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3 unusual facts about The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away


The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away

The group sing the closing chorale from the Bach cantata (Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56): Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder, Komm und führe mich nur fort; Da wischt mir die Tränen mein Heiland selbst ab (Come, O death, brother of sleep, come and lead me forth; my saviour himself shall wipe my tears away).

It is narrated by a 35-year-old man (like all the characters he is not named) who is lying in hospital waiting to die of liver cancer, although the doctors do not believe that the cancer is real.

The narrator's father was 'associated with the military', and was part of an anti-Tojo movement in the Kanto Army to promote General Ishiwara; after the plan failed, he returned to the village on New Year's Day 1943 and shut himself up in the storehouse.



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