man, and those of the Russo-Japanese War, which highlighted the heroism of leadership, depicted heroic sacrifice as part of a collective effort. Whether the story concentrated on the officer and his men or the soldier and his unit, the context of action was the army group that drove purposively and inexorably toward victory In the Sino- and Russo-Japanese war bidan the image of the Japanese group was harmonious, a fighting organism united in mind, spirit, and purpose. In contrast, the narrative in the Koga bidan split the group into pieces, atomizing acts of heroism into a series of independent, uncoordinated operations. Each man fought to be the one who saved the flag; each strove for a more sensational act of sacrifice than the last; each sought a more heroic death. In the process the meaning of patriotism shifted from sacrifice for the group to the competitive strength of the individual.
Like other battlefield bidan, Koga's story conveyed the message that sacrifice through death was the only path to virtue. Unlike the earlier war heroes, many of whom survived their campaigns, no hero of the Manchu-rian Incident outlived his moment of glory. Rendered with images like “crimson-stained snow” and the “glittering face of death,” or by the traditional metaphor of a “fallen cherry blossom,” death was transformed in these bidan into a symbol of poignant beauty.146 The Shnen kurabu version of the Koga bidan departed from this convention and described Koga's last moments under the caption “The Command That Was Vomited with Blood.” This decidedly unbeauteous yet arresting image of Koga's dying visage left the reader with a brutally powerful visual impression. In Koga's story, man was transformed to hero at the moment of death. It was in death that Koga earned his posthumous title, idaina hitobashira (a great human sacrifice). Sacrifice in the line of duty provided both the dramatic climax to and the aesthetic heart of Koga's story. Koga's last moments saw him hit and fallen, only to raise himself on his sword point to issue the forward order.
The Commander looked so bad that the others stood blankly for a moment. Then suddenly, he was lurching up from between the bodies and they could hear his voice crying out mightily:
“Save the flag! Forward, forward!”
As he cried out blood spurted from his mouth and he slid to the ground. But again he pulled himself up on his sword point and forced out a raspy cry,
“Forward, forward…”
He continued thus three or four times more, falling and rising, rising and failing, till finally, face down on the grass, he moved no more.147
In bidan, the moment of death was also the moment of victory. In Koga's story, this occurred when the flag was saved by one of his lieutenants. “Face dripping with enemy blood like some hideous red devil,” Lieutenant Oyadomari demanded, “the flag, how is the flag?” Upon learning it was safe with the platoon, Oyadomari gasped out his final words: “Safe? It's safe?…I…I…if the flag is safe then I can die.” While the others looked on, tears “cascading down their cheeks,” Oyadomari toppled over, secure in Japan's victory.148 In this equation of victory with death, battlefield bidan yet again interwove the themes of personal glory, death, and patriotism. Thus, in saving the flag for his country, Oyadomari died even as he achieved his moment of personal glory. Strikingly absent from depictions of the heroism of men like Oyadomari were acts of bravery to save the lives of comrades, protect the platoon, or otherwise sacrifice the individual for the good of the group. Rather than promoting ideologies of groupism, these stories did precisely the opposite; the paeans to individual valor and the competition for heroic martyrdom called for patriotic sacrifice through appeals to personal glory and in ideological language of individualistic success.
While battlefield bidan showed manly young soldiers demonstrating their virtue by dying at the front, a separate genre of home-front bidan glorified the heroism of their female counterparts. National and local newspapers stirred up a bidan boom with a flurry of articles on acts of great personal sacrifice to support fundraising campaigns and other aspects of the war effort. In a typical example, an Osaka paper published the heartrending story of the donation made by a female textile worker. Although supporting two children and an aging parent on her paltry earnings, she managed to scrape together three yen (nearly a week's wage) to send to the front.149 The point was not that the money helped anyone. The end result of such gestures was usually left vague, for the moral of the story was to convey the nobility of the sacrificial gesture itself.
Like the battlefield bidan, inspirational tales of home-front virtue made the degree of loss into a measure of national virtue. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the virtue. The story of an impoverished tenant farmer's wife published in Fujin kurabu illustrated one of the myriad female acts of virtue.150 And like the Koga bidan, her story conveyed the nobility of sacrifice through the language of individualistic competition. The account began as an old woman arrived at a local police station with what was at the time the large sum of twenty yen. Donating the money to the war effort, she refused to give her name or have her generosity acknowledged in any way; but one of the policemen discovered who she was and learned of her tragic circumstances. Like the Osaka textile worker and thousands of other home-front heroines whose deeds were celebrated in newspapers and magazines, the story of the sacrificial act was framed in discovery. Though she had modestly sought anonymity, the reward for the farm wife's action was its revelation and that moment of fame granted by the spotlight of the mass media. In this way patriotic sacrifice was represented as a path to fame and glory, the route to patriotic stardom.
One of the main points of the story of our heroine was that throughout her long and sad life, she had staunchly refused to be a burden to others. When her second son was drafted and her husband and eldest son debilitated by illness, she was left with a fifteen-year-old daughter and a seventy-four-year-old mother to tend the farm. Still, she declined to accept any charity from the village authorities, saying, “Thank you for your kindness but it is an honor for my son to discharge his patriotic duty. No matter how difficult things are for us I cannot accept any money.” This refusal to accept community support flew in the face of the homilies of mutual aid delivered by agrarian-minded bureaucrats and ideologues for community voluntary organizations. No helpful neighbors leap in to help with planting or harvesting. Instead of surrendering