Hirose Chūsa | The Story of Japan's First War God | 1912 Naval Song

A naval officer searches a sinking ship three times for one missing sailor and never finds him. Japanese ten-year-olds learned this story at school. 広瀬中佐 - Hirose Chūsa was song No.12 in Jinjō Shōgaku Shōka, Ministry of Education's official fourth-grade songbook of 1912. Today it is counted among the Imperial Japanese Navy gunka (軍歌). The events are real. On 27 March 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, the blockship Fukui Maru was torpedoed at the entrance to Port Arthur. Chief Petty Officer Sugino Magoshichi, sent below to fire the scuttling charges, was missing. Hirose Takeo searched the ship three times, calling his name, and was killed by a shell as he stepped into the boat. The song names no enemy. Hirose's own name appears only in the last line: promoted to commander after his death, he was honoured as Japan's first gunshin, a "war god". 日本語 轟く砲音飛來る彈丸 荒波洗ふデッキの上に 闇を貫く中佐の叫 杉野は何處杉野は居ずや 船內隈なく尋ぬる三度 呼べど答へずさがせど見えず 船は次第に波間に沈み 敵彈いよいよあたりに繁し 今はとボートにうつれる中佐 飛來る彈丸に忽ち失せて 旅順港外恨ぞ深き 軍神廣瀨と其の名殘れど English The guns are roaring. The shells come flying. On the deck washed over by the raging waves the commander's cry cuts through the dark Where is Sugino? Sugino! Are you not here? Three times he searches every corner of the ship. He calls. No answer. He looks. No sign of him. Little by little the ship sinks beneath the waves and the enemy shells fall thicker and thicker around him. At last he steps across into the boat and a flying shell takes him in an instant. Off the harbour of Port Arthur how deep the grief though his name lives on as the war god Hirose. [EN] DISCLAIMER & CONTEXT 廣瀨中佐 (Hirose Chūsa) is a Japanese school song written for ten-year-olds. It tells of a naval officer who searched a sinking ship three times for a missing sailor off Port Arthur in 1904, called his name into the dark, did not find him, and was killed as he climbed into the boat. The song is an account of a loss, and it names no enemy nation and no enemy person. This recording reproduces it as a historical document. It does not endorse any war, state, military or ideology, past or present. [JP] 免責事項 & 背景 「廣瀨中佐」は、十歳の子供のために書かれた文部省唱歌です。一九〇四年、旅順港外で 沈みゆく船を三度捜し、行方の分からない部下の名を闇に向かって呼び、見つけられぬまま ボートに移る際に戦死した海軍士官を歌っています。これは失われた者を語る歌であり、 敵国の名も敵の人物の名も現れません。本録音はこの歌を歴史的な資料として再現したもの であり、過去と現在のいかなる戦争、国家、軍、思想も支持するものではありません。 [CREDITS] Original song: 廣瀨中佐 (Hirose Chūsa / "Commander Hirose"), 1912 Music and lyrics: Ministry of Education committee, authors not credited (music traditionally attributed to Okano Teiichi, 1878-1941) Cover arrangement and production: Kurisushima [IMAGES] Japanese woodblock prints, 1904: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-P-1983-150, RP-P-1983-163, RP-P-1983-160). Photograph of Hirose Takeo: National Diet Library, Japan, "Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures". #hirosechusa #gunka #japanesesong #meiji #cover