Mao Tse-tung composed the verse in 1925 before organizing the farmers of his native village into an “association to clean up the shame” of Japanese “invasion” of parts of northern China—the precursor to the spreading occupation of the Chinese mainland in the 1930's. A negotiator for China's Five-Metal Company presented a scroll, with the characters for the verse gracefully brushed in black ink, to Hosai Hyuga, president of Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd., in December, 1972, three months after Japan and the People's Republic opened diplomatic relations.