Pricking and Shooting

Japanese schoolgirls, fragile as butterflies, small as pixies, must not faint at sight of blood. To test their courage seven Tokyo high school girls gathered last week around a white cloth in the centre of which they had drawn a circle. After a solemn soprano chant the maidens pricked their fingers deeply, held them over the circle until it grew red and the cloth became the flag of Japan. This flag the seven schoolgirls dispatched to Crown Prince Chichibu's crack 3rd Regiment which is part of the Imperial forces still holding Shanghai.

Because Emperor Hirohito saw from the first the basic unwisdom of Japan's Shanghai adventure, Crown Prince Chi-chibu (a daring skier and steady-nerved huntsman) is 'not and never has been with his regiment at Shanghai. The chief sacrifice which Crown Prince Chichibu is called upon to make derives from the fact that his brother, Emperor Hirohito, has no manchild. Until the Sublime Emperor has a son (he has had four daughters) Japanese etiquet demands that Crown Prince Chichibu have no child whatsoever. Four years ago he married merry Setsuko Matsudaira who was schooled in Washington. D. C. while her father was Ambassador (1925-28).

Typical of Japanese militant fanaticism, from which the Imperial House now stands aloof, was the conduct at Shanghai last week of Major Noburu Kuga, a battalion commander in the heroic Japanese 9th Division, famed for valor in the Shanghai fight (TIME, Feb. 29). On March 16 Major Kuga who had been captured by the Chinese, was released in an exchange of prisoners. Promptly he faced a Japanese courtmartial such as always investigates when a Japanese warrior has been taken prisoner and released. To the Court's satisfaction it was proved that Major Kuga on Feb. 20 led a gallant assault on the no less gallant Chinese 19th Route Army, advancing with such vigor that his small Japanese detachment found itself presently engulfed by Chinese and was soon almost wiped out. Major Kuga, knocked senseless by the explosion of a hand grenade, did not even know his enemies had captured him until he woke up in a Chinese hospital. The Japanese courtmartial, when these facts had been established, complimented Major Kuga and dismissed him with all honor--but his hero's brain throbbed with the madding, ignominious fact that he had been "captured." Major Kuga wished to commit harakiri--to disembowel himself with his sword--but his own sword had been broken in the battle, an aggravation of his shame. Brooding and white-lipped Major Kuga walked last week to the exact spot on Shanghai's battlefield where the hand grenade had knocked him unconscious. There, putting his service pistol to his head, he fired one well-aimed shot. "The suicide of Major Kuga." said the Japanese military spokesman at Shanghai, "has aroused the greatest sympathy and admiration in Japanese military and civilian circles here." In Shanghai the Oriental haggling match over when & how Japan's forces will withdraw eased into its leisurely month last week at the British Consulate.

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