Honour, Bushido, and Seppuku
For the last year I have been fascinated by the concept of Honour, Bushido, and Seppuku.
Honour is a status attached to bravery and the unwillingness to be dominated by others. It is externally defined; therefore, if anyone offends your honour through insult or harm, the expected response is violence. In honour cultures your reputation is defined by how you respond to aggressions; to not do so is to forgo honour and standing.
The contrasting culture is one of dignity that assumes inherent worth in everyone. Your dignity has value regardless of reputation; therefore, aggressions have significantly less effect on your standing in the community. Often times the ability to withstand insults is more commendable. It is expected in dignity cultures that small offences can be handled personally and larger ones are handled by courts.
In modern Europe the transition from honour culture to dignity culture only occurred in the late 19th century as the growth of law and order occurred. Prior to that duels for honour were the way to respond to major transgressions. Around the turn of the 19th century four Prime Ministers in the United Kingdom took part in duels. Pitt the Younger and the Duke of Wellington were both the sitting Prime Minister at the time they took part in duels.
The most fascinating of honour cultures is that prescribed by the Bushidō code in feudal Japan. Bushidō directly translates to “way of the warrior”.
The popular conception of Bushidō is that it was a formalised code that bound the samurai to their masters and the people of their land, placing strong emphasis on the loyalty, bravery, and devotion of the samurai. This conception originates from two different Japanese authors - Nitobe Inazō and Inoue Tetsujirō.
Nitobe is famous for having written the book “Bushidō: The Soul of Japan” in 1899, which defined the popular conception of Bushidō in the West. But it was derided in Japan for being a caricature.
Inoue was a Japanese philosopher who wrote dozens of books promoting the ideology of bushidō in Japan at the start of the 20th century. His work promoted a historically revisionist angle of bushidō.
It formulated a model of bushidō as the spiritual and cultural defence of Japanese culture. His work injected nationalism and devotion to the nation to counter the technological inequality it faced against the Western powers.
Inoue’s historical revisionism helped to promote an ideology of militarisation, nationalism, and xenophobia, in effect turning the entire country into a de facto army united by extreme devotion to the emperor.
What is key in both Inoue and Nitobe’s work is a complete rejection of historical sources pre-Meiji period, as the historical ‘bushidō’ is a much looser concept than that of 20th-century bushidō. In fact, the term bushidō rarely appeared in pre-20th-century work.
This newly weaponised version of bushidō was used to provide the Japanese with the jingoism required for the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the many atrocities committed during World War II.
Bushidō was centred around an extreme devotion to the twisted concept of honour, glory, and the divinity of the emperor. This was emphasised in practices such as kamikaze pilots and seppuku.
Seppuku is the ritualistic practice of suicide by disembowelment. It is also known as harakiri (a simple mistranslation, ‘cutting belly’ vs ‘belly cutting’).
Seppuku as a practice dates back to the 8th century but was slowly formalised by the 17th century. Prior to that it was an act of military defeat often seeing the commanders committing battle suicide with their sword. However, during the Edo Period (1600-1867) the act of Seppuku became far more ritualistic.
Seppuku became almost a play with a crowd of spectators and a series of rituals involving ceremonial dress, final meals, and death poems.
Seppuku requires the samurai to plunge a tanto (a short dagger) into his abdomen making a cut; there would then be a ‘kaishakunin’ (also known as the second) to partially cut off the samurai’s head to ensure his quick death.
In Buddhism and Japan the abdomen was the seat of the soul. The belief being that cutting the belly would let the spirit go free and by exposing your insides you are both pure and brave enough to perform the act. Seppuku would therefore cleanse a warrior of his mistakes.
A more intense form of seppuku was invented called ‘jūmonji giri’ which involved no kaishakunin and meant the samurai would perform a cut across the abdomen and then another cut vertically leading to a significantly faster death.
The practice of Seppuku was more limited than the popular imagination. It transitioned from a practice of demonstrating loyalty or protest to a method of capital punishment for a period until it was outlawed after the Meiji Restoration. However, the practise was primarly a way for a samurai to demonstrate their honour.
As a result there was an enormous variety of pitfalls. Firstly, hesitating, grinning or showing the signs of weakness were perceived as cowardly and not honourable. If a Samurai failed to go through with the plunge of the tanto he would be forcefully beheaded - meaning the loss of honour.
There eventually became a practice of using a fan instead of the tanto to indicate for the second to decapitate you. The practice of a fan was primarily used for the elderly and children. If an adult male picked this method he would be known as a coward.
The most precarious job in this situation was that of the kaishakunin. The task of a kaishakunin was to decapitate the samurai so precisely as to leave a band of flesh attached so that the head would fall into the arms of the executed.
To be selected as kaishakunin was considered an ill-omen, as if one made a mistake such as taking multiple strikes it would become a lifetime of disgrace for both the selected and the household presiding over the ceremony.
After its ban post the Meiji restoration the practice remained sporadically amongst Japanese culture with some notable instances during World War 2, especially after the defeat in Okinawa.
One of the most recent practitioners of Seppuku was Yukio Mishima, a fascinating Japanese author in the 20th century who I will write about in the future. In 1970 Yukio Mishima tried to lead a coup d’état against the Japanese government and inspire the Self-Defence Force (the remnants of Japan’s military after WW2) to restore the Emperor.
After his speech, Mishima retreated into the military base and committed Seppuku; kaishakunin Masakatsu Morita failed to decapitate Mishima three times.
After which a third member of the group stepped in to perform the duty, Morita then promptly committed seppuku.
Seppuku is fascinating in so many ways. Prior to its use as capital punishment, when used as a way to demonstrate loyalty or regain honour, it shows the depths at which we value both of those concepts.
To be seen committing seppuku to regain honour after a slight or prevent its loss after capture is an inversion of what is typical in honour societies.
Violence against those who have wronged you versus the self-control to commit violence against yourself as a way to gain honour after defeat instead of the humiliation of capture.
This aversion to capture permiated itself through Japanese society and is most evident in their treament of PoW’s in WW2. The Japanese PoW death rate was around 27% versus 4% under other Axis powers.
When seppuku was in use as capital punishment, it raises an interesting counter to traditional forms of state-sanctioned death penalty. Those in the West who have had the death penalty placed upon them wait months if not years for their day of death.
They live under constant degrading fear of the day they will be dragged out of their cell to face their death. What is a few minutes to be lived through before death becomes years. Accounts describe the skin colour changing as though fear is corroding the body as the man to be executed slowly retreats into a husk. In their final moments they have no dignity of choice.
However twisted and alien seppuku is to us, it acts as the moment of choice for those chosen to be executed, a moment of control.