This poem is included in Oni no ko no uta (Songs of a Devil’s Child), which collects, according to Kaneko, poems written during the same period as those in Rakkasan. Some of the poems were published, some rejected by publishers, many simply written and kept without any prospect of being printed unless, of course, Japan’s causes were lost. (1) Kaneko wrote another poem with the title ‘On My Child’s Induction Physicals’, later collected in Ga (Moth). (2) By early 1944, even as the diehard elements of the Japanese military were calling upon the populace to take up bamboo spears to fight the enemy, part of the military was telling the people about the horrendous consequences of indiscriminate bombings that had become common in Europe. Nevertheless, when, on 23 February, the daily Mainichi Shimbun dared to carry a front-page article with the headline “Bamboo Spears Will No Longer Do”, Prime Minister-cum-Minister of the Army Tohjoh Hideki was enraged and had the reporter who wrote the article sent to the front. In July, when Saipan fell, Tohjoh had no choice but to resign. Large-scale bombings of Japan proper began in November that year.