What We Should Actually Learn from Japan

Inspired by a new favorite tik tok war edit

I’ve stared at my phone for 15 minutes straight as the same reel plays over and over and over. My daemon has been activated. Previously, only the penguin heading to the mountains did it for me. Now, I cannot stop watching the only known footage of kamikaze pilots hitting their target. A vocaloid remix of Around the World plays on repeat as the Zero slams into the side of the USS Enterprise.

I am a warrior adrift. I have been trained to kill. I have wanted the adventure yet have not been granted it. The only war on the horizon hurts my nation yet I will probably still go. This is not about that. This is about the inner spirit of the pilot. This is about the world they came from. The one they did not just offer to die for, the one they committed to die for.

Japan has become the newest obsession of the right wing. I’ve lived in Japan, it’s a land far less tainted than ours. But every twitter account and podcaster draws the wrong conclusion. Clean streets and a functional criminal justice system are the basic fucking prerequisites to a higher civilization. Japan has not done anything special in this regard apart from being the last Western nation to capitulate to Judeo-Bolshevism. The London that Lee Kuan Yew visited in the 1960s was far cleaner, safer, and ‘higher trust’ than Tokyo is in 2026.

As an aside, I will not rehash Sun and Steel (a great book nonetheless). Yukio Mishima spoke to his people in a specific time and place. There are lessons to be learned from him and I actually would recommend Temple of the Golden Pavilion first.

Like Mishima though, I read the letters of the Kamikaze pilots. And what I discovered spoke to me. It spoke to what we’ve lost, what will be required, and what we must uphold.

Psalm 118:6 “The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

If you had to write a final letter who would you address? Would it be political grandstanding? Would it be a mere cry to ‘be remembered?’ Would you march to the gallows with head held high or with absolute fear?

I trust that everyone has been doing well recently.

I am dearly grateful that you went to all the trouble to come visit me the other day in such a busy time. Since my injury is already healed, do not worry.

At last for me also the time of final service has arrived. I very deeply appreciate my special upbringing until now. I am one who lacked courage, but please do speak well of me.

In order to destroy our enemy, I will summon courage with all my might and will go to strike. We are the ones to deliver the country from the current crisis. Taking pride in this, I will surely do it. My comrades have already done it. Even right now my comrades, believing in those who will follow after them, are striking the enemy. Shall I keep silent? Shall I try to be quiet about this? Father, Mother, please do congratulate me.

Brother, sister, please take care of Father and Mother.

I surely will be protecting everybody from the eternal faraway skies in Nansei Shotō. Even though my body dies, I will certainly defend you.

Please give my kindest regards to the neighbors. I hope you will always keep in contact with Mr. Ebihara of Honjō. Since I have been busy, I have not been able to write a letter to him for a long time. Please give my greetings to Mr. Nishigaya also.

\With this I give you my final farewell. Thank you for everything. Goodbye, goodbye.

Second Lieutenant Tomizawa

Do you have a community worth sending your last words to? Do you have neighbors that you would want to inform? Do you even know your neighbor?

2nd Lt Tomizawa did. Pay special attention to Mr. Honjo. Perhaps it seems bland that he would address a mere neighbor in his farewell letter to the earthly plane. He has an upbringing to thank. An upbringing that embodied the aphorism of ‘it takes a village.’ And not only does he thank them, he sees his prime directive as their defense and continuation.

What do we learn through his sacrifice? We learn that a prerequisite to creating the kinds of men who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good is a community at the smallest of levels worth dying for. That means a neighborhood in which your life is integrated with your neighbors. One in which your family represents a sacred institution, not just a blood related patronage network. It means being tied to the land, to the culture, and to the people who form your slice of the Earth.

What have you done for your neighbors? What will you do for your children? What have you done for your parents? For Tomizawa to have entered the Zero in defense of the Empire required something far greater than a solipsistic notion of the Platonic merits of duty to one’s tribe. It required an intimate connection to the place from which he came; something we must rebuild if we are to escape the chaos that will follow the final death throes of the Faustian soul.

Dear Grandmother,

You took care of me for a long time. I warmly thank you for your extraordinary kindness.

Did you know that I visited about 1300 hours? I saw clearly the people who went up to the roof and were waving red and white clothes. Grandmother, it surely must have been you who was waving from the second floor.

Finally it is the sortie. Certainly I will sink at once an enemy ship.

I am really saddened to depart from my squadron commander, who I truly thank strongly for his valuable encouragement. Missing my squadron commander as I lag behind even though I follow, I go after him as I earnestly live only for an eternal cause as a shield for the Emperor.

Please live long in good health with my portion.

Thank you for the various things that you have done for me.

Corporal Genzō Takeda

What place does true gratitude hold within your life? Thankfulness to family, to the nation, to God? Would your final thoughts be of fear? Maybe of victory? Or would your spirit be imbued with gratefulness that those before you allowed you this honor?

The boomers think they will live forever. The spiritual plane has departed their minds and the sickness of our society reflects it. In the ethos of our rotting society, the only plausible sadness to experience is the recognition of the end of your own hedonistic pleasures. Perhaps you’d feel sadness at losing someone or something you loved. But what made Corporal Takeda sad? As a warrior, he was saddened that he no longer would be able to serve a great commander. His only sadness is that he couldn’t give more.

America too had this spirit. Recall the echoes of those men who took up sword and musket to the British Empire. Nathan Hale, a patriot captured by the British, had but one sentiment to leave us with as he was marched to his execution. ‘My only regret is that I only have one life to give for my country.’ How many of you would give a tenth of your life for your people? Who among you would sacrifice any measure of wealth for glory? Who truly understands the existential crisis they are in and judges their civilization and progeny to have greater value than their temporary material comfort?

Dear Parents,

Please take comfort that I arrived safely at my destination. I will use some spare time to write to you from this forward base. In this place plum blossoms have already fallen. Japanese yellow roses (yamabuki) and other flowers are now in full bloom and remind me of my hometown full of simple beauty.

Adding to that, with emotion filling my heart, I remember the touching scene from the other day at the time of my departure when Father came to see me off. I am seized with an impulse that I want to cry manly tears, but with an effort I hold them back and will go resolutely.

Now I am waiting only for the order to come. Please have everyone in the neighborhood pray to God for my success. Please look up to the southern skies where vast white clouds rise high in the blue sky and imagine that I will be smiling there always.

Grandmother, Father and Mother, and younger brothers and sisters, I hope that you will be well. I will go with great vigor.

Farewell.
Ensign Isao Yui

What do you think happens when you die? Do you imagine a fade to black and hold a small hope that you left your children better off than yourself? Do you understand that warriors live forever? Do you understand that the deeds of the worthy outrank the wealth of the avaricious?

When duty calls will you have a simple flashback of your whole life? Will you be the coward of Camus’ Stranger? Or will you look to the ground, the sky, and the flowers and recognize the beauty around you? Will you understand your place in history? Ensign Yui had no such qualms. He was able to be at peace with his destiny. He did not need some gay ‘nirvana’ realization to achieve these tranquility. Yui only needed to look to his family, his nation, and his Emperor to understand that his purpose had been fulfilled. Yes, he was human and fought back tears but he understood there are things greater than his own existence.

Did your ancestors cry before charging hopelessly across the fields of Gettysburg? Did General Pickett concern himself with minutiae and fear? Or did he embrace his destiny as a Faustian man and charge forward into the infinite? Who can be said to have really lived; the sickly, ancient banker in his deathbed or the fiery youth who pointed bayonet towards eternity and charged uphill?

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna - I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man - The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken - I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch - The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis

The spirit of the kamikaze may be dead in Japan, I do not profess to know what resides in the souls of men in the Orient. But I do know what resides in the souls of my people, my nation. I know that the men descended from heroes like Travis at the Alamo still live within us.

I know that throughout hundreds of years of conflict the American soul still yearns for the last stand. I know that within us this spirit of sacrifice can still be recalled. I know that honor still binds us in the deepest recesses of our Weimar occupied nation.

But work must be done. Travis was part of a people who built on the frontier. Perhaps his life is not as analogous to ours. But the spirit of a people who have something worth dying for all have something in common. They have built communities that are worth dying for. They live next to people they would lay their life down for. They have children that they will do anything to save.

So what is the lesson from the Japanese? It is that we must build something that allows us to view our own people the way they viewed theirs. We must love one another. We must know our neighbors. We must measure our progress in centuries, not quarterly profits. We must have something worth defending. Our cause must represent more than simply tearing down the walls of corruption around us. We must have a call to create a new man for the new era. Our goals must escape the material.

Simply put, we must be ready to answer the call. And we must have a call worth answering.