mercedo's Journal: The Meaning Of Harakiri

Traditionally Japan was a Buddhist country. Our ancestor didn't eat meat of animals but only ate a fish. When we cook fish, we take all the offal, some parts are eaten but almost all the cases all offal is thrown away. Then decapitated to make it fillet, then it would be served as food in front of us.

Traditionally after harakiri took place, always decapitation by the helper beside him took place afterwards. I found the similarlity between two. Both offal and internal parts of their body were thought to be 'untidy' both before humans and before God. - After decapitation all fish and them are served as a tidy sacrifice.

Beheading

[bettiwettiwoo]

I thought the beheading taking place after the self-inflicted part of seppuku took place as an act of mercy since death is quick and, if done by a good enough beheader, relatively painless, whereas dying by disembowling alone is slow and gruesomely painful.

Re:Beheading

[mercedo]

Exactly. Seppuku is described as 'self-determination' in Japanese terminology, which itself is very strange, and has long been believed to be related to the purification of soul, but actually it is nothing but a denial of self-existence. Many warrior class people used to do it when they were ashamed of some misconduct or wrongdoing against their master. It was till recently that this act was thought to be the ultimate way to take responsibility for their wrongdoing.

On the other hands, kamikaze has differe

Re:Beheading

[eglamkowski]

There's still quite a bit of suicide over things us westerners would not think to do so over. For example: failure to get into university. A friend of mine teaching english in Japan a few years ago witnessed someone do exactly that. She saw the person jump from a building top. The next day saw the news article and lo, it was failure to get into the university.

Probably an (academically) intelligent person, but obviously the societal pressure on such people is still excessive. Nobody should commit suicid

Re:Beheading

[mercedo]

Basically from the tradition based on Christianity, killing himself has been strongly denied in Western culture, which itself is a very good thing. Japanese people tend to think light of their value of life, because they think too highly of the culture of shame, I think.

I am sad to see just too many Japanese famous writers killed themselves for various reasons. Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Dazai Osamu, Mishima Yukio, Kawabata Yasunari, Ariyoshi Sawako, in the case of Western writers, only Sappho( I am not sure), He