I love Japanese culture and even thought their edo era was considered barbaric I felt it was cool because it made the japanese people straightforward and the laws helped in shaping the life of each person and making honor the watchword of everybody especially the Samurai
Today on Culture and Tradition we are gonna be discussing Seppuku which i call death with dignity
Seppuku, also called harakiri, is ritualistic suicide by disembowelment, practiced mostly by samurai in feudal Japan. it involved katanas,and honor (or dishonor) could inspired the act
Seppuku is an old japanese rite done to soldiers who lost during battle and are too ashamed to face the shogun because of the draconian level of practice it is dreaded today. it shows when honour comes first before the life of a man, and as such becomes the watchword of the person which is the life of the samurai and making it honest duty to protect their honour which this time comes before their life
Seppuku was often committed as a result of dishonor, or disloyalty to the emperor or daimyo (feudal lord). In some cases, daimyo acted as judge, jury, and executioner, demanding seppuku. Such forced seppuku required little evidence or testimony. This form of obligatory seppuku continued until 1868, when it was finally outlawed.
See, the act requires a specific technique. First, insert the blade into the side of your belly, close to your ribs. The side you choose depends on your dominant sword hand. Draw sharply across the gut to disembowel yourself, then rotate the knife and yank it up, to really spill everything out.
Codified Seppuku rituals became so complex the act could take days to plan and hours to enact. The process began with choosing an assistant - a protege, friend, or master swordsman - to carry out the decapitation. Would-be decapitators could only refuse on the grounds that their sword technique is inadequate.
Imagine you're kneeling on the ground, waiting to be beheaded - if someone sliced your head clean off, it would shoot away from your body and tumble across the floor. So, the idea is, the assistant leaves a small flap of skin attached at the front of the neck to prevent runaway heads.
The climax of seppuku demanded more finesse than merely hacking a head off. After the gut is slashed, the assistant must remove the head in one clean stroke. A botched beheading or bloody mess was, understandably, considered sloppy, crude work; the gut pain was so excruciating the beheading was a welcome reprieve. The gut slitting of seppuku isn't the death blow, it's symbolic, so it must be done right Say you have the pain tolerance of a god and want to be especially honorable in death. After the first three wounds, withdraw the knife, stab yourself low in the stomach, and draw up through the previous cuts to your sternum,.
There's an alternate version called jumonji giri . Jumonji Giri has no beheading. You open the belly, then sit, stoic, knife cradled, bleeding to death. Which could take hours.
Admiral Takijiro Onishi, man in charge of kamikazi runs in World War II, killed himself in this way upon Japan's surrender. It took him 15 hours to die and also General Nogi also committed jumonji giri, in 1912, and was so hardcore he fully buttoned his dress military uniform over his wounds before waiting for the end
As a final act of badassary, you can slit your own throat. If at any time your assistant sees you hesitate or show indication of pain, it's his duty to cut your head off. In many cases, those who committed harakiri wrote poems as part of the ritual. So there are technical and literary aspects to seppuku.
As it turns out, in addition be being badass warriors, samurai were a learned class, with education in religion and the written word, both of which tied heavily into poetry in feudal Japan. Believe it or not, some samurai were actually pretty good poets.
To be clear, writing a poem wasn't a formal requirement of every death-by-seppuku. However, as part of the long tradition of death poems in East Asian cultures, samurai with impending seppuku plans often wrote poetry, and Japan has more than its fair share of poetic forms.Some samurai wrote haiku, others waka. Among other things, death poems provided proof you understood the true nature of your death. These poems were typically heavily influenced by Buddhist views of death.
For example, here's one such poem:
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;
A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.
Famous actor and poet and actor Yuskio Mushima commited seppuku in 1970 and his followers committed harakiri while advocating for a political revolution. Certain movies have enacted this act for example Keanu Reeve's 47 Roniin showed a Samurai commit seppuku, after disobeying their shogun and after death all blades used for seppuku are destroyed.
How does that relates to our modern day society. in feudal japan the watchword was honor above life itself , which is something that is lacking in our modern day society and generation which famous people including veteran actor Clint Eastwood calls "pvssy generation"
if honor is placed before everything it is good we know phenomenon like this exist and let it resonate within us and teach us a thing or two about honor.
mused by Victor Samuel
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