Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/189

WEAPONS AND OPERATIONS it was considered proper that a campaign should be opened or a contest preluded by a human sacrifice to the god of war; the victim at this "rite of blood" (chi-matsuri) being generally a condemned criminal or a prisoner. Other preliminaries also had to be respected. Men went about the business of killing each other in an orderly and punctilious manner. Ambuscades and surprises played their part, of course, but pitched battles were the general rule, and it was de rigueur that an intimation of intention to attack should be given by discharging a "singing arrow." Thereafter the attacking army, taking the word from its commander-in-chief, raised a shout of "Ei! Ei!" to which the other side replied, and, all the formalities having been thus satisfied, the fight commenced.

Tactics were of the crudest description in the first part of the Military epoch, and discipline can scarcely be said to have existed at all. An army consisted of a congeries of little bands each under the orders of a chief who considered himself independent, and instead of subordinating his movements to a general plan, struck a blow however he pleased, thinking much more of his own reputation as a warrior than of the interests of the cause for which he fought. From time immemorial a romantic value has attached in Japan to the "first" of anything: the "first snow" of the winter; the "first water" drawn from the well on New Year's Day; the "first 161