EXCERPT

She would win, she cried, a victory of spirit over matter. America was big, her armaments were superior, but what did that matter? All this, they said, had been foreseen and discounted. ‘If we had been afraid of mathematical figures,’ the Japanese read in their great newspaper, the Mainichi Shimbun, ‘the war would not have started. The enemy's great resources were not created by this war.’

‘The heavier our bodies, the higher our will, our spirit, rises above them.’ ‘The wearier we are, the more splendid the training.’

There was virtue only in accepting life and death risks; precautions were unworthy.

Honor was bound up with fighting to the death.

But the Japanese behaved as if, having put everything they had into one line of conduct and failed at it,they naturally took up a different line.

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD chapter 2