Seppuku

“ 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. ”

“ A FUNERAL.
[165]
“Your appeal is in vain,” said Sennoske, not altogether unmoved at the sight. “Seppuku was designed as a knightly punishment for samurai whose errors are errors of judgment, but whose deeds are the deeds of samurai. This does not apply to you, who have ever had recourse to intrigue, to circumvention and low cunning, rather than to arbitration by the sword. Men who were opposed to you you have stabbed in the dark, giving them no opportunity to defend or to justify themselves; you have even, as in the case of my father, prevented them from finding relief in an honorable death. ”

“ I went to Sakai, of course,—and bought a sword, and saw the grave of the eleven samurai of Tosa who had to commit seppuku for killing some foreigners,—and told them I wished they could come back again to kill a few more who are writing extraordinary lies about Japan at this present moment. I would rather live a month in Ōsaka than ten years free of rent in Tōkyō. ”

“ In the days of Ashikaga the Shiogun, when Japan was vexed by a civil war, and prisoners of high rank were every day being put to shameful deaths, was instituted the ceremonious and honorable mode of suicide by disembowelling, known as Seppuku or Hara-kiri, an institution for which, as the old Japanese historian says, “ men in all truth should be very grateful. To put his enemy, against whom he has cause for enmity, to death, and then to disembowel himself, is the duty of every Samurai.” ”

“ You ought to be thankful that for your crime, for which the penalty should be death by strangling, you are ordered by His Highness’s clemency to commit seppuku; and you73 should at once prepare for death. Besides, there is the etiquette for committing seppuku. What do you mean by dressing yourself up in a long haori [1] of the present fashion? Have you been drinking, or have you run mad? You are wanting in courtesy to Lord Ishido and me, Yakushiji, who are here by His Highness’s command. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This view of mental physiology once admitted, the syllogism of seppuku is easy to construct. “I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.”
I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in the sentiment expressed by Garth,
“When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die ”

“ Poised near the surface of the water, like a hawk in the air, the sepia moves gently to and fro in its tank by graceful undulations of its lateral fins,—an exquisite play of colour occasionally taking place over its beautifully barred and mottled back. When thus tranquil, its eight pedal arms are usually brought close together, and droop in front of its head, like the trunk of an elephant, shortened; its two longer tentacular arms being coiled up within the others, and unseen. Only when some small fish is given to it, as food, is its facility of rapid motion displayed. ”

“ As they were on their way to Takanawa, the suburb in which the temple called Sengakuji stands, the day broke; and the people flocked out to see the forty-seven men, who, with their clothes and arms all blood-stained, presented a terrible appearance; and every one praised them, wondering at their valour and faithfulness. But they expected every moment that Kôtsuké no Suké's father-in-law would attack them and carry off the head, and made ready to die bravely sword in hand. ”

“ Accordingly he gave orders that an ox should be slaughtered, that the fat from the region of the heart should be affixed to the end of some cleft-sticks, and that the sticks should be planted in front of the doors of the huts of the runaways. It was the first time that Sepopo had ever prepared any incantations, or even mentioned his system of charms in public, and the eyes of his people were only now opened to the detestable humbug which was the chief feature of his character. ”

“ Such is an example of the summary way in which Sepopo would dispose of the friendless and infirm; and as the number of strangers that gathered round the king at Sesheke was considerable, executions of this kind were more frequent than in many other places. Under certain rulers—such for instance as Sepopo’s grandfather, who was much respected by the people—these cruelties fall into disuse, nor are they often practised when a queen holds the reins of government. ”

“ This man has now come to settle here with you in Sesheke; but he is old, very old, and his relations are far away in the Barotse.” Sepopo nodded to signify that he quite understood the story. While he had been listening, his eye had again and again glanced towards a distant quarter, where the general crowd were gathered; and when the chief ceased to speak, the king cried out “Mashoku!” In an instant the executioner hastened towards him and received his commission to take care that the old man should no longer be permitted to be a burden to the neighbourhood. ”

“ He is altogether Oriental so far,—looks at me with the still calm Buddhist eyes of the Far East, and the soul of another race. Even his nose will never declare his Western blood; for the finest class of the Japanese offer many strongly aquiline faces. Setsu is a Samurai, and though her own features are the reverse of aquiline, there are aquiline faces among the kindred. ”

“ The animal of Sepia is short and rounded, with a large head surrounded by a row of eight short arms and two very long tentacular arms, ending in expanded clubs armed with powerful suckers. Like the Octopus and Squid, the Cuttle-fish is capable of many changes of colors by the contraction and expansion of its pigment cells. They are found throughout the world, living near the shore, but the species found about European shores are the best known. ”

“ Sepia walks abroad, he sticks his little round body upright, so that his eyes, and mouth, which is armed with a parrot-like beak, are brought close to the surface over which he passes, while his long twining legs go sprawling about in all directions; on the insides of these legs are a great number of small circular suckers, by means of which the animal can fix itself to any object so tightly that it is almost impossible to detach it without tearing off part of the limb. Woe be to the poor unfortunate fish that chances to come in its way ”

“ In the family of one Sengoku, a samurai of Matsue, there was a Tokutaro-San which had a local reputation scarcely inferior to that of Kishibojin—she to whom Japanese wives pray for offspring. And childless couples used to borrow that doll, and keep it for a time—ministering unto it—and furnish it with new clothes before gratefully returning it to its owners. ”

“ Sepopo began to besiege Blockley with question after question, and as I was not sufficiently versed in the Sesuto-Serotse dialect to follow their conversation, I entertained myself by criticizing the company. Presently the crowd opened to admit a young man, preceded by a herald, and carrying a great wooden dish which, after making an obeisance, he placed on the open space between us and the king. The odour was quite sufficient to make us aware that the dish contained broiled fish. Sepopo picked out a fish at random and handed it to the chiefs Kapella and Mashoku, who had to eat a portion of it ”

“ It is not amongst the Octopidæ therefore that we must look for a solution of the mystery.
The basking condition is fulfilled by the Sepia; and its flattened back, supported and rendered hard and firm to the touch by the calcareous sepiostaire beneath the skin, is broader in proportion than that of the octopus or the squid. Thus Sepia might pass as a microscopic miniature of the great Scandinavian monster. But it lacks the character of size. We have no reason to believe that any true Sepia exists, as the family is now understood, that has a body more than eighteen inches long. ”

“ The screen in Septimus’s room has ‘blue swallows’ on it (p. 123) and is matched by Clarissa’s drawing-room curtains depicting ‘a flight of birds of Paradise’ (pp. 144, 143) . Septimus is described as ‘hopping . . . from foot to foot’ (p. 126) before taking flight through his open window, and, following his suicide, in the first reference to Clarissa’s curtain, we read that it ‘blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room’ (p. 143) . ”

“ The Sepia seldom lives long in confinement. Although, like the calamaries, it often swims gently forward by the use of its side fins, its usual mode of rapid progress is the same as that of the octopus; namely, darting backwards by the ejection of a stream of water through the funnel. In a limited space, like an aquarium tank, there is not sufficient room for its rocket-like rush, and therefore its hinder extremities so frequently come in contact with the rock-work, that the skin is worn through until the edge of the [69] internal shell, or “sepiostaire” is visible, and death follows. ”

“ They enjoyed a kind of hereditary reputation, as in spite of the atrocities which they were known to have encouraged, they were regarded by the various tribes with awe rather than with hatred. That there had not been a revolt long ago against Sepopo’s tyranny was mainly to be attributed to the belief that he had those in his secret council who could divine any plot beforehand and frustrate any stratagem that could be devised, and even when his despotism grew so great that the life of the highest in the kingdom was not secure for a day, not a man could be found to lift an assegai against him. ”

“ The young Sepia when born is much larger than a baby octopus or squid. It is of about the size of a rather small horse-bean. When about half developed, the little animal has the head and eyes disproportionately large, but gradually acquires a greater resemblance to its parent. If the black integument be removed, as one would skin a grape, it may be seen moving in the fluid which fills the egg. ”

“ Zora, however, walked serene, unconscious of slander, enjoying herself prodigiously. Secure in her scorn and hatred of men she saw no harm in her actions. Nor was there any, from the point of view of her young egotism and inexperience. It scarcely occurred to her that Septimus was a man. In some aspects he appealed to her instinctive motherhood like a child. When she met him one day coming out of one of the shops in the arcade, wearing a newly bought Homburg hat too small for him, she marched him back with a delicious sense of responsibility and stood over him till he was adequately fitted. ”

“ And the adoration in each man's heart was intensified by the consciousness of the pathetic futility of her noble rage. It was for her own sake that the situation had arisen over which she made such a pother, and she was gloriously unconscious of it. Sypher could not speak lest he should betray his knowledge of Septimus's secret, and Septimus could only murmur incoherent ineffectualities concerning the perfection of Emmy, the worthlessness of himself, and the diamond soul that lodged in Wiggleswick's forbidding body. Zora would not listen to unreason. ”

“ But the lift man was wrong. No man had a part in her soul's exultation. If Septimus Dix crossed her mind while she was undressing, it was as a grotesque, bearing the same relation to her emotional impression of the night as a gargoyle does to a cathedral. When she went to bed, she slept the sound sleep of youth.
Septimus, after dismissing the cab, wandered in his vague way over to the Café de Paris, instinct suggesting his belated breakfast, which, like his existence, Zora had forgotten. The waiter came. ”

“ Yes, I think it is one of the greatest trials that a boy can have to bear; and Seppi was quite strong and active before the accident that lamed him, as I dare say he has told you. But still he has a beautiful place to live in, and his friends the goats to amuse him, and his drawing and his carving which occupy his hands. ”

“ After endeavouring to fall in with his wishes in every way, and having twice come from Panda ma Tenka on purpose, and, moreover, having submitted to be fleeced by him till they had little more than the clothes on their backs, they now found that he was about to start without them. This could not be. No doubt Sepopo had his own motives for his conduct; he was accustomed to consider all elephants as his own property, whether shot by himself or not, and probably he was anxious to conceal what numbers of elephants there were in the country, lest the visits of white men should become too frequent ”