The River. Part One. Chapter Five

The cadet corps reeked of carbolic acid, sweat, and the raw earth of the parade ground.

Life here was governed not by the cycle of day and night, but by the rhythm of the drum. A beat — reveille. A beat — formation. A beat — lights out. This rhythm seeped beneath the skin, into the blood, becoming the beating of the heart. Individual names were erased, supplanted by numbers and surnames. They were no longer boys. They were a platoon, a company, a regiment. A singular entity, where each was merely a cell submitting to the collective will.

The days were indistinguishable from one another, like gray stones at the bottom of a river. Drill training. Hours spent beneath a scorching sun or freezing rain, honing a single, absolute skill—to move as one. In lockstep. The turn of the head — simultaneous. The thud of hundreds of boots against the earth melded into a viscous, hypnotic drone. At first, Ichiro could not grasp the purpose of this senseless, grueling drill. He believed the marching to be a mere rehearsal for a parade, a display of beauty and order. But only later, much later, in the province of Shanxi, would he comprehend the true meaning behind these endless marches. It was not about discipline. It was about transmuting them into a single organism, where the loss of one cell meant agony for the entire body. Where your mistake was the death of a comrade. Where there was no “I,” only “We.” They were being forged from a scattering of stones into a monolithic, indestructible wall, where the falling of one stone would not fracture the whole. Their bodies were being bound by invisible threads, so that later, in battle, they would move and die as one continuous entity.

There were no real weapons. Instead of rifles — heavy, smoothly planed wooden poles that rubbed their shoulders raw and bloody. Instead of swords — the same bokken as in school. But now, in every swing, in every lunge, lay not a game, but the rehearsal of murder. They bayoneted straw dummies, and the cry of “Banzai!”, ripping from hundreds of throats, was no mere battle cry, but an exhalation that purged them of the remnants of their humanity.

In the evenings, in a dimly lit auditorium, they were shown a map of the world. It resembled a patchwork quilt that begged to be stitched into a seamless whole.

“Hakko ichiu,” the instructor would say, a man with a shattered nose and a scar on his cheek. His voice was raspy, like that of an old hound. “‘Eight corners of the world under one roof.’ Our roof is the roof of the House of Yamato. Our divine mission is to gather these corners, to bring light and order to the savage peoples of Asia. To forge the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

Newsreel footage flickered across the screen: smiling Japanese soldiers handing food to Chinese children in Manchukuo; grateful Koreans waving flags bearing the rising sun. And then — other frames: cruel white colonizers beating the natives; treacherous Chinese generals peddling opium. The world was as simple as a bayonet thrust. Light and dark. Us and them.

In this world, constructed of discipline, pain, and propaganda, Daisuke, to Ichiro’s astonishment, did not break. On the contrary, he found his place. The cadets, exhausted by the drills, humiliated by the officers, stripped of home and warmth, gravitated toward him as toward a faint, yet singular source of light. On Sundays, when visits from relatives were permitted, the parade ground swelled with the scents of home-cooked food. Mothers and sisters brought bundles of onigiri, fried fish, and sweet beans. And here began Daisuke’s sacrament. He gathered all the provisions into a communal pot. His hands, clumsy with a rifle, discovered their magic here. He chopped, mixed, added a pinch of salt, a drop of sauce he had somehow managed to procure. And from these disparate, meager rations, he forged something collective. Not merely food — a dinner. A ritual that, for one hour, returned them home. He divided everything equally, ensuring each received their share. And in that moment, he was not the feeble Cadet Yoshikawa. He was the keeper of the hearth for their small, battered brotherhood. Ichiro looked at him and saw how the one he had once protected had now become a protector himself. He protected them from hunger, from despair, from their ultimate transfiguration into faceless cogs of the war machine.

Daisuke became their indispensable part. Their shared secret. Their small, quiet rebellion against the soulless rhythm of the drum. A rebellion embodied in the taste of a salted plum inside a rice ball…

Left-right. Left-right. In step. Always in step. To the very end.

Part Two. Chapter One →
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