Harakiri, or, as the Japanese themselves say, seppuku, is a method of ritual suicide adopted among the samurai class in the Middle Ages and practiced until the 20th century.
Seppuku is a tradition directly related to the relationship between a vassal and a sovereign, a samurai and his daimyo (prince). Therefore, seppuku is an element of power relations. Hara-kiri were performed only by samurai - this was the privilege of their class. Ritual suicide was committed in the following cases: if the overlord sentenced the samurai to a similar execution, or if the samurai was slandered, accusing him of betraying the master, he could resort to seppuk as self-justification and thus prove his innocence and loyalty to the overlord.
As you know, seppuku is a procedure for ripping open the abdomen, extremely painful and painful. This ritual was closely related to the Japanese concept of vitality: they believed that the stomach is the most important part of the body, which contains the vital center of the body. And, performing this ritual, you eliminate this life force.
In Japanese society, such an execution was considered honorable. Firstly, since the samurai took his own life - by his own will or by order of the master, and was not subjected to death at the hands of another. Secondly, such a painful death is a test that a samurai passes with dignity, dying with honor. If a samurai was sentenced to seppuk, his family was not persecuted, retained its surname and property. The execution by beheading was considered unworthy, which was considered a great shame, when the head of a criminal was put on public display and transported throughout the city.
Traditionally, two people took part in the seppuku ritual: the one who commits suicide and his "second", the assistant. As already mentioned, the procedure for ripping open the abdomen is extremely painful and usually does not bring instant death. Therefore, the samurai chose an assistant for himself, who stood next to him, and after he ripped open his stomach, the second had to chop off his head, thereby saving the samurai from further torment.
There is a strict prohibition on suicide in European Christian culture, and in Japanese culture, there has never been a prohibition on it. Christians believe that the body of a person does not belong to himself, but to God who created it. Taking his own life, a person goes against the will of God, committing sin. In Japan, it was believed that your body belongs to your parents or master and you should serve them with your body. The samurai's body belongs to his daimyo.
It should be noted that there have actually been few cases of hara-kiri in Japanese history. Popular culture has replicated the image of a samurai performing hara-kiri, so the viewer may get the impression that seppuku was an extremely common and even everyday practice of any samurai, but this, of course, is not so. This ritual was a rather rare occurrence, and already in the 18th century this kind of seppuku was prohibited, when after the death of the overlord, the most loyal vassals committed suicide. In the Middle Ages, among the samurai class, it was considered good form to die after your master. But already at the beginning of the 18th century, this was legally prohibited, and in this regard, the number of hara-kiri committed decreased markedly.
Seppuku was finally banned in the second half of the 19th century after the establishment of permanent ties between Japan and Europeans. The latter considered hara-kiri to be a barbaric and inhuman method of killing, after which it was replaced by hanging and execution, more familiar to Europeans. Nevertheless, cases of hara-kiri were recorded in the twentieth century. They were already rare, but caused a great public outcry - precisely because of their rarity. So, after Japan's defeat in World War II, several military ranks resorted to hara-kiri, and the most recent high-profile case is the suicide of the famous writer Mishima Yukio in 1970.
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Alexander Meshcheryakov