junshi

Updated: June 27, 2025

As regarded compulsory sacrifice and popular custom, this edict may have had the immediate effect desired; but voluntary human sacrifices were not definitively suppressed. With the rise of the military power there gradually came into existence another custom of junshi, or following one's lord in death, suicide by the sword.

Lafcadio Hearn - Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation

Nominally, the practice of compulsory junshi ceased from that date,* but voluntary junshi continued to find occasional observance until modern times. *Of course it is to be remembered that the dates given by Japanese historians prior to the fifth century A.D. are very apocryphal. The name of Nomi-no-Sukune is associated with the first mention of wrestling in Japanese history.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era