This Japanese suicide ritual was surrounded by rules and ceremonies. The great warriors who performed it prepared themselves with purification baths, wrote poems and even had witnesses. The act aimed, in most cases, at repairing the honor of the suicide, tarnished, for example, by some unworthy conduct. In Japanese, the term haraquiri means something like «cutting the belly» and is a vulgar way of referring to seppuku («cutting the belly»), the noblest expression for this type of suicide.
The ritual was part of the code of ethics of the samurai, great Japanese warriors of the past. In the so-called feudal period, between the 12th and 19th centuries, Japan was ruled by large landowners, known as daimyos, who used to have a private army, composed of samurai. These were very skilled with the sword, virtuous and could only serve a single daimyo in their lifetime. Thus, it was not uncommon that, when a master died, the samurai decided to follow him. “A samurai saying goes, ‘Lose honor and life is lost too.’ In addition to honor, seppuku was a way of demonstrating loyalty to your master and accompanying him in the afterlife,” says oriental specialist in the art of swords Jorge Kishikawa, founder of the Instituto Cultural Niten, in São Paulo.
The ritual could be done on the battlefield, to avoid capture by the enemy army, or in a more ceremonious way, with the suicide preparing in advance for death. The first seppuku that is recorded is from the year 1170, when the samurai Minamoto Tametomo committed suicide by throwing himself on his own sword, after defeating a rival clan. The last famous ritual took place in 1970 and was performed by the great Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, three times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
dive into it
At the bookshop:
Musashi, Eiji Yoshikawa and Leiko Gotoda, Freedom Station, 1999
Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima, Companhia das Letras, 2004
On the Internet:
https://www.niten.org.br/musashi
only for samurai
Suicide ceremony had bath, sake, last poem and even coup de grâce
1. The haraquiri, or seppuku, began with the samurai preparing himself with a bath, which he believed served to purify the body and soul. The warrior invited friends and relatives to witness his death and the reconquest of lost honor and could wear a special white costume to symbolize integrity and virtuous character.
2. The place chosen for the ceremony could be inside a house, but it was usually in the open, like in a Buddhist garden. Seppuku could only not be performed in the gardens of Shintoist temples, sacred places that should not be desecrated by death.
3. The samurai sat on his legs, wrote his last poem on a small wooden table and drank his last sake in two gulps. Then he positioned the sword blade on the left side of the abdomen and struck himself. After the first cut, the bravest brought the sword to the center of the body and raised it, aiming to reach the center of the abdomen. The Japanese believed that the soul was located there.
4. To strike himself, the warrior used a short sword (from 30 to 60 centimeters) called wakizashi. He wielded it holding a white handkerchief
5. The kaishakunin, “the second”, was another very skilled samurai who accompanied the ceremony. He could be a friend of the suicide or even an enemy, who, in recognition of the rival’s bravery, offered to accompany his death.
6. The function of seppuku was to inflict a fatal and painful wound on the suicide. But since death sometimes took hours, the kaishakunin could deliver a coup de grâce to end the life of the warrior, who had already proven his mettle. The single blow to the neck needed to be precise, keeping the head attached to the body by a piece of skin. Making her roll across the floor was considered a huge lack of respect.
Read too:
– What was the Rape of Nanjing?
– How is a sword forged?
– How was the training of a samurai?