During interbellum and Second World War Shōwa Japan, bushido was pressed into use for militarism to present war as purifying, and death a duty. Bushido was pitched as revitalizing traditional values and "transcending the modern". Bushido would provide a spiritual shield to let soldiers fight to the end. When giving orders, General Hideki Tojo routinely slapped the faces of the men under his command, saying face-slapping was a "means of training" men who came from families that were not part of the samurai caste, and for whom bushido was not second nature. Tojo wrote a chapter in the book "Hijōji kokumin zenshū" ("Essays in time of national emergency") which the Army Ministry published in March 1934. It called for Japan to become a totalitarian "national defense state". It included 15 essays by senior generals and argued Japan defeated Russia in the Russo–Japanese War because bushido gave the Japanese superior willpower: they did not fear death, unlike the Russians who wanted to live.