3

PORT ARTHUR

The harbor at Port Arthur with its great fortifications was, and went on being, a thorn in the side of the Japanese military. Tōgō’s plight was pathetic to the point of absurdity. The army’s failure to capture the fortifications meant that his fleet was stuck at the harbor entrance, posting guard to ensure that what remained of the Russian fleet didn’t sneak out and overrun the seas—a terrible waste of manpower. Japan’s chances of victory had never seemed so unpromising.

Reports on when the Baltic Fleet might be expected to arrive from Europe were inconsistent, the timing of that fateful encounter impossible to predict. One disturbing rumor had the fleet reaching the Sea of Japan as early as October. Port Arthur was still an impregnable fortress, the season already late summer. Even if Port Arthur fell immediately (a dream), repairing the Japanese fleet would take at least two months. And, unless each warship was repaired and restored to full fighting power, what hope was there of defeating the Baltic Fleet? Taking Port Arthur immediately would leave barely enough time (assuming the October rumor was true). The navy was frantic.

Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo was beyond frantic. A consensus had already formed that General Nogi was unequal to the task at hand, and evaluation of his chief of staff Ijichi Kōsuke was even harsher. It was the top leaders in Tokyo who had put the two men in their posts, however, so nothing could be done. There were calls for a shake-up, but changing the army commander and his chief of staff in the middle of fighting would devastate troop morale. Within Imperial Headquarters some fumed. “Their strategy is to use up huge numbers of men at Port Arthur—enough to fill in the harbor—with no discernible effect. What on earth are they thinking?”

Even more surprising than this failure of leadership is the docility with which nameless soldiers of Meiji Japan went obediently to their deaths. “People must be made dependent on the authority of the government.” This thinking had prevailed during three centuries of Tokugawa rule, and well into the Meiji period Japanese soldiers still retained the old feudal virtues of fear and obedience. An order was absolute. The same order to attack the same target was given monotonously over and over again, and successive waves of soldiers silently obeyed. Before the gigantic killing machine of the Russian Army, whole companies were mowed down en masse.

But Nogi’s staff stayed too far in the rear. The young staff officers seldom visited the front and were slow to grasp the wretched situation. When Kodama Gentarō finally came on the scene at the end of the siege, this was what drove him wild. Toward Nogi, who was expected merely to oversee the army, he was tolerant, but he lambasted Chief of Staff Ijichi and the others whose job it was to carry out actual operations. To reprimand an officer for gross failure to monitor battlefield conditions, he tore off his shoulder sash in front of a large assembly.

But Kodama did not come along until the very last. In the meantime, following the chain of command, the situation was left to the discretion of Nogi’s staff.

General Nogi was not solely to blame for the failed attack on Port Arthur fortifications: the entire Japanese Army had been remiss. “It was our moment in the new twentieth century. What in blazes were we doing with antiquated bronze cannons?” wrote Captain Satō Kiyokatsu with hot indignation in his book The Russo-Japanese War As I Saw It. He was referring to 15- and 9-centimeter bronze mortars. The army used weapons like these to attack the world’s newest, most modern fortifications—a miscalculation of appalling proportions. (Later, they would borrow artillery from the navy or remove them from domestic coastal defenses.)

It was more than a simple miscalculation. There was an inherent tendency in the army to look down on technology, even to take pride in countering enemy technology with Japanese courage and human bullets. This way of thinking owed much to the character and proclivities of the architect of the Japanese Army. Japan’s military system was first modernized by an expert in military technology named Ōmura Masujirō, but he died in 1869, the second year of the Meiji period, and was replaced by Yamagata Aritomo from the Chōshū militia. It is fair to say that Yamagata’s conservative temperament weakened the tradition of emphasizing technological expertise. From that time on, the army would seek to offset second-rate technology with the blood of its soldiers.

In a sense, the Japanese Army did possess weaponry of greater sophistication than the Russian Army. Their rifles in particular were superb. But no matter how many of Japan’s vaunted Type 30 rifles the infantry had, the concrete armor of the Port Arthur fortifications held firm.

Nogi’s army made the greatest inroads by destroying clusters of smaller defenses in front of the harbor. Those were easy to take. After that, Nogi prepared to attack the main defenses. On August 16, he advised General Stoessel to surrender. Stoessel naturally refused. “News of the invitation to surrender spread quickly through the ranks,” wrote General Mikhail Kostenko, one of the Russian officers stationed at Port Arthur. “The effect was to lift the morale of the entire army, just the opposite of what Nogi intended. Our officers and men figured he sent the invitation because he lacked the power to take the fortress.”

Nogi launched his first full-scale attack on August 19, slightly before the battle of Liaoyang began. Ignoring the maxim that attacks should be aimed at the enemy’s weakest point, he selected the well-nigh impregnable Panlong and East Cockscomb forts, intending to drive a wedge between them and split the area in half—a perfect example of a “desktop plan.” Implementation of this plan resulted in devastating losses. After six days of fierce fighting, Japan had 15,800 casualties. Damage inflicted on the enemy, meanwhile, was minimal, and not a single fortification fell.

General Nogi Maresuke’s greatest misfortune was the selection of Ijichi Kōsuke as his chief of staff. He had no say in the matter. The choice was made by the army’s top echelon. Final authority in all such personnel assignments rested with Yamagata Aritomo, who also picked Nogi to head the Third Army.

Yamagata was the supreme arbiter of personnel decisions based on domain loyalty. As the grand old man of the Chōshū military faction, he naturally had a deep affection for Nogi, a fellow native son. Ironically, Nogi himself was completely lacking in domain loyalty where personnel matters were concerned and, if truth be told, secretly disapproved of such cliquishness. But Yamagata was inordinately fond of him.

“Chōshū on land, Satsuma on sea.” This division of the Japanese military was an unequivocal fact. Men of Satsuma controlled the navy, but ahead of the First Sino-Japanese War, Yamamoto Gombei himself went through the roster of Satsuma veterans to eliminate the deadwood, and by restructuring the navy and enhancing its functionality he succeeded in defeating the Qing. The Chōshū-dominated army never underwent any such radical reform. Yamagata retained his grip on personnel matters, creating a peculiar system where any washout could rise high so long as he hailed from Chōshū.

Yamagata’s choice of Nogi grew out of this climate. At the time, Yamagata himself was chief of the General Staff, and the army minister was Terauchi Masatake, who had served in the Seibutai militia in Chōshū. Terauchi had little flair for the military and virtually no battle experience. Despite his high position in military government, he made no attempt to keep an eye on the future and improve the army’s capability. He was a conscientious administrator, skilled at insider appointments (based on domain cliques) and fond of paperwork.

The key figure in command of operations in the Russo-Japanese War was Vice Chief of the General Staff Nagaoka Gaishi, a man of sufficient ability that he could probably have attained the position on his own merits, even without the advantage of being a Chōshū native. A visionary in the best sense of the word, he combined a hard-nosed ability to grasp reality with a sweeping imagination. Though lacking the genius of Kodama Gentarō, yet another man of Chōshū, he was an able strategist. It was he who gave Akashi Motojirō, a mere colonel, the million yen to foment revolution in Russia.

Nagaoka was among the first to matriculate at Japan’s Army Academy and a member of the second graduating class there. In other words, he was one of the first Japanese to receive a formal military education under the modernized system. Everyone in that first group became a major general in the Russo-Japanese War.

Let us continue the discussion of factionalism.

The highest army echelon in charge of waging the Russo-Japanese War was overwhelmingly dominated by men from Chōshū, among them Terauchi Masatake, army minister; Yamagata Aritomo, chief of the General Staff; Nagaoka Gaishi, Yamagata’s deputy; and Kodama Gentarō, chief of staff for the Manchurian Army. Indeed, virtually every important administrative and tactical post went to an officer from Chōshū.

Interestingly, however, Chōshū did not produce many officers fitted for field command. Among military men independent of any domain clique, there was a widespread sense that Chōshū lacked generals of sufficient toughness to lead a siege or field operation. Satsuma generals were better suited for such roles. Ōyama Iwao, a Satsuma native, was made commander in chief of the Japanese Manchurian Army, while the First Army, of which daring deeds were expected, was put under the command of Kuroki Tamemoto of Satsuma. Oku Yasukata, commander of the Second Army, was not from either Chōshū or Satsuma, but Nozu Michitsura of the Fourth Army was another Satsuma man.

This preponderance of Satsuma generals grated on Yamagata. “Surely we can have at least one from Chōshū,” he protested, and that’s how Nogi Maresuke was put in charge of the Third Army. In the beginning, army brass were inclined to believe that Port Arthur posed little challenge, and accordingly Nogi was chosen less for his fitness for the job than for his birth credentials. Since he had withdrawn from active service, being awarded this post was no doubt an honor. But as he faced up to the reality of Port Arthur, it may not have seemed unmitigated good fortune after all.

Even more unfortunate was the fact that clique rivalry figured equally in the assignment of Nogi’s chief of staff. “Since the commander is from Chōshū, in fairness we ought to make his chief of staff a Satsuma man.” Following this line of thought, Yamagata and Terauchi chose Ijichi Kōsuke for the job. Though Ijichi was tapped in part because of his artillery experience, his Satsuma roots carried far greater weight. He did not have a reputation as a great strategist. Indeed, his friends and former subordinates were well aware that he lacked the flexibility to adapt to shifting circumstances.

Nogi too lacked the tactical ability necessary to carry out modern warfare, but he was known to be a man who lived by spiritual values. After the war, his spiritual side would become widely bruited in Japan and abroad, but, at this point, it was known only to a limited number of individuals. Yamagata counted heavily on the general’s leadership and ability to inspire his men.

The siege of Port Arthur put Japan at continuous risk of overall defeat, and Army Minister Terauchi and Chief of the General Staff Yamagata must bear responsibility for this.

When Nogi left Tokyo, he was of the opinion that ten thousand casualties would suffice to take Port Arthur. That low estimate was his basis for approving the plan of attack—a plan devised by Ijichi Kōsuke, needless to say—but the first all-out assault alone produced Japanese casualties of sixteen thousand, a devastating defeat. Not only was Port Arthur not taken, but the great fortress came through unscathed. It was a total victory for the defending side. The second assault followed the same basic plan, with no better results. Though there were four thousand nine hundred casualties, the fortifications held firm as a rock.

“You would think,” Nagaoka wrote savagely in his diary, “that after bringing death or injury to more than twenty thousand men below that impregnable fortress, they would have changed their mode of attack.”

The General Staff Office tolerated the loss of so many dead and wounded in the first assault—the equivalent of an entire division—only because it took that great a sacrifice for them to realize just how formidable the fortifications at Port Arthur really were. Such miscalculations and misapprehensions are an inevitable part of any war. What made Nagaoka and the others question the intelligence of Ijichi was his failure to acknowledge the error, extract a lesson, and alter course.

The lesson involved was elementary. To gain knowledge about fortifications that any encyclopedia would have yielded, Ijichi paid dearly, sacrificing many thousands of soldiers’ lives. The knowledge was not even gained directly at the battlefield but pieced together behind the scenes from various reports. That’s because the Third Army headquarters was so far back that they were completely out of range of enemy fire. Concerned, Nogi would later suggest to Ijichi that they move forward, but Ijichi declined on grounds that, in that case, he would be unable to make cool, rational decisions. He kept his distance from the fighting to the end.

Nogi was no coward. To raise the men’s morale, he frequently rode his horse to the front amid a hail of bursting shells. But even when he saw with his own eyes the horrors of the front, working out a new strategy was beyond him. (Of the four army commanders, the only one capable of waging war without the aid of his chief of staff was General Oku.) In the alien world of strategy development, Nogi had no choice but to trust Ijichi and go along with what he said.

“Too benevolent to be severe.” This was the assessment of Major Ōzawa, a battalion commander in the Eleventh Division who admired Nogi’s warmth and humanity, yet regretted that these very virtues made the general excessively generous to everyone on his staff from Ijichi down. Ijichi’s news from the front line was largely secondhand, relayed by young officers, yet Nogi did not object. He had lost his elder son at Jinzhou, would lose the younger one on this battlefield, and was himself resolved from the beginning to die at the front. His supreme misfortune, however, was his failure to gain a topnotch chief of staff.

The second attack on the fortifications was not a simple headlong assault like the first. This time, it was preceded by an artillery barrage. It still ended up a pointless exercise in hurling flesh and blood at concrete.

Concerning attacks on fortresses, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban had already laid down the great operating principle involved: the attacking side must erect its own fortification for use in offense. This approach was known in Japan as early as the era of Warring States, when an army attacking a castle would build an opposing castle as a base of operations. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the brilliant conqueror, used this technique with great effectiveness from early in his career.

According to the Vauban principle, an attacking army not only built additional fortifications but also dug parallel trenches to protect the lives of infantry. Then they dug tunnels to blow up the enemy walls from below and, once they had taken the outer walls, they blew up the breastworks. Only then would they make their assault. This procedure was the basic principle of offensive battle and had by the time of the Russo-Japanese War become standard practice in the world’s armies. “There is no other way to do it,” Vauban declared unequivocally, an opinion backed by countless examples from European warfare.

Nogi’s army did not completely ignore this orthodoxy. The soldiers did apply the Vauban approach in their second attack, however incompletely. They dug trenches and a network of tunnels leading to the enemy stronghold from a variety of directions. But Russia was second to none in the sophistication of its defense. The Russian Army dealt swiftly with the crude tunnels, cutting them off so that they were of little use.

From the first, Ijichi was of the optimistic view that gunfire would be enough to demolish the fortress. Offensive power rated higher than defensive power in his book, a view that was, in the light of modern siege warfare, utter nonsense. Some members of Nogi’s staff were aware of the Vauban principles of defense but dismissed them as the arguments of “foreigners without souls.” Japanese soldiers had Yamatodamashii, the indomitable spirit of the Japanese people. Faith that this spirit could melt steel was necessary for troops in the thick of battle, but the high command had no business relying on it. The respect accorded the high command was based on the faith of the state and the nation that they would attain victory on the battlefield with the fewest possible casualties.

If the Japanese soldier was docile, Japanese privates in particular were surely the most docile of any in the world, yet even among their ranks there was muttering. “We can’t fight the war under a chief of staff like that.” Replacements would cheer if assigned to the army fighting its way north, but among those who joined Nogi’s army, there was a noticeable drop in morale.

Had he not been a man of Satsuma who attained his majority around the time of the Meiji Restoration, Ijichi Kōsuke would doubtless have spent his life in obscurity. Due to those circumstances, however, he was blessed with opportunity from the first. In 1871, he went to Tokyo along with some other Satsuma youths and joined what was then called the Imperial Bodyguards. When the army preparatory school opened the following year, he enrolled based on someone’s recommendation from home. Then, in 1875, when the Army Academy was founded, he naturally entered that too and was a member of the second graduating class. On becoming a second lieutenant, he was ordered overseas to study in France. Others said jealously that Ijichi was like “Satsuma’s cherished son.”

During his three years in France, Ijichi studied artillery, but soon after his return it happened that Ōyama Iwao, then the army minister, was about to tour Europe and needed an interpreter, so Ijichi went along. When his services were no longer needed, he remained in Europe, going to Germany to study. In the meantime, the Army Staff College was established in Japan, but since Ijichi happened to be abroad at the time, he never studied there. “That’s all right,” people said. “Ijichi got his training from the horse’s mouth.” They said this in reference to his studies in Germany.

Ijichi’s bond with Nogi Maresuke came about during his German sojourn. Nogi, at the time a major general, was on a study tour of Europe, and Ijichi went along as his interpreter.

After the First Sino-Japanese War, Ijichi became a colonel and served as military attaché to the British embassy. He spent a long time overseas, in other words, with almost no experience as division or other unit leader in Japan. He was promoted to major general and, in 1900, became chief of the First Section of the General Staff, a great honor and a piece of luck for an army bureaucrat. “After all, Ijichi was trained in Britain, Germany, and France,” the higher-ups enthused, their hopes for him high.

The main fruit of Ijichi’s extended time abroad was undoubtedly linguistic prowess. His next most important acquisition was not strategic studies or practical experience but a certain concept of military affairs—a concept drawn from modern army and military science. Nobody had any idea how he might perform in an actual war. The fact that four years before the fighting began he was made the First Section chief of the General Staff, the nerve center of Japanese tactical planning, is a strong indication of the temper of the times. It was an era when certain words carried great prestige: hakuraihin, “imported goods”; kichōsha, “someone returned from abroad”; yōkōgaeri, “back from a Western tour.” Having spent nearly the whole of his military career abroad, Ijichi was to the Japanese a quasi-foreigner, a man of whom much was expected. “Ijichi can handle anything.” And so he attained his post. If not for the Russo-Japanese War, he would undoubtedly have lived out his days happily as a nameless military bureaucrat.

His luck held. Even though he perpetrated that preposterous disaster at Port Arthur, he was made a baron after the war, thanks to his Satsuma connections. He never made general, though, rising only as high as lieutenant general.

As Nogi’s senior command fell out of touch with sensibilities at the front because of Ijichi, one frustrated brigade commander wrote directly to Nagaoka Gaishi in Tokyo. “Ijichi doesn’t know the first thing about strategy. He continually issues commands that don’t match conditions at the front or the enemy situation, sacrificing more and more men to no purpose.” In the letter, he refers to Ijichi as a “superannuated anomaly.”

Tokyo was alarmed. This was why Imperial Headquarters sent people (Lieutenant Colonel Tsukushi Kumashichi, among others) to learn on the sly what was going on. The inside information they gained was sobering: division leaders under Nogi’s command had no confidence in Nogi’s staff.

Ijichi’s report to the Manchurian Army after the first all-out assault was amateurish in content, so simplistic that Kodama and the rest were taken aback. “To sum up, enemy fortifications and gun batteries are unexpectedly strong. The fortifications are securely concealed and equipped with loopholes from which the area outside can be swept with gunfire.”

Amid the carnage of the assault, the senior command lacked adequate knowledge of the fortifications there. And, although grasping the enemy situation is admittedly never easy in the thick of war, they failed to exert themselves to learn what they could. For example, in one preliminary operation before the assault, Nogi’s army captured Great Orphan Hill. Although the summit afforded a clear view of the eastern fortifications and gun batteries, Nogi’s staff climbed to the top only on the day of occupation. After that, none of them visited there.

Each Russian battery was equipped with a large number of machine guns. For Japanese troops at the front line ordered to attack with bayonets, nothing was so fearful as this new weapon. Unlike an encounter with a standing army, in storming a fortress, Japanese attackers were forced to follow a set course. All the defenders had to do was mow them down as they came. It was as if Japanese troops kept coming for the sole purpose of being mowed down.

Nogi’s senior command at the rear was aware that the Russians possessed something called a machine gun, but they failed to go to the front in person and see with their own eyes just what it was the troops were up against. When a new weapon appears among the enemy, military strategists must go to the front to experience directly how formidable it is. Otherwise, any strategy they work out risks ending up a mere desktop plan, detached from reality.

In the staffroom of Tōgō’s fleet anchored off the harbor at Port Arthur, hope lingered that Nogi might yet use the main force of his army to attack 203-Meter Hill. “Why doesn’t he do it?” they wondered, but no one spoke up to criticize the competence of Nogi’s headquarters.

“The army has its reputation to maintain,” someone said. Nogi’s headquarters wanted to attack the Port Arthur fortifications straight on, fair and square. Although 203-Meter Hill was virtually undefended (later, the Russians hastened to fortify it), their answer was unvarying. “Capturing a hill off at one side like 203-Meter Hill won’t help us occupy the Port Arthur fortifications. Our mission is the occupation of all fortifications.”

To the navy, gaining 203-Meter Hill meant being able to look down on the harbor. If observers were positioned at the peak, and the Russian warships in the harbor were attacked with a barrage from heavy navy guns, that would be the end of what remained of Russia’s Port Arthur Squadron. Tōgō’s fleet would finally be free to return to Sasebo to dock and prepare for the arrival of the Baltic Fleet. But Nogi’s headquarters would not go along with this plan.

At the time of the first assault, Imperial Headquarters sent navy commander Kamiizumi Tokuya to Nogi’s headquarters to check on the situation. After the assault failed, Kamiizumi prepared to return to Tokyo, first visiting Nogi’s quarters to pay his respects. Nogi’s eyes were red from days without sleep. On his return voyage, Kamiizumi planned to call on the Combined Fleet and visit Tōgō as well, so he inquired if Nogi had any message for the admiral.

Nogi pondered awhile before replying. “As you see, our attempt to storm the fortress failed. There is no use continuing with this line of attack, so I have decided to employ a standard direct attack next. For the rest, while I wonder about the appropriateness of an army officer offering any opinion regarding naval matters, it seems to me desirable that ships should slip off to Sasebo one or two at a time for repairs to ready themselves for the coming of the Baltic Fleet.”

Kamiizumi asked Nogi how much longer he thought the fall of Port Arthur would take. Nogi answered honestly that the fortress showed no sign of yielding in the next few weeks. Beyond that, he could not predict.

Kamiizumi returned from Port Arthur to Dalian and from there borrowed a torpedo boat to call at the Mikasa. He met first with Chief of Staff Shimamura Hayao and reported what Nogi had said. Shimamura’s only comment was: “Well, that’s war. Can’t be helped.”

Kamiizumi then called on Tōgō and relayed the same message. To his surprise, Tōgō responded with the exact same words: “Well, that’s war. Can’t be helped.”

That was the navy’s only reaction. Kamiizumi then reported Nogi’s suggestion about repairing the fleet and sought Tōgō’s response. The reply was curt: “No change.” Tōgō was a man of swift decisions.

To Imperial Headquarters, the incoherent strategy of Nogi’s Third Army, along with the stubborn refusal to change it, had become like a cancer. The matter ought to have been simple enough. “All they need to do is turn the main force of the offensive to 203-Meter Hill. That’s all there is to it. Why can’t they just do that?” Once 203-Meter Hill was in hand, even if all the fortifications had not yet fallen, the fleet in the harbor could be sunk, thus fulfilling the mission of the attack on Port Arthur. Troop losses would be held to a minimum.

“Advance on 203-Meter Hill.” In a variety of ways, Imperial Headquarters put this request through to Nogi’s headquarters. But the chain of command dictated that the request be relayed locally, through the Manchurian Army’s General Headquarters. It was standard policy to leave matters of strategy to the army in the field. Tokyo could only suggest, not order, what needed to be done.

“Just do this one thing—capture 203-Meter Hill!” This plea was made by the navy at every liaison conference of the Imperial Headquarters. The army was also of the same opinion, but Nogi’s headquarters turned a deaf ear. Imperial Headquarters had the authority to dismiss Nogi and Ijichi, but in the middle of fighting that was something to avoid at any cost.

At one point, the navy sent Commander Iwamura Danjirō from Tosa (the present Kōchi Prefecture) as liaison officer. Iwamura stood before Nogi and Ijichi, and vociferously argued the urgency of capturing 203-Meter Hill.

Ijichi coldly dismissed his remarks from a different perspective. “We will not tolerate navy interference in army operations.”

Iwamura, a hotheaded man of Tosa, flared up. “Sir, do you mean to say that you do not care if the empire is destroyed?” He gave Ijichi a shove and, in his excitement, also laid a hand on Nogi.

Later on, Nogi testified, “I was merely sprayed with spittle from Commander Iwamura. There was nothing to make a fuss about,” and so Iwamura narrowly avoided being expunged from the navy rolls.

Another time when a fellow staff officer of the Manchurian Army confronted Ijichi, pointing out his obstinacy and urging a major shift in tactics, both men got worked up and traded blows.

At the time of the second major assault, the question of 203-Meter Hill took another turn. The chief of staff of the First Division recognized the importance of the elevation and, during a council of war at the headquarters of the Third Army, enthusiastically proposed attacking it.

Ijichi gave his approval. “Very well, if the First Division has reserve strength.” It was to be a secondary attack, nothing more.

As a result, a portion of the First Division attacked the hill, which was defended only by a rifle pit, but the attackers were so few in number that they were easily driven off. Their sole accomplishment was to demonstrate to Stoessel the tactical importance of 203-Meter Hill. The Russians then hastened to fortify the hill to the maximum.

Here again we must return to the fact that the Japanese Army did not have a superior “owner” comparable to the navy’s Yamamoto Gombei. From the first, Yamamoto had a clear vision of what the Imperial Japanese Navy ought to be. The theme of how to beat the Russians gave his vision substance and wrought fundamental changes in the navy, affecting everything from its character to its weapons. But there was no one like him in the army.

Yamagata Aritomo was Yamamoto Gombei’s counterpart in status and authority, but he was so enamored of authority, so enthusiastic about fiddling with personnel, and such a conservative to the core that coming up with a new vision for the army was the farthest thing from his mind. His background as a shishi, one of the young men of action who took on the establishment at the end of the Tokugawa period, seems incongruous—but, in fact, Yamagata was not a true shishi at all. When the Chōshū domain he served as a lower-ranking samurai rebelled against the shogunate, he participated in the rebellion as a matter of course. Not even the most careful examination of his record from that era will turn up any evidence qualifying him as a shishi, someone filled with a revolutionary new vision for the nation of Japan. He was not a man who rose because of his powers of imagination.

As a young man, Yamagata sought to shake off his low status. That was the driving force behind his actions in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration. He was born into a family of ashigaru samurai. “Deep down in Yamagata there was always something mean. After all, the man rose from ashigaru parentage.” This remark is attributed to Hara Takashi, who was born into a samurai family of high status. His father was a chief counselor to the daimyo in the former Nambu domain (the present Iwate Prefecture), which joined the pro-shogunate forces at the end of the Tokugawa period.

And yet surely the mere fact of being from an ashigaru family is not enough to invest a man’s every thought and action with meanness. Yamagata’s overweening determination to succeed in life, to make it to the top, and also to protect his own authority, cast a shadow on the figure he cut and made him seem mean-spirited. While Yamagata had eagerly devoted himself to mastering the Hōzōin school of spear-fighting in his youth, this was not from any love of that martial art, but because, once he became a master, he could leave the ashigaru class and become a full-fledged samurai.

Just when Yamagata was thus consumed with the desire to make something of himself, the imperial loyalist Yoshida Shōin of the same domain was driven to act, impelled by a frantic sense of crisis over Japan’s place in the world. Later on, Yamagata would join what amounted to a local political party founded after Shōin’s death by his disciples. These were the young men of the Shōka Sonjuku, the private school that Shōin established in his house. Evidence that Yamagata was actually a disciple is rather tenuous. However, he styled himself one all his life. Certainly after Shōin’s death, he joined that party and so became a commander in the Chōshū irregular militia, a record that won him a position of importance in the later Meiji government. Besides such things, there were his gifts as a highly accomplished composer of tanka and a skilled garden designer. He did not have the sort of talent to strike out in any new direction, however, but was conservative in all things. This was the man known as “the army’s pontiff.”

Yamagata’s character explains why, unlike the navy, the army was not superior to Russia in structure, equipment, or armaments.

When, on the eve of war, Kodama Gentarō had decided that he alone was fit to become chief of staff of the Manchurian Army, he had to find someone to replace him as vice chief of the General Staff, the post he would be giving up for this new assignment. Kodama wired the forty-seven-year-old major general Nagaoka Gaishi to “Come immediately.” Nagaoka, chief of the Ninth Infantry Brigade (Hiroshima), was waiting for mobilization orders when he received this peremptory summons. “Bring your family and horse with you,” the wire added. Nagaoka hurried to Tokyo and went to the General Staff Office, where he met with Vice Chief Kodama.

“I’m going to Manchuria,” Kodama informed Nagaoka. “You take over here.”

Nagaoka was thunderstruck.

Kodama would have much preferred the next head of overall strategy for the Japanese Army to be a longtime specialist of Russia, but, given the crunch the army was in, he could not insist. Why then did he choose Nagaoka Gaishi?

The army’s personnel policy for both Imperial Headquarters and field headquarters was to place graduates of the Army Staff College, trained by Meckel, as chiefs of staff. Operations were to be conducted uniformly in the style of Meckel. This is why people said that “the Russo-Japanese War was fought with Meckel’s strategies.” The entire first crop of Meckel’s students to graduate from the Army Staff College were all major generals already. That bunch included Akiyama Yoshifuru, who was sent to the field to take on the Cossack cavalry. His grades were not particularly outstanding. Top honors in war strategy went to Tōjō Hidenori of the former Nambu domain, who rose from petty officer to major general. But Kodama did not appoint Tōjō as chief of staff and instead sent him off as head of an infantry brigade.

Of the ten members of that first graduating class, only Nagaoka was from Chōshū. Kodama was not overly concerned about factions, but with Chōshū stalwart Yamagata Aritomo as commander in chief, he chose Nagaoka for one reason only. “Whoever is vice chief of staff will have to get along well with old man Yamagata.” As Kodama saw it, Yamagata was likely to interfere, and, when he did, it was vital to have someone in place who could calm him down and persuade him to withdraw his suggestions. That was why he picked Nagaoka, a Chōshū man. A deputy from anywhere else would either be unable to stand up to Yamagata or would get into fights with him, neither of which would work. Nagaoka Gaishi was not awarded this important post for his ability.

There was a society of sons of Chōshū called Ippinkai—“Top Quality Society”—so named because the characters for the word ippin, “top quality,” resemble the crest of the Chōshū daimyo. Every military man from Yamaguchi Prefecture—that is, the former Chōshū domain—of the rank of major general and above was a member. This was a private association and, among all the organs of the army, the one most feared by soldiers since almost all personnel decisions—who was promoted, who was shifted where—were made in its secret deliberations. Nogi and Nagaoka’s fates were almost certainly settled here.

Yamaguchi soldiers with the rank of colonel and below had their own association, called Dōshōkai—“Same-Costume Society.” This was a junior version of the Top Quality Society and answerable to it. To men from other prefectures, the existence of these organizations was a bane. Later on, to counter the Chōshū faction, other factions were formed with other geographical ties, and those developed in the early years of the Shōwa period into overtly ideological factions like the Imperial Way faction and the Control faction. But that is not a main consideration here.

To repeat, the reason that Nagaoka Gaishi took on the weighty role of vice chief of the General Staff, with the future of Japan in his hands, was not because of his sterling abilities.

“Nagaoka will do.” It was Kodama Gentarō who gave this assurance to Yamagata. Kodama believed that no one but himself was qualified to conduct the Russo-Japanese War, and objectively speaking he was right. The virtue of Chōshū men lay in their high intelligence, a trait that Kodama possessed in abundance. Also, like so many Chōshū fighters, he was ready at any time to put his life on the line. In short, he embodied all the finest aspects of Chōshū tradition. “Nagaoka will do,” he said, because he believed that the Army General Staff of Imperial Headquarters ultimately did not matter. As long as he was heading to the field with Ōyama Iwao, he was resolved to take every single moment of the war’s management with him. For that reason, he undoubtedly thought of the vice chief of the General Staff as a caretaker, the General Staff as little more than a glorified supply center for soldiers, weapons, and ammunition. That is what he meant by “Nagaoka will do.” And, indeed, the ablest members of the General Staff followed Kodama overseas.

Nagaoka was a peculiar fellow with an enormous mustache that he proudly called the “world’s longest.” That mustache made him seem like nothing so much as a humbug. “Show-off,” some called him behind his back. While there may have been some truth to the charge, basically he simply took a child’s delight in flaunting his wit and heroism. His imagination occasionally was visionary. In time, he would introduce skiing to the army, and later, when the airplane came on the scene, he not only was the first to see its potential usefulness to the military but also enlightened the army staff about his views. These accomplishments are proof of the strength of his imagination.

Nagaoka’s mustache was 19.7 inches long, fashioned in the shape of the airplane propellers he eventually became so engrossed in. Had the two sides of the mustache only rotated, it seems entirely possible that he would have taken flight. He was rash by nature. At the time, there was a man in the United States with a 22-inch mustache, the world’s longest. The second-longest mustache in the world belonged to Nagaoka Gaishi of Japan. “It’s an expression of my patriotism,” he would explain in all seriousness. Diffidence was clearly foreign to him.

Was Nagaoka an able man or a third-rate soldier who bluffed his way up the ladder? This question lingered on in the army for years. Even after he died, the matter was never resolved. But the fact that he tended daily to the second-longest mustache in the world and wore it boldly in public without the least embarrassment is perhaps one key to unlocking his character. Nagaoka was a creature of impulse.

There were many mysteries about the great fortress at Port Arthur. One was that, even though Japan’s army and navy together had the harbor and town so tightly encircled and blockaded that not even an ant could crawl out, comments from General Stoessel appeared off and on in the world’s newspapers. Apparently, it was possible to communicate with the outside world from the safety of the fortress, by some means or other.

“How in the world do they do it?” The General Staff Office spurred its spy network to investigate and found that the enemy was using carrier pigeons.

The report came from Colonel Aoki, who was stationed in Beijing. There was a dovecote for carrier pigeons in Weihaiwei, he said. It belonged to the United States, but the Russians were the ones actually using it. Weihaiwei was a neutral part of Qing territory, and, moreover, the Japanese had no wish to stir up a diplomatic skirmish with the United States.

Nagaoka struggled to come up with a ploy, and at last he did, finding a solution entirely in keeping with his character. “Send hawks to attack the pigeons.” He promptly took up the matter with the Imperial Household Ministry, which had an office with the old-fashioned name “Hunting Division.” Count Toda Ujitaka was the division head, with many hawk-keepers under his supervision. Nagaoka quickly summoned the keepers to Imperial Headquarters and handed out formal notices of appointment, making them members of the strategic planning team.

However, it soon became clear that Imperial Household Ministry hawks were not accustomed to attacking pigeons. “Peregrine falcons might work,” the keepers suggested, and Nagaoka jumped on this idea, asking them to follow through. They had to start by finding wild peregrines, which were most plentiful in the prefectures of Kōchi, Kagawa, Shimane, and Wakayama. Men were dispatched to those areas, and so Imperial Headquarters was able to get its hands on the necessary birds—but training them took time. Port Arthur fell before Nagaoka’s peregrines ever had a chance to wing their way across the harbor there.

Nagaoka Gaishi did not have a gift for careful, precise reasoning, but in his ability to dream up new ideas one after another he was second to none. For one thing, since Kodama Gentarō had authority over strategy in the field, the General Staff of Imperial Headquarters was relatively idle. It was Nagaoka who came up with the idea of floating a balloon over Port Arthur. This was an ingenious scheme. They would put observers in a balloon high in the air and have them look down inside the fortifications to spot hits. Nagaoka’s later focus on airplanes and his attempt to send hawks after carrier pigeons suggest a strong interest in flight.

Balloons had long since been put to practical use by European armies, but since the Japanese Army put little faith in technology, their lone balloon had been tested just once, in December 1901. Nagaoka ordered the old balloon hauled out of storage and re-tested. There was no rope, so a rope-manufacturing company in Fukagawa was told to produce some. The quality of the resulting rope was poor. In April of that year, 1904, the balloon was successfully launched in the Hama Rikyū Garden, but at 300 meters the rope broke, and the balloon floated off, eventually falling into the sea off the port of Ōarai, about 160 kilometers north of Tokyo.

A new balloon had to be hurriedly constructed. The gas bag was ordered from Shibaura Engineering Works, the precursor of Toshiba. The finished balloon, known as Mooring Balloon No. 3, joined Nogi’s army at Port Arthur in August and flew high in the sky over Zhoujiatun and Fenghuang cheng. It turned out to be of little use, affording a view of the harbor and part of the enemy forts but not the all-important gunners. Its military effectiveness was virtually nil. This was not Nagaoka’s fault but rather that of the Japanese Army itself for failing to make the balloon operational all along.

Nagaoka agonized over Port Arthur. “If Port Arthur doesn’t fall, the country will be destroyed.” He muttered these words nearly every day.

While Ōyama Iwao and Kodama Gentarō of the Manchurian Army had the right to issue direct orders to Nogi’s Third Army, Kodama was in the process of moving troops farther north after the pitched battle of Liaoyang, oblivious to all else. With no time to spare for Nogi’s army in Port Arthur, he followed protocol and left matters entirely in the hands of Nogi and Ijichi.

As a result, Nagaoka ended up stepping outside the chain of command to supervise Nogi’s army in various ways. He had no choice. The tactics of Third Army headquarters were all too plainly bumbling and ill-considered as well as deeply entrenched. At this rate, losses would continue to pile up while enemy positions remained unscathed. Some new approach was required, something unconventional. Nagaoka may be called a showman with some justification, but his ability to come up with unconventional solutions may have made him exactly the right man for the job. Yet, because his ideas were too eccentric for the dignity of his position as vice chief of the General Staff, he failed in everything he attempted.

What saved this crisis in Port Arthur, where the fate of the nation hung in the balance, was not the strategic competence of Nogi’s headquarters. It was rather the human blood that headquarters spilled by driving successive waves of soldiers at the Russian fortress in blatant disregard of Nogi’s personal feelings and sentiments. This blood was not the agent of change. But the fact that blood was spilled was important. To explain further, those deaths represented the spiritual condition–the grand spiritual condition, let it be said—of tens of thousands of Meiji period Japanese soldiers striding willingly (or helplessly) into the jaws of death. Nogi’s military headquarters relied on Japanese men’s loyalty to the state and, using that as base, issued death orders again and again on a scale never before seen in world history. The many deaths finally motivated Imperial Headquarters to take drastic steps.

Earlier, we touched on Nagaoka Gaishi’s showmanship and affectation. But his show-off personality played a significant role in saving the Japanese at Port Arthur. It predisposed him to enjoy discussions of quick-wittedness or resourcefulness and to listen avidly to new ideas. He was as different in personality as he could possibly have been from Nogi’s chief of staff Ijichi, who was stuffed full of preconceived notions.

One time, when Nagaoka went to the Army Ministry to call on Colonel Yamaguchi Masaru, head of the artillery section, he happened to run into someone else. It was technician Arisaka Nariakira, famed as the inventor of the “Arisaka rifle.” A major general, Arisaka was from Iwakuni domain in Suō (ruled by a branch family of the Mōri family of Chōshū)—the next best thing to being from Chōshū itself. The Type 31 quick-firing field gun that he invented, a vastly improved version of a quick-firing rifle, would prove its worth many times over in field battles of the Russo-Japanese War. Arisaka was eventually promoted to lieutenant general, then made a baron before he died in 1915.

“About Port Arthur,” ventured Arisaka, at this point head of the Army Technology Investigation Department. “The way things are, it will never fall.”

Nagaoka looked at him with annoyance. He knew very well that Port Arthur wasn’t about to fall. That was precisely what he was agonizing over, why he kept intimating to Nogi’s headquarters that a change of strategy was in order.

“Do you have a good strategy in mind?”

“No, sir,” said Arisaka. “I don’t know anything about that. What I know about is guns. And the ones you sent over there can’t get the job done.”

“The hell you say,” thought Nagaoka. Senior command had taken the trouble to place Ijichi and Toyoshima, both artillery experts, on Nogi’s staff.

“What I say may sound odd, but I would like to send over some 28-centimeter howitzers.”

Nagaoka gasped. The 28-centimeter howitzers were great guns mounted in Japan’s coastal defense zone.

“Send soldiers.” This message, a request for troop replenishments, came without cease from Nogi’s Third Army in Port Arthur. Any troops sent there were bound to become fodder for the trenches in front of the fortifications (not even making it as far as the fortifications). In Imperial Headquarters, loud mutterings were heard. “The only tactic Nogi’s staff knows is killing people.” Nogi’s brain trust was so obstinate that they never seemed to realize that their failures should serve as a springboard for new approaches.

“The Japanese Army keeps coming at us in the same way.” This comment appears in Russian sources.

Among the men and officers under fire on the front line at Port Arthur, there was increased criticism of military headquarters at the rear. Major General Ichinohe Hyōe was a born soldier and a talented field officer who served under Nogi as brigade commander. He led the Sixth Brigade from Kanazawa in the assault and succeeded in capturing a rise that was renamed “Fort Ichinohe” in his honor. Even he—we say “even” because Ichinohe shared with Nogi the character of an old-time samurai—criticized Nogi in private. While fighting at the front during the siege of Port Arthur, he wondered, “Why does the army chief”—Nogi—“keep issuing orders that are so nonsensical, so completely unconnected to the situation?”

Under such appalling leadership, the rank and file went obediently to their deaths, but one or two generals faked illness and actually were transported to the rear. To Meiji period Japanese, the state and the emperor were absolutes, and yet there was undoubtedly some wavering among high-ranking officers. Even common soldiers began to sense that the commander was too far back, too unaware of what was happening at the front. And, at Imperial Headquarters, the phrase “needless killing” came into daily use.

In later years, Major Shigi Moriharu gave a special lecture at the Army Staff College on the battlefield psychology of Japanese officers and men during the siege of Port Arthur. He was a colonel at the time of the siege. “General Nogi was not at the time anything like the General Nogi so highly revered today,” read the stenographic notes of the lecture.

Before the third all-out assault, a rumor reached the front that if Port Arthur didn’t fall this time, the chief was prepared to die. But the rumor did not encourage or inspire the troops in the slightest. They sloughed it off. “If he wants to, let him” was the attitude. Knowing that the general lost two sons in the war supposedly stirred up the troops’ morale to a great degree, but this is a complete fabrication. The First Division knew nothing about it, and the Eleventh Division thought it was only a matter of course.

Big guns: the appellation perfectly fits the 28-centimeter howitzers, then known as “coastal guns.” They were positioned strategically at Japanese straits, at the entrance to Tokyo Bay, and on promontories and islands along the Kitan Strait leading into Osaka Bay. In the event of an attack by enemy warships, they would be used to sink the ships.

The prototype of the 28-centimeter howitzer was of Italian make and had a fairly long history in Japan. As far back as 1883, the army had ordered the Osaka Army Arsenal to build a replica. Lacking the technology to make good-quality cast iron of its own, the arsenal used imported Gregorini cast iron from Italy, completing the replica in 1884. When the finished gun was test-fired at Shinodayama in Osaka Prefecture, it let out an earth-shattering roar and was declared a success. The army promptly built a battery on Kannonzaki Point in Tokyo Bay and mounted the gun there.

This howitzer could not yet be described as being entirely manufactured in Japan. Comparable guns of purely Japanese make did not come about until 1893, when Gregorini cast iron was abandoned in favor of Kamaishi pig iron. After that, several dozen more were made and placed in strategic coastal spots around the country. The gun barrel was cast iron. The exterior was covered in steel.

Previous army cannons, field guns for example, would rattle backward when fired, due to recoil. After each blast, they had to be muscled back to their original location before they could be fired again. The new cannons were equipped with buffers so that recoil affected only the barrel, which was returned to its position by hydraulic pressure. The pump contained a spring and glycerin.

As coastal defense, the howitzer did not need to be moved about, and it was so big that the chassis was fastened down. Concrete was used for the groundwork, with impressive results. The gun was mounted on a rack able to turn 360 degrees, allowing it to be fired in any direction.

“Those would be powerful enough to destroy the concrete in the Port Arthur fortifications,” said Arisaka. “The psychological impact alone would be enormous.”

Nagaoka, fond of new ideas as he was, began to be excited about the suggestion, but then his expression darkened slightly. “If they are removed, won’t the country’s defenses suffer?”

“Port Arthur has the country teetering on the edge of destruction anyway” came the pointed reply. “With the country destroyed, what need will there be of coastal defense?”

For Nagaoka, this was a plan of great magnitude. Unable to make the call on his own, he consulted Commander in Chief Yamagata and was told, “If Arisaka says so, you can count on it. Go talk to the army minister.” He then sprang into action, immediately going to see Army Minister Terauchi Masatake, laying out the plan and the reasoning behind it. Terauchi balked, however, and refrained from committing himself. He had always thought Nagaoka rash, and generally took a dim view of his speech and behavior. But Nagaoka was relentless, calling on Terauchi repeatedly until finally he obtained the minister’s consent.

Nagaoka later said that he felt “great joy” at that moment, but when he conveyed the news to Nogi’s headquarters in Port Arthur, he was told, “No need to send them.”

“Nagaoka is out of his mind,” Ijichi told Nogi.

The sound of gunfire never ceased, although none of the shelling reached as far back as headquarters. It was significant that none of Nogi’s aides had acquired the habit of creeping to the front on hands and knees. So their uniforms were clean, their gold braid decorations brightly shining.

Nogi’s expression never varied. In years to come, he would be known as a man of great virtue, and indeed there was always a gentleness in his eyes as he looked on others. He never once lost his temper with his aides, nor hurled abusive language at them. His mouth, the shape of which suggested an introverted temperament, would sometimes curl in a light smile, but he had what people call a “tear-stained face,” so that even when he smiled, he appeared to be crying.

“Did you talk to Major General Toyoshima?” Nogi asked Ijichi. Toyoshima Yōzō was the one in charge of all the siege artillery in Nogi’s army.

Neither Ijichi nor Toyoshima had ever studied under Meckel, nor were they graduates of the Army Staff College. On that point, the two were of one mind, agreeing that “just because you’ve gone to the Staff College doesn’t mean you know anything about war.”

This, by the way, is perfectly true. Strategists and commanders possess innate ability. Like artists and sculptors, they are not produced by a fixed course of training. Akiyama Saneyuki acquired his knowledge of naval strategy completely on his own. While he did take up a teaching position at the Naval Staff College, he was never a student there. Geniuses of the likes of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Napoleon never received formal training either.

But let this be clear: in the case of the Japanese Navy, nearly all the tacticians of the various fleets and squadrons that made up the Combined Fleet had studied under Saneyuki in the Naval Staff College. This shared background was of enormous benefit, providing unity of approach and aiding in the communication of strategic goals.

In the army, Kodama Gentarō was previously not a student of Meckel’s but a college administrator. We’ve told of how he attended lectures alongside the students and absorbed the German advisor’s tactics. Nagaoka Gaishi of Imperial Headquarters was a follower of Meckel, as were most of the chiefs of staff and other staff members of the various armies. Their thoughts regarding strategy were therefore easily conveyed to one another. Only Nogi’s headquarters was a nonconductor of this electricity.

“Those idiots in Imperial Headquarters know absolutely nothing,” Ijichi informed Nogi when discussing the howitzers. “Toyoshima had a good laugh about it too.” He and Toyoshima were accepted experts on artillery. Not knowing anything about modern warfare himself, Nogi had no choice but to go along with what his “expert” aides told him.

The surprising news that these enormous guns would be shipped to Port Arthur came by wire. “Preparations are underway to send four 28-centimeter howitzers” went the text of the wire that Nagaoka sent to Ijichi, “two with disappearing carriages and two with ordinary gun carriages. Will arrange for them to arrive at Dalian Harbor around September 15. If you have any opinions on this matter, please advise.” Nagaoka’s enthusiasm shows between the lines. The last line, with its deferential approach, demonstrates Tokyo tactfulness toward the Manchurian Army.

That reply from Nogi’s headquarters deserves to go down in history: “No need to send them.” In the history of the world, has any military leadership ever been so impossibly foolish and deluded?

“Nagaoka was in the infantry. He has no idea what a hassle it is to move 28-centimeter howitzers.” This is what Ijichi and Toyoshima, the two artillery experts, said to Nogi.

“You have to start by building an emplacement,” Toyoshima explained. “It would take a good month or two for the concrete to dry. After that, there’s no telling how long it might take to put the thing together. The people in Tokyo don’t even know that much.”

Ijichi echoed this opinion. He was not fool enough to suppose that it would take “a good month or two for the concrete to dry,” as Toyoshima said. Still, it might well take a good three weeks, he thought, which would not be in time for the next assault. And so he wired back, “No need to send them.”

In fact, neither Toyoshima nor Ijichi had much real technical knowledge. Tricky as it was to disassemble and transport the big guns, ten days would suffice to set them up again. This was common knowledge in artillery circles. The two men’s knowledge and understanding were piecemeal. They merely put on the airs of being experts as opposed to the “amateurs” in Tokyo.

But Tokyo had Arisaka Nariakira, a world authority on guns, as well as an expert on these 28-centimeter howitzers. A team was set up to construct emplacements, headed by Captain Yokota Minoru, who assured Nagaoka that he had no cause for worry.

A special ship was prepared for the purpose of transporting the howitzers. It entered Dalian Harbor and arrived at Dazifangshen. Barely nine days later, the emplacements were set up and all was finished, the howitzers ready to fire. Yokota’s struggles were monumental, but he got the job done.

The number of guns increased from the four in the original plan to six. Later, the number would go all the way up to eighteen.

In discussing the Japanese approach to the assault on the Port Arthur fortifications, we’ve covered the same ground several times from different angles; sometimes we’ve inverted the order of events in our relentless pursuit of the matter. We find the degree of repetition embarrassing. And yet “Port Arthur” is not an ordinary place name or phrase, but one that has acquired a fateful sound and meaning associated with the very survival or extinction of Meiji Japan. Everyone at the time felt a dark foreboding that Port Arthur might spell the end. After the unprecedented agonies of the late Tokugawa period through the Meiji Restoration, Japan had built a modern (that is, nineteenth-century) state—a state which, barely thirty-seven years on, lay in mortal peril.

From the first, Nagaoka Gaishi believed that the thing to do was to make an all-out effort to capture 203-Meter Hill. Nagaoka had done all he could to win Nogi and Ijichi over to this idea, even dispatching Lieutenant Colonel Igata Tokuzō to the front to try to talk some sense into them.

When Igata had reached Manchuria, instead of going straight to Nogi, he called at the headquarters of the Manchurian Army. “As I am only a lieutenant colonel,” he told Kodama, “I doubt if my words will carry weight with the commanders in Port Arthur, Nogi and Ijichi. If possible, I would like to go there in the company of Major General Iguchi.” He was referring to Iguchi Shōgo of Shizuoka, known along with Colonel Matsukawa Toshitane of Miyagi as one of Kodama’s two top thinkers.

One hot day early in August, Iguchi and Igata had set off for Nogi’s headquarters in Shuangtaigou. The first words out of Ijichi’s mouth were: “What does either of you know about the conditions here, or the suffering? The Third Army doesn’t need half-witted advice from you, Igata. It needs soldiers and bullets.” In other words, send us more blood and iron.

Iguchi and Igata had done their best to convey the dire straits the navy was in, hinting at the need for a fundamental review of tactics, but Ijichi had flatly dismissed their concerns. “We are in constant communication with the Combined Fleet,” he maintained. “They’re in no particular hurry.” A heated argument arose, during the course of which Ijichi called Iguchi names. Iguchi became so incensed that he was sorely tempted to cut down Ijichi on the spot, commit seppuku and so save Japan from its moment of crisis.

For the Japanese nation, so keen to modernize in the wake of the Meiji Restoration, the attack on Port Arthur was its first intimate encounter with the fearsomeness of modernity, as symbolized in those impregnable fortifications. The lesson cost Japan dearly in the blood of its soldiers.

“Leave Port Arthur alone.” This was the essential line of thinking developed over a period of years by the General Staff as it geared up for war with Russia. “The enemy is holed up in its castle fortress,” reasoned army leaders. “Why draw it out?” That approach was essentially correct. Had the Japanese Army landed at Dalian Harbor, proceeded northward without bothering about the fortifications at Port Arthur, and then won a string of victories in the field, the fortifications would have eventually fallen of themselves. Better to have left them to their fate.

“Yes, but what if the foe emerges and threatens the Japanese Army from the rear as it moves north? Then what?” This consideration was of course valid. “Then we leave behind sufficient troops to handle that possibility.” That was what everyone thought—correctly, it must be said.

In laying out an early blueprint of the war, even Kodama Gentarō spoke about the possibility of enemy soldiers coming out of Port Arthur. “Just put up a bamboo palisade.” A bamboo palisade was a temporary impediment used in medieval Japan to stop an enemy attack. In the Tokugawa period, bamboo palisades were set up to mark areas that were off limits. Kodama did not mean that his suggestion should be taken literally. It was his way of saying that a minimal contingent of soldiers could do the job.

But then, on the eve of fighting, the navy put in a request that Port Arthur be attacked by land. The request was not unreasonable in itself. Had the Japanese Navy succeeded in sinking every last ship in the Port Arthur Squadron (a virtual pipe dream), an overland attack would have been unnecessary. They gamely did what they could to sink the entire enemy fleet unaided, but because the squadron refused to leave the harbor, their only recourse was to continue the blockade.

At one point, the squadron did emerge. Tōgō then took off in hot pursuit and fought the battle of the Yellow Sea, but too many enemy ships slipped away unharmed and retreated to the safety of the harbor, leaving the navy no choice but to resume the blockade. From the navy’s perspective, the fleet in the harbor needed to be sunk. For that to happen, the army needed to capture a hill where spotters could be placed (203-Meter Hill, as it turned out) and then sink enemy ships with heavy artillery fire. That was all. That would have been enough to wrap up Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War. Instead, Nogi’s misguided attempt to obliterate the fortifications caused an unprecedented and unmitigated disaster (one not to be dignified with the name of war).