Every year on December 14, Sengakuji Temple holds a festival commemorating the 47-Ronin event (the most famous example of the samurai code of honor courage, and loyalty--bushido--as the country's "national legend"). I will post information about Seppuku from Wikipedia.
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Illustration from Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs, by J. M. W. Silver, Illustrated by Native Drawings, Reproduced in Facsimile by Means of Chromolithography, London, 1867 |
Seppuku (切腹?, "stomach-cutting", "abdomen-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honour code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honour rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture[citation needed]), or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion.
Vocabulary and etymology
Overview
Ritual
Female ritual suicide
History
Religious and social context
In literature and film
Terminology
Seppuku as capital punishment
European witness
Seppuku in modern Japan
While the voluntary seppuku described above is the best known form, in practice the most common form of seppuku was obligatory seppuku, used as a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai, especially for those who committed a serious offense such as unprovoked murder, rape, robbery, corruption, or treason. The samurai were generally told of their offense in full and given a set time to commit seppuku, usually before sunset on a given day. On occasion, if the sentenced individuals were uncooperative or outright refused to end their own lives, it was not unheard of for them to be restrained and the seppuku carried out by an executioner, or for the actual execution to be carried out instead by decapitation while retaining only the trappings of seppuku; even the short sword laid out in front of the offender could be replaced with a fan. Unlike voluntary seppuku, seppuku carried out as capital punishment did not necessarily absolve, or pardon, the offender's family of the crime. Depending on the severity of the crime, half or all property of the condemned could be confiscated, and the family would be punished by being stripped of rank, sold into long-term servitude, or execution.
Seppuku was considered the most honorable capital punishment apportioned to Samurai. Zanshu (斬首) and Sarashikubi (晒し首）, decapitation followed by a display of the head, was considered harsher, and reserved for samurai that committed greater crimes. The harshest punishments, usually involving death by torturous methods like Kamayude (釜茹で), being boiled to death, were reserved for commoner criminals.
Notable cases
This list is in chronological order.
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