(2 of 2)
A silent man, he reputedly took leave of his wife on the occasion of his departure for the Port Arthur action with the words: "Madame, be so good as to take excellent care of my dogs." When he returned, a world hero, his one extravagance was to purchase from the court photographer the sole negative of himself then in existence in Japan. From this the photographer had been making prints of the Admiral which he sold at a high price. Togo, having purchased the negative, destroyed it, saying:. "I am shocked to find that people . . . spend money on the portrait of such a stupid person."
Such words are characteristic of the man. His dogs were of paramount importance to him, for with them he delighted to go on long completely solitary hunting trips. He was shocked at the squandering of money on his portrait, for he himself spends every copper sen (.005c) with the utmost circumspection—and once squelched attempts to start a popular subscription from which he would hava received 1,000,000 yen ($487,000).
From the Tenno* to whom he is what von Tirpitz was to Wilhelm II, Admiral Togo accepted, perforce, The Grand Order of the Chrysanthemum, The First Order of the Golden Kite, and his creation in 1907 as a count. At the time of his capture of Port Arthur the State declared the victory due to "the Virtue of the Tenno." The Tenno ascribed it to the intercession of his ancestors. Admiral Togo, asked which of these theories he favored, replied gravely and laconically: "Both."
*January 2, 1905.
†The figures 3-5-5 represent the relative naval strengths in capital ships of Japan, the U. S. and Britain (TIME, May 26) at present. In 1905 the figures 1-2-6 represented the relative strengths of these nations in the battle ships then current. Russia, on this latter scale, would have been represented by the figure 2.
*Only foreigners refer to the Emperor by the poetic title "Mikado."