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When conscription was suspended in the Netherlands in 1996, the VVDM (Association of Conscripts) and the AVDM (General Association of Dutch Military Men) together with the Ministry of Defence took the initiative to have a commemorative statue made.

On the advice of Stroom Den Haag, the initiators consulted the world-famous American-born and originally Japanese sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was locked up in one of the internment camps for American Japanese. In 1943, he voluntarily fought for the Americans on the Italian front. After the war, Tajiri started his career as a visual artist in Paris. Since 1956, he has lived and worked in the Netherlands.

The urge to experiment is an important characteristic of Tajiri's work. In this respect, he shows some affinity with Cobra artists such as Karel Appel and Constant. The three most important recurring subjects in Tajiri's oeuvre are violence, speed and eroticism. In addition, he regularly refers to certain aspects of American and Japanese culture. World famous are his giant 'buttons'.

An interesting detail is that Tajiri himself comes from an old Samurai family (Japanese warrior family). With 'Watchman' on Nassauplein, Tajiri gives an abstract representation of a Samurai. The sculpture is in fact a reinterpretation of one of the warriors and combatants from a series that Tajiri made in the years after the Second World War. In those sculptures he incorporated both his experiences as a soldier at the front and an old Japanese saga about 47 Ronin. A Ronin is a Samurai warrior without a master to serve. Central to this is the question of to whom one should be loyal and how one should pay tribute to that person. The old saga thus proves to be quite topical. The warrior Tajiri calls 'Keeper' here also has a symbolic function as a guardian of peace.