It marks the place where 19 samurai teenagers in Aizu-Wakamatsu killed themselves because they thought their city had been defeated in Japan’s Boshin War in 1868. (As it turned out, they were wrong, and their suicides were unnecessary).
But, even weirder, is that the Italian leader Mussolini heard about this story one day and was so moved by the honour of the child warriors that he gifted this column from Pompeii!
