Hara-kiri

“ But that really grand system of legalized self-murder which was for ages the privilege of all who felt wounded in their honor, gives the Japanese a horrible pre-eminence in the Hara-kiri, and crime though we call it, there was much to admire in the stately heroism of those orderly suicides, notable for their fine appreciation of the dignity of Death, their reverent courtesy to his awful terrors, and sublime scorn for pain of body. From their infancy they looked forward to suicide as a terrible probability, the great event for which through the intervening years they had to prepare themselves. ”

“ In the Russo-Japanese War, when faced by defeat at Vladivostock, the officer in command of the troops on the transport “Kinshu Maru” committed hara-kiri. Hara-kiri has not been uncommon among women, but in their case the mode is by cutting the throat. The popularity of this self-immolation is testified to by the fact that for centuries no fewer than 1500 hara-kiris are said to have taken place annually, at least half being entirely voluntary. Stories of amazing heroism are told in connexion with the performance of the act. ”

“ Hara-kiri was of two kinds, obligatory and voluntary. The first is the more ancient. An official or noble, who had broken the law or been disloyal, received a message from the emperor, couched always in sympathetic and gracious tones, courteously intimating that he must die. The mikado usually sent a jewelled dagger with which the deed might be done. The suicide had so many days allotted to him by immemorial custom in which to make dignified preparations for the ceremony, which was attended by the utmost formality. ”

“ But their courage is not limited to fearlessness in the face of death; it extends to complete indifference to pain. 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 vastness of the multitudes who died by their own hands would be incredible, were there not ample evidence of the most convincing nature. ”

“ Nothing could more strongly show the force of education. The Samurai, or gentleman of the military class, from his earliest years learns to look upon the hara-kiri as a ceremony in which some day he may be called upon to play a part as principal or second. In old-fashioned families, which hold to the traditions of ancient chivalry, the child is instructed in the rite and familiarized with the idea as an honourable expiation of crime or blotting out of disgrace. If the hour comes, he is prepared for it, and gravely faces an ordeal which early training has robbed of half its horrors. ”

“ At this point the squeamish foreigner is apt to leave the theatre, but the Japanese babies do not blench at blood, and are taught by such sights from their earliest years that superb indifference to death, that supreme attachment to honour, which no other nation displays to the same degree. Hara-kiri cannot be approved by utilitarians, but it implies a higher pitch of heroism than you find in a British melodrama, where the hero and villain are probably engaged in selfish rivalry for the hand of the same young woman, and merely differ in the choice of means to gratify the same desire. ”

“ I felt a small tingle in my fingertips as the sword sailed through the outer steel casing and severed its first layer of silicon neurons, sending forth a shower of sparks.
It wasn't dead, but then the sword had some backup. There is a long tradition in Japanese culture of cooperation, support from others. For example, in seppuku, the ritual disembowelment sometimes called hara-kiri, there is always a second participant who stands behind you and ceremonially lops off your head as your body topples forward. ”

“ The vulgar criminal must be put to death by the hands of others, but the nobler samurai, who never cares to survive disgrace, was condemned to hara-kiri if found guilty of actions worthy of death. Not to be allowed to do this, but to be executed in the common way, was a double disgrace to a samurai. ”

“ Kira, who was a coward at heart, concealed himself in an outhouse. The ronins found him there, drew him forth, and requested him to kill himself by hara-kiri, as was the privilege of a man of his rank. But he refused out of fear, and the retainers of Asano were forced to kill him as they would have killed a common coolie. Thus did they accomplish their purpose and fulfil the high duty of loyalty to their dead lord, after two years of waiting, most careful planning, and ceaseless vigilance. ”

“ The extensive press bureau which was established to popularize the Japan side of the Japan-Russia War, encouraged hara-kiri and telegraphed over the world in exaggerated terms the details of every hysterical and self-advertising suicide. For instance, if the warriors could not take the fort, instead of trying again, they were to march up and blow their brains out before the moving-picture film, so to speak, leaving a letter for the Mikado as follows: “We could not do what you asked us; it is our fault. Therefore in shame we hara-kiri. Bushido! ”

“ At each encroachment of the enemy those of the population who could not find refuge at once within the inner defenses were driven to choose between surrender and self-inflicted death. The unconquerable samurai spirit flamed out in the choice of hundreds of women and children as well as men, and whole families were wiped out [457] of existence at once, the little ones, who were too young to understand the proper method of hara-kiri, kneeling calmly with bowed heads for the death-stroke from father or brother which should free them from the disgrace of defeat. ”

“ In connection with the Japanese weapons must be mentioned some of their modes of punishment. The first is the celebrated Hara-kiri, or Happy Despatch, and consists of suicide by ripping open the abdomen with two cuts in the form of a cross. Only the upper classes are privileged to perform the Happy Despatch, and to them it is in reality a privilege. If a Japanese official has failed in some duty, or committed some act which is likely to call upon him the anger of his superiors, he applies for permission to perform the Hara-kiri. ”

“ But in other palaces to which the remainder of the retainers of Takumi no Kami were entrusted, it is said that the places of execution were purified. But the people of that day praised Kumamoto Ko (the Prince of Higo) , to whom the palace at Shirokané belonged. It is a currish thing to look upon death in battle or by hara-kiri as a pollution: this is a thing to bear in mind. In modern times the place of hara-kiri is eighteen feet square in all cases; in the centre is a place to sit upon, and the condemned man is made to sit facing the witnesses ”

“ We passed a funny little company of Japanese soldiers. The Japanese play at war far less gravely than your boys and mine do. Frankly, they are very droll in their martial aspect; and their exquisite good taste makes them conscious of this. The land of the Hara-kiri is not the land of men who lack fortitude in death. The Japanese know how to die, but they do not know how to fight; at least, not against Occidental forces. And, if they did, the odds are so preposterously against them that they must be beaten in any conflict with a Western power. ”

“ There are many stories on record of extraordinary heroism being [pg 287] displayed in the hara-kiri. The case of a young fellow, only twenty years old, of the Choshiu clan, which was told me the other day by an eye-witness, deserves mention as a marvellous instance of determination. Not content with giving himself the one necessary cut, he slashed himself thrice horizontally and twice vertically. Then he stabbed himself in the throat until the dirk protruded on the other side, with its sharp edge to the front ”

“ We do not understand, we Occidentals, why the Japanese prefers to commit hara-kiri rather than be captured, and we argue this way: If I allow myself to be captured, I may be exchanged or escape, and thus have a chance to fight another day; if not, my enemy has to take care of me and feed me, so that I reduce his force and resources just that much. If I kill myself I make a gap in my own ranks that I can't fill again. ”

“ A custom peculiar to Japan is a form of suicide known as hara-kiri, or "belly-cutting." From time immemorial, to take one's own life in this manner has been considered very honorable and has expiated all crimes and offenses. ”

“ The peculiarly high rate of suicides in Japan is explained by statisticians as being largely due to some mistake or sin for which the offender would rather die than be chastised by society. The cold-blooded hara kiri was an institution by which the Samurai could sustain his honor or save his face when involved in disgrace. ”

“ To-day, however, women often take part with the men, as with us.
The old plays are very interesting and well done, the costumes being superb and the scenery excellent. The characters consist for the most part of samurai and daimyos, two or three of whom are either killed or commit hara-kiri during the performance. While their postures mean little to our eyes, to a Japanese every movement has its significance. When the actors pose and stamp around and finally kill themselves, the audience weeps in sympathy. ”

“ A Samurai must not be heard to groan from pain. How different from the respectful applause that greets the Japanese self-murderer is the first sentiment of healthy aversion that is aroused in English men and women by the news of a suicide. It is true that sometimes, at the first glance, the preceding circumstances compel our scorn or provoke us into only a disdainful commiseration with the victim, but pity is sure to follow. For the Hara-kiri is always pathetic; and if the suicide be a woman, how tenderly the feeling of pity is intensified! ”

“ The imperial fleet followed, and after some manœuvring at Sendai proceeded to Hakodate. Here the warlike operations between the rebels and the imperial troops lasted till July, 1869. Finally, the leaders, Enomoto and Matsudaira Tarō, seeing that it was hopeless to contend longer against a constantly increasing enemy, offered to commit hara-kiri, in order that their followers might be saved by a surrender. Their unselfish purpose was not, however, permitted. Then it was determined that the [pg 376] two leaders should give themselves up to the besiegers, to save the rest. ”

“ And when they came to their lord's grave, they took the head of Kôtsuké no Suké, and having washed it clean in a well hard by, laid it as an offering before the tomb. When they had done this, they engaged the priests of the temple to come and read prayers while they burnt incense: first Oishi Kuranosuké burnt incense, and then his son Oishi Chikara, and after them the other forty-five men performed the same ceremony. Then Kuranosuké, [pg 15] having given all the money that he had by him to the abbot, said—
"When we forty-seven men shall have performed hara-kiri, I beg you to bury us decently. ”

“ Lurking under the delusion lies the faint-hearted apprehension that to-morrow would be, and must be, just the same as to-day, a fear of the future that underlies every wilful suicide, and is at once the most disastrous and deplorable frame of the human mind. ”

“ In other forms the same unhesitating resignation of life presents itself to us as heroism of a grand type; but in the piteously small scale of the surrounding circumstances, and even the familiarity of the nature of the death, the grandeur of such a sacrifice is lost, and we feel only pity for the unhappy creature thus needlessly exchanging her bright home for the grave. False sentiment tempts men often to magnify the bravery of self-inflicted death, forgetting that the insanity which makes suicide so pitiful robs it also of all that commands admiration. ”

“ If troubles are ahead, the more need for, the more honor in, a resolute hold on life. Our race does not readily yield to despair, and every suicide among us, even though it be a woman’s, takes something therefore from our national character; and, in spite of an unavoidable feeling of sincerest pity for those who reckon death among the boons of nature, we ought to condemn with all our hearts the ignoble abandonment of life by those amongst us who have not the courage to wait and see if to-morrow will not cure to-day. ”

“ But the circumstances of their lives, with religion or superstition teaching them that fate predestines everything, and magnifying the most trivial occurrences into calamities from which there is no appeal, often surround their deaths with incidents so picturesque and quaint that they deceive the judgment, and exalt the paltry suicide into an heroic surrender of life. ”

“ Pity at first carries away the feelings of the sympathetic, but there are few healthy minds to which, on the second thought, does not come the reflection that suicide is, after all, an insult to human nature, and, for all its pathos, cowardly. There are, indeed, circumstances, such, for instance, as hideous, incurable disease, that tend to soften the public verdict upon the unhappy wretch, who, in taking his own life, had otherwise committed a crime against humanity, and played a traitor’s part to all that is most noble in man. ”

“ To some races such hopeful prospects seem impossible, and, in the East, especially, the first summons of the enemy finds the garrison ready to yield. This frequency of suicide, however, and the general indifference to the crime as a crime, are among the surest signs of inferiority. All savage tribes, and even some of the nations of the East, though more advanced in civilization, fly to death as the first resource in trouble. They seek the relief of the grave before having sought any other. ”