Hara-Kiri: Japanese Ritual Suicide Read Free

may be to act as his executioner?
    The foregoing account is a typical example of seppuku in its most honorable form, imposed as a sentence of death. Inasmuch as a criminal is actually executed, it is, significantly, a form of the death penalty. The criminal, however, is permitted to take the initiative and to strike the first blow toward his own death. As such, seppuku is also a form of self-punishment and expiation and was granted only to those who, though violators of certain codes or regulations, were nonetheless worthy of the respect of those determining the penalty. On occasions, the condemned man was regarded with warm sympathy and his regrettable but necessary passing was honored by a solemn ceremony such as the one witnessed by Lord Redesdale.
    The events in the foregoing narrative by Lord Redesdale occurred, as noted, in 1868, when feudalism was beginning to give way to the modern era. Yet, for the most part, the feudal system was still intact and at its most highly developed stage. Accordingly, the seppuku seen by Lord Redesdale was perhaps the penultimate point of the formalized ceremony itself. Although practiced at the beginning of the Tokugawa Era 268 years before the Meiji Restoration in 1868, seppuku was not nearly as stereotyped and rigidly ceremonialized then as in the case witnessed by Lord Redesdale.

    Changes in Methods of Execution
    In ancient Japan, we do not find any evidence of decapitation as a method of execution. One piece of indirect evidence is that the sword of this period was straight and designed for piercing, not for cutting. It was during the Gem-Pei strife that the slightly curved sword with a cutting edge was first used in battle on a large scale. Even as late as the beginning of the period of Gem-Pei fighting, there is the example of Minamoto-no-Tametomo who, defeated in battle and desperate, plunged his short sword into his stomach and then, still alive, withdrew the blade and stabbed himself again, this time cutting into his spinal column. Had the custom of kaishaku (assisting at seppuku) been developed then, he would not have had to make the second and fatal cut himself. With the Gem-Pei Period, more efficient methods of execution and self-destruction began to develop in Japan. Prior to that, strangulation and burning were probably the common modes of execution and of suicide.

    Breaches of Tradition
    The samurai was devoted to the code of chivalry and lived for the cause of honor, according to his own lights. To have his own name—his escutcheon—besmirched was the supreme stultification to the warrior. As he tried to live with honor, so his superiors tried to accord him an honorable method of death when his crime, though proscribed, was not a dishonorable one. There were, however, exceptional cases where contemptuous and insulting methods of execution, though generally condemned, were applied to samurai.
    There was the time when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Regime, captured an enemy general and, instead of permitting him to commit seppuku, ordered him decapitated. Historians record this unusual breach of tradition as a stain on the reputation of this great administrator.
    Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who preceded Tokugawa Ieyasu as the de facto ruler of Japan, also committed a similar breach when he ordered Ishikawa Goemon, an infamous bandit and the son of a samurai, boiled to death in oil. In this instance, however, the punishment was meted out to Ishikawa as a bandit and his near-samurai status availed him naught.
    Too, during the early Tokugawa Era, Catholics were often crucified, regardless of whether they were samurai or commoners. This persecution can be attributed more to fear of rumored Spanish political and military inroads than to dislike of this alien religion.
    In spite of the rare exceptions, however, cruel and unusual methods of execution were seldom meted out to samurai.

II
    ORIGIN & TYPES

    Beginnings of Sacrifice
    T HE ORIGIN of immolation