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Updated: June 7, 2025
The honorable method by which a samurai who had transgressed some law or failed in some point of etiquette, might leave this world is well known to all, the "seppuku," the elegant name for the vulgar term "hara-kiri" or "belly-cutting." To one who is sensitive to tales of blood, unexpurgated Japanese history must be a dreadful thing.
The delay of even one moment would have been fatal; but good Ikenoshoji came running to the place just in time, and prevented the seppuku . "Oh, my lord!" the retainer cried, "you are surely too hasty in your resolve to die. "Rather first suffer me to try my fortune, and see if I may not be able to offer up prayer for your sake with more success."
Such as, and who's been spreading them?" "Oh, they are the usual bodyless voices that float about," Tipton told him. "Emanating, I suspect, from sources interested in shaking out the less sophisticated small shareholders before the merger. The story is always approximately the same: That Lane Fleming saw his company drifting reefward, was unwilling to survive the shipwreck, and performed seppuku.
"The ancient tradition of seppuku," continued the Chinaman, "or hara-kira, still rules, as you know, in the great families of Japan. There is a sacred ritual, and the samurai who dedicates himself to this honourable end, must follow strictly the ritual. As a physician, the exact nature of the ceremony might possibly interest you, Dr.
Could the statistics of the suicides during this long period be collected, their publication would excite in Christendom the utmost incredulity. Nevertheless, this qualifying statement should be made. A study of the origin and development of the national method of self-destruction shows that suicide by seppuku, or opening of the abdomen, was first a custom, and then a privilege.
Of the two kinds into which Dr. Strahan divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the Irrational or True, seppuku is the best example of the former type. From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called
Among the highest class of retainers, it was also a duty to make protest against misconduct on the part of their lord by performing seppuku, when all other means of bringing him to reason had failed, which heroic custom has been made the subject of several popular dramas founded upon fact.
Not for extraneous associations only does seppuku lose in our mind any taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of the soul and of the affections.
He maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by madness, or by morbid excitement." But a normal seppuku does not savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost sang froid being necessary to its successful accomplishment.
It should be stated further that in the case of "seppuku," as soon as the act of cutting the abdomen had been completed, always by a single rapid stroke, someone from behind would, with a single blow, behead the victim. The physical agony of "seppuku" was, therefore, very brief, lasting but a few seconds.
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