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"It is better to be a crystal and be broken, Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop." So Kusákabé, from the highlands of Satsuma, passed out of the theatre of this world. His death was like an antique worthy's. A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before the Court. His last scene was of a piece with his career, and fitly crowned it.
Only a few miles from us, to speak by the proportion of the universe, while I was droning over my lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of the mosquito; and while you were grudging a penny income tax, Kusakabe was stepping to death with a noble sentence on his lips.
In addition to his legitimate offspring, Kusakabe, the Emperor Temmu left several sons by secondary consorts, and the eldest survivor of these, Prince Otsu, listening to the counsels of the Omi Court's partisans and prompted by his own well-deserved popularity and military prowess, intrigued to seize the throne.
It fell first to the lot of Kusákabé to pass before the judges; and when sentence had been pronounced he was led towards the place of death below Yoshida's window. To turn the head would have been to implicate his fellow-prisoner; but he threw him a look from his eye, and bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two Chinese verses:
"It is better to be a crystal and be broken, Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop." So Kusakabe, from the highlands of Satzuma, passed out of the theatre of this world. His death was like an antique worthy's. A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before the Court. His last scene was of a piece with his career, and fitly crowned it.
To this latitude of choice many disturbances were attributable, notably the fell Jinshin struggle, and the terrors of that year were still fresh in men's minds when, during Jito's reign, the deaths of two Crown Princes in succession brought up the dangerous problem again for solution. The princes were Kusakabe and Takaichi.
It fell first to the lot of Kusakabe to pass before the judges; and when sentence had been pronounced he was led towards the place of death below Yoshida's window. To turn the head would have been to implicate his fellow-prisoner; but he threw him a look from his eye, and bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two Chinese verses:
But he was not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour of trial. In the next cell lay one Kusakabe, a reformer from the southern highlands of Satzuma.
Only a few miles from us, to speak by the proportion of the universe, while I was droning over my lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of the mosquito; and while you were grudging a penny income-tax, Kusákabé was stepping to death with a noble sentence on his lips.
It is not enough to remember Yoshida; we must not forget the common soldier, nor Kusakabe, nor the boy of eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness betrayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the same days with these great-hearted gentlemen.
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