It is the tradition of many old families that every boy or girl born to them holds an understanding of a certain art, and are instructed in its ways from an early age. For some it may be flower arrangement, or the tea ceremony, or perhaps calligraphy.

For us, it was sensha-do.

The day after my sixth birthday, my mother took me by the hand and led me outside. I followed willingly but slowed to a halt when I saw where she was taking me.

The Tiger was a hallowed machine within the grounds of our house. I had never seen anyone save my mother inside it. The servants were not even allowed to touch it - all maintenance was performed by my parents, and even so, my father never set foot within that tank. It was my mother's steed. Now she wanted me to follow her - into the machine, into our family's legacy.

I did, and I did so happily, without reservations. I stepped onto the boarding ladder and slipped, the bottom of my shoes wet with the rain that had fallen earlier that day. My mother grasped my hand tightly and hauled me into the top hatch. She let me stand in the commander's seat - after I had removed my shoes - and peek out of the open cupola. Then she began driving.

I will never forget the feelings that irrigated me when the Tiger started moving with me in it for the first time. Here was a sixty-ton machine, all steel and smoke, and it was carrying me like a horse carries a knight, the eighty-eight millimetre cannon stretched out imposingly from under me like a lance. The tracks rattled and sang as they slithered over uneven ground, yet the machine kept perfect level, like some predator stalking slowly forward. The engine was rumbling loudly, and I could feel its vibrations through my fingers on the hatch-rim, as if the whole tank was a fearsome beast straining at some invisible leash, aching for the moment when it was released to lay waste to entire armies. Although I was barely tall enough to see outside from the top hatch, I felt like I was ten metres tall. It felt like power - raw power.

Some people criticise the Nishizumi school, saying that its approach is archaic and inflexible. Such people have never rode in a Tiger.

My mother brought me to the outskirts of the city, where four other tanks were waiting. I recognised them as the smaller Panzer IIIs and IVs that our family owned. What surprised me, though, was the fact that two of my aunts and my father were there as well, standing next to a tank each.

Then my mother got up from the driver's seat, and pulled me down from the commander's seat so I was standing before the loading breech, where the loader would have stood. She then climbed out of the tank. I was not expecting that. What did she want me to do now? She hadn't taught me anything. Was I supposed to drive? To shoot? Where were the shells? There were none.

Just stand up, she said. Stand up and keep standing until this hatch opens again.

Then she shut the door, and I stood, in the dim blue light of my mother's iron steed. I stood for quite a while, and I began shifting my weight around, for my calves started to hurt.

The first volley caught me totally by surprise.

Several somethings smashed into the outside of the tank (my tank), and a split second later a terrible roar of sound washed over me. Those that have never been in a tank before will never understand - inside that small, closed space, everything is amplified, and the sound of being shot is nearly physical, something you can feel buffeting you like an angry spectre. It is like when the thunder from a lightning strike that you can clearly see splitting the air a mere several hundred metres away hits you, but louder - far louder - and with no warning of the shock to come..

Normally, a tank will not be shot at many times in a match - one well-placed hit will flag most vehicles. However, there was no flag in this Tiger - it had been removed earlier that day - so the shots kept coming.

One, two, three, the shells slammed into the outside with hideous clangs, followed immediately after by that deafening roar. It was as if some monster, some screaming horror was raging outside, pounding and howling with hellish strength. I leaned against a wall, then jumped back as a shell hit the other side, on the area just below my head.

I think I screamed then. What I screamed though I do not remember, because I could not hear myself. And that means that they could not hear me outside.

I have been fired upon many times, and now the sound of a shell hitting my vehicle is as familiar to me as rain and wind. But to a six-year-old, I suppose it must have been deafening. The impacts came consistently and quickly, one after the other, the loud ringing shell impacts interspersed with the ptink, ptink, ptink of what I would later learn was machine gun fire. It was as if I was in a huge bucket, and it was being pounded on from all directions.

The bombardment seemed to go on forever, and my head swam in that hot, cramped, roaring hell. Soon there was nothing but hot, blaring waves of sound washing over me from this way and that. I felt nauseous, and my tongue grew thick and foreign in my mouth. Then I threw up, all over the radio operator's seat.

When the hatch opened, I was huddled in a corner of the tank, my hands over my ears. I must have been crying, because I remember that my eyes and throat were incredibly sore that night. My father was the first one into the tank, and he picked me up, cradling me in one arm as he climbed out into the open. The cool air outside, tinted with the smell of cordite and smoke, caressed my sweat-drenched back, but I grabbed my father tightly and pressed my face into his neck as he stroked the back of my head gently.

When I finally let go of him, I saw the Tiger, standing blackened but unbowed, and felt an immense guilt that I had not done the same. I turned my face away and saw my mother, standing behind my father - who was still crouching before me, hands resting softly on my shoulders. The look in her eyes made my heart twist.

"I told you to keep standing," she said.