Word: nogi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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According to ancient doctrine, Hirohito is the 124th direct descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. All his childhood was a drill in the warrior-centered Shinto religion. When he was eleven, his grandfather, the Emperor, died, and General Nogi, one of Hirohito's beloved tutors, gave him a final traumatic lesson in Shinto. After sitting with him for more than three hours and reviewing the boy's studies, the old general went home to his wife. First, the couple purified themselves in Shinto rites. Then the general took a dagger, dispatched his wife, and eviscerated himself...
...Nobusuke was frail, and so swarthy that his schoolmates called him "Darky." He was also proud and conceited and "was always picking fights with bigger and older boys," a habit he has not yet outgrown. In middle school, Nobusuke wrote an essay praising the suicide of General Maresuke Nogi, the hero who captured Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War and later disemboweled himself on the death of his beloved Emperor Meiji in 1912. The act had shocked the West and produced a critical editorial in the London Times, but Nobusuke hailed it as an example of virtuous idealism...