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Beyond a song – the tragedy of the Himeyuri


Biwa recitations fall into a number of categories. Those considered the oldest are said to date back to the middle of the 16th Century. Some are Confucian in how they advocate serenity, peace, and order. Other are like sermons in their moral tone. The song Fumon performed that day is in a style of text developed later.


Elegiac in tone, it is on a martial theme commemorating the Himeyuri Student Corps. They were a group of high school girls who were mobilized by the Imperial Army, contrary to all laws at the time, and ordered to treat wounded soldiers at the Haebaru Army Hospital during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.


The word Himeyuri is the Japanese name for a kind of lily. It was the nickname for the students at the school the girls came from, much in the same way as today we use “Cats” for the Kilkenny Hurling team, or “All Blacks” for New Zealand in Rugby.


It seems that the Army led the students to believe that they would be helping at a distance from the frontline. However, they found themselves ordered to the frontline and into the thick of battle. There, they worked on the battlefield, treating the injured and recovering the bodies of those killed.


Not many of the girls were injured or killed initially, but this changed as the Japanese Imperial Army began to disintegrate. The student corps were disbanded in the midst of fierce fighting on the Kyan Peninsula and they found themselves caught between two armies. Of the 240 mobilized to the Army Hospital 136 were killed. 91 students in different student medical corps died in other areas, bringing the total to 227. A small number of them took their own lives.


If you’d like to read a personal account of one of the survivors, you can find it in Japanese here: kumamotokokufuh.ed.jp/kokufu/sensou/okinawa.html


I was never able to ask Fumon about this piece or why he sang it that day. Spring and early summer of 1995 was exactly 50 years since the end of the Battle of Okinawa, so I presume that it was for some event to commemorate them.


Title page of the song Himeyuri in Fumon's hand

The song was composed by Nagahama Nanjo (1900-1969). He was the principal of a high school technical college in Satsuma-Sendai in Kagoshima Prefecture. Teaching students of the same age, the Himeyuri's story must have resonated deeply with him. Unfortunately, I don't have an exact date for its composition. Some people might be interested to know that he also wrote a song lamenting the loss of President Kennedy, composed immediatelyfollowing his assassination, November 27th, 1963.


My struggle with the martial nature of Satsumabiwa


During my 30 years of playing Satsumabiwa, I’ve often felt the need to pause and give a lot of thought to some of the songs, particularly those on martial themes.


It is very easy to misconstrue that these songs all intend to present war through rose-tinted glasses as something to admire. There is an historical understanding of the origins of Satsumabiwa as being formed to raise the fighting spirit of the warriors. However, the older tradition has it that it was created by the Confucianist, monk, and senior member of the Satsuma Clan, Nisshinsai, in the aftermath of a vicious civil war in the Satsuma region at the beginning of the 16th century. His desire was to promote order and harmony in society, as well as to create an art form to temper and balance the destructive tendencies that naturally manifest in the life of a warrior solely focused on fighting.


Performances of Satsumabiwa were banned after World War 2 by the occupation forces because it was regarded as being too associated with the militarism of the preceding years. I intend to research songs written at this time to see what may have justified this action. In any case, I often felt uncomfortable considering the pain and suffering that has been caused by all Imperial ambitions of the past.


Reaching below the surface


Nevertheless, the whole tradition can't be summed up in this way, and recently I came to understand these texts in a more nuanced way. I hope to expound on the changes to my perceptions as I introduce this song about the Himeyuri. In the next post, I will give the text and its translation.


My sense that Satsumabiwa was irreverently encouraging an admiration for war was challenged for the first time when I realised that blame is not attributed or present in Satsumabiwa songs. I have never seen anger encouraged. Instead, the listener is led to empathise with the main character without disdain to the other.


In time, I then came to see it almost as a requiem-like event. It reminded me of Noh theatre and how this occasionally centres on the spirit of a character who dying in difficult circumstances cannot have peace without the intervention of another person, usually a Buddhist monk. Similarly, Satsumabiwa wasn't just telling their story and trying to get the listener to take a side. Instead, it appeared as if seeking to restore something to the protagonist of the song all the while drawing the listener to empathise with them.


Piercing a tale


I often wondered how one can relate to the tone of a recitation in Satsumabiwa. Just a few days ago I read of an incident from the battle of Okinawa that might serve to give some sense of the manner in which Satsumabiwa often treats its subject matter.


This is from a post on X - A 29-year-old mother (the grandmother of the poster) desperately wanted to get food for her five-year-old son during the height of the battle in Okinawa in 1945. Going to the fields, she was killed by incoming fire.


How would one treat this story in a narrative? The listener could be feeling anger at the injustice and the futility of war. Others might feel pity for her at how unlucky she was, and perhaps, for some people, a sense of rage at the possibility that she may have been deliberately targeted.


In Satsumabiwa, the text instead would focus on the mother, her love for her child, how she felt she had to get food for her son, her fears, how she overcame them, her courage, then the sounds of war, the scenes around her, her terror as she desperately searched for food.


What is happening here is not just a pitiful tale of a mother who unfortunately was killed in a war situation. Instead, the entirety of her being is addressed. Everything integral to her as a person is restored to her. Her voice is heard through the performer. It is like an act of charity to give back to her the fullness of who she was rather than to be a footnote to a bigger story.


Beauty and tragedy


I was also struck at how this song text is written in an expressive and beautiful manner. The tone is never raw or direct in Japanese. Many times I wondered if this was an attempt to desensitise the listener to, or gloss over, the horrors of war. It troubled me until I read The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. One passage from the book remained with me ever since:


And about myself I remember this ... At first you're afraid of death ... Amazement and curiosity live side by side in you. Then they both vanish – from fatigue. You're at the limits of your strength. Beyond the limits. In the end only one fear remains – of being ugly after death. A woman's fear ... Not to be torn to pieces by a shell ... I saw it happen ... I picked up those pieces.”

(Sofya Konstantinovna Dubniakova – Medical Assistant)


The manner of writing in the Satsumabiwa narrative and the treatment of the protagonist lead me to understand these texts now as respecting this one fear – “of being ugly after death”.

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