A Piece of Mirror and Other Essays Author:Daisaku Ikeda "My parents were married in 1915, and my mother as part of her trousseau brought along a mirror stand fitted with a very nice mirror. Twenty years or so later, however, the mirror somehow or other got broken. My eldest brother, Kiichi, happened to be home at the time, and I sorted over the fragments and picked out two of the larger ones to set a... more »side as keepsakes.
Then the air raids on Tokyo began and soon the were a daily occurrence. I could hardly bear to look at my mother's face. As though it might somehow help to protect her life, I kept the piece of mirror always with me, sticking it carefully inside my shirt as I dodged my way through the the incendiary bombs that fell all around us. Eventually, when the war ended, we received notification that my eldest brother had been killed in the fighting in Burma. I thought at once of the piece of mirror I knew he must have carried in the breast pocket of his uniform. I could imagine him, during a lull in the fighting, taking it out and looking at his unshaven face in it, thinking longingly of his mother at home. I know how he must have felt, because I have a piece of the mirror too, and when I look at it, it brings back memories of my brother."