Great Construction

The Brains of Makers of War

        It is the brains of makers of war that always make me baffled. They have the mentality that gives no care at all in sacrificing a great many people’s lives to fulfill egoistic ambition, which has not just begun recently but has long been the same situation since very old times. You should consider this; even if someone kills only one person, he or she will not only be accused of murder but also will be, for his or her own part, incessantly stung by conscience and suffer from pangs of repentance, which is often heard from the words of murderer’s confession. Such persons are, on the whole, less ill-natured even among murderers of the same kind, though. In extreme cases of utter villains, even if they killed many people, they are hard to feel remorse. As the saying goes, when evils are raging they prevail over heaven, so the villains make their way gorgeously in the world for a while. However, now that they finally begin to decline because of the fruit of evil deeds, so it’s time for them to be caught and reap what they have sown, trembling with fear of the evil that they have done and come to their senses; some of them in remorseful tears even leave praiseworthy words, which we often hear, but on rare occasions there are some brazen fellows who have no guilty conscience and, in addition, are executed saying spiteful things, yet this is an exception. 
        In the case of war, however, the scale of severity is far beyond comparison. The leaders, even if they do not have a direct hand in killing people, commit mass murder through hundreds of thousands or millions of their subordinates. In addition, they kill not only enemies but friends, so their cruelties can never be tolerable to a sense of humanity. They must be some kinds of demons or beasts, and are indeed beyond words. However, they are not bad only because they kill a number of people at a time. For, if there is a force that poses a menace with weapons to a people who are enjoying their peace, that is, a peace-loving people, it is perfectly legitimate self-defense to ward off the attack since without taking preventive measures promptly, the casualties would be greater. Therefore, it is needless to say that this countermeasure does not constitute a crime at all. 
        We must say that heroes of the times who sacrifice a number of lives for their own ambitions and never reflect on their conduct that their brains are indeed mysterious. It is too evident that the realization of world peace can never be attained as long as this kind of brain is not converted. Viewed in this light, though all sorts of pacifist organizations and the activities of religious bodies are very fine, for the sake of thoroughness it should be said that there is no other choice but to root out cruelty from the brains of present heroes. Doing things like that, however, will be said to be an almost impossible task, and most people could possibly think of religion as a promising solution. But since it has already been proved that the religions to date are no-good, an X which is beyond some epoch-making religion must emerge by all means. Probably it is not the case that we alone think thus.

Eikô, Issue 101, April 25, 1951
translated by taki