#i added the spaces in to make reading easier

[memories-of-ancients]

this human document was written last Summer by a Japanese captain of infantry. the introduction and conclusion have been written by his American friend Seymour Gordden Link, dean of liberal arts at Andrew Jackson University in Nashville Tennessee.

When I attended Columbia University sometime ago I was fortunate enough to be one of two Occidentals admitted to intimacy with two Chinese students, Chang and Kim, and two government - fellowship scholars from Japan, Tatsuo and Mitsui. The latter's true name is not given because identification would doubtless lead to his immediate execution as a trader to his government.

We have corresponded for years. Our correspondence has dealt largely with the arts. Although Mitsui is a great mathematician, he is also a great lover of painting and poetry, of flowers and comparative linguistics. This multiple development is more frequently encountered among the Japanese intellectuals than anywhere else on earth. Most of what I have been lucky enough to absorb about the intricacies of Japanese grammar on honorifics and social usage, I owe to Mitsui. All that he knows of contemporary art and literature outside the Orient comes, he has said, from my letters. And we have exchanged mutual references to our Chinese friends Chang and Kim.

But the other morning came a letter more moving than the others, and more disturbing. While I hold it to be a thing of personal and sacred to me, I offer it in the hope that readers will profit from the small glimpse into the heart of " a thousand Mistuis" and will refrain thereby from too hasty a surrender to the drums of jingoism - S. G. L.

Tokyo, Japan

July 15, 1937

Link sensei,

Writing this I do now in great and lementable haste for the fear is that soon no letters will go out. War has no respect for the things of the heart. And here is War. And here soon one small unwilling captain of infantry will wake from a night of rest and look around to discover he no longer is honored by the friendship of his great friend and teacher in America.

For war enters into the heart where it is not welcome and makes a strange chemistry; and my American friend who once said he had a great love for one small Japanese scholar, will think only of many small captains of infantry making many unpopular battles. He will hold on to the last and say all men are brothers and that he thinks the same thoughts and loves the same poety and speaks the same languages with his former Japanese brothers. but he will remember these things better of Chang and Kim then he will remember them of Mitsui.

For Chang and Kim will be in the war on the side where the heart leans and mitsui will be on the side that the heart is turned against. And he will forget that not a thousand Mitsuis can make a war or stop a war. he will forget that Chang and Kim and Tatsuo and Mitsui and Larson and Link once walked together beneath the shade of trees of the Columbia campus and ate together at the cafeteria and read poetry together in many languages.

And what of Chang and Kim? they who once called Mitsui brother now join their countrymen and blind hate of a thousand Mitsuis. And Mitsui dare not send them a letter full of his ancient love. It would mean the firing squad.

Once upon a time, so long a time it seems, Link sensei wrote in Mitsui's book English translation of a poem, because Mitsui showed him a scroll with a painting of long green plains that led to Fuji. This is written in the heart as War approaches. it says:

All that comes to pass

Of the warriors proud dream

Is this summer grass.

Because the scroll is beautiful and because it has memories in it of the happy years in America it is now enclosed as a parting souvenir of Mitsui who will fall in battle with a bullet from Chang or from Kim and his heart. Please to someday inform these brothers that their bullet entered Mitsui's heart only to find there love and brotherhood and great sorrow.

Here is the death song of Mitsui:

These grasses that bent

Underfoot will lean as soft

Over the cleft skull.

And in the deep roots will drain Love and peace that filled the brain.

Sayonara brother.

Mitsui

I shall never see my "small unwilling captain of infantry" again. He will lead his troops into action and then with his arms at his side walk calmly into the drum fires, thinking as he dies of his Chinese friends, Chang and Kim, and perhaps, I hope, of his American friend whom he did the honor to call sensei, teacher. Thus he will pay homage at once to his ancestors, his Emperor, his friends, and his dream of peace on earth, good will to men. S.G.L.