IN the second month of the thirty-seventh year of Meiji,[3] the diplomatic relations between Japan and Russia were severed, and the two nations began hostilities. At the outset our navy dealt a stunning blow to the Russian war vessels at Chemulpo and off Port Arthur. His August Majesty issued a proclamation of war. Mobilization orders were issued to different divisions of the army. At this moment we, the soldiers of Japan, all felt our bones crackle and our blood boil up, ready to give vent to a long-stored energy. Mobilization! How sweetly the word gladdened our hearts, how impatiently we waited to be ordered to the front! What division was mobilized to-day? What one will have its turn to-morrow? How long shall we have to wait? May the order come at once! May we find ourselves in the field without delay! Not that we wished to distinguish ourselves and win honors in the early battles, but that we hated the idea of arriving at the scene after other divisions had borne all the burden of the first struggle. But what could we do without Imperial orders? We were soldiers always ready to “jump into water and fire at the Great Sire’s word of command.”[4] We had to wait for the word “Advance!” How eagerly we watched for that single word, for that order of mobilization, as drought-suffering farmers watch for a rain-cloud in the sky! We offered “mobilization prayers” as they offer “rain prayers.” Wherever we went, whomsoever we met, we talked of nothing but mobilization. At last about the middle of April, the month of cherry-blossoms,[5] emblematic of the spirit of Japan’s warriors, our division received this longed-for order. Ordered to the front! Our garrison was granted the golden opportunity of untrammeled activity. I was at that time the standard-bearer of the regiment. I said to our commander on hearing this glad news: “Hearty congratulations, Colonel; we have just received the order.” Upon which Colonel Aoki smiled a smile indescribably happy as if he welcomed the order and exclaimed, “It has come at last!” That was the happiest day we had ever experienced, and I could not help going around, half in frenzy, to the officers of all the companies to carry the news to them. A mysterious kind of spiritual electricity seemed to permeate the whole garrison, composed of the flower of the “Land of the Gods.” Every one, both officers and privates, seemed ready to fight the whole of Russia single-handed. Our souls were already on the great stage of Liaotung, while our bodies still remained in our own country.