Message: 3
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 19:13:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nate Ledbetter <
ltdomer98@...>
Subject: RE: on suicide...
--- Silk Road School <
silk.road.school@...>
wrote:
> This is one of those things that makes me intensely
> glad to be a gaijin, I
> fear.
Um, why? Being Japanese doesn't mean you're required
to commit seppuku.
A legitimate point, to be sure. But by way of background, my father used a
.30-06 on himself as a way of redeeming his honour (an oversimplification,
but pretty accurate), and it's left me with a profound distaste for that
method of departure. I watched my mother deal with the emotional
consequences of the act for another ten years. So I've looked at the idea a
little more intimately than most gaijin, I think, and my personal belief is
that there are better ways to go, no matter what the problem. I feel - and
it is strictly my feeling - that it's better to stand back up again and go
on, trying to heal one's honour in life, or (in warfare) to go down
fighting.
I compare Asano's seppuku in Inagaki's "Chushingura" with Mishima's - thank
you one and all for reminding me of his name - and in Mishima's I see a very
human reaction to a degree of pain that I think excessive. Within my own
personal structure of honour, and without slighting a number of very great
men who took this way out, seppuku is not a valid way of making a statement.
Without doubt it requires courage and immense fortitude ('guts' would be too
cruel a pun), but by and large it still seems to me ultimately less
courageous than the ongoing effort to live and continue to grow, and to
redeem honour in life. Referring once again to "Chushingura," I have more
respect for the bushi who elected not to die at once, but instead to make
good the pledges and debts of the han, than I do for Asano's inflexible
pride that took him to that end, at the cost not only of his life but of the
livelihoods of his samurai, his wife and children, and the commoners under
his care. I regard power as properly an obligation, rather than a
privilege. Giri - as I see it - requires a greater care for one's
dependents.
Don't mean to start a big philosophical argument, but you did ask why...
You're thinking of Mishima Yukio, the author. It
wasn't at a television station, it was at Ichigaya,
the then military academy, now the headquarters of the
Japan Defense Agency (think the Japanese Pentagon).
I've stood in the spot where he did the deed. It
wasn't simply a protest, it was a botched and horribly
failed attempt to get the students to rise up in a
coup--they laughed at him, and he withdrew to attempt
his fairly botched suicide.
Thank you for the corrections. Is it also incorrect, then, that the act
was filmed? I had understood this to be the case.
Message: 8
Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 01:09:38 -0500
From: "Anthony J. Bryant" <
ajbryant@...>
Subject: Re: Re: on suicide...
Seppuku is considered a more genteel and less plebean or vulgar term.
Compare
the use in English of some French terms instead of regular English. Some
examples: "mutton" to replace the good old Anglo-Saxon "sheep meat"; "It has
a
certain 'je ne sais quois'" rather than "it has a certain 'I don't know
what'";
or "that was its raison d'être" rather than "that was its reason for being."
Tony
Of course in the case of 'mutton' vs. 'sheep meat,' we have the Norman
conquest to consider as well. Englishmen were growing the sheep, but it was
their Norman masters eating it: so with 'cow' and 'beef', 'sheep' and
'mutton', 'pig' and 'pork', we have the English term for the animal, but the
French-derived term for the meat.
The comparison I've made is between "he ended his life" and "he blew his
brains out." My understanding - notwithstanding my semi-flippant 'glad to
be gaijin' comment - is that the peasantry didn't find the practise any more
admirable or comprehensible than many gaijin do, and hence used
'belly-slitting' rather than a more polite term for the act. Again, please
feel free to correct me.
Message: 11
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 10:25:06 +0200 (MEST)
From: "nattilla the nun" <
nattilla@...>
Subject: RE: on suicide...
''An inglorious and messy end for a
dedicated man.''
No way!
With no disrespect intended, I'll stick to my opinion on this - I refer you
to Nate's summary of the "fairly botched suicide". If you attempt to follow
the traditions of your ancestors in your departure, and those traditions
call for a calm and composed reaction to horrible pain, while your emulation
of the act results in being unable to hold still enough to do it with style
and grace, then I think my description pretty accurate. Note that I do not
criticise his honour: but I cannot think that Mishima meant to make his
exit so different from the calm and resolute endurance that seppuku is
supposed to entail. I would have wished him a better ending, for it is
apparent that it meant a very great deal to him.
''This is one of those things that makes me intensely glad to be a gaijin,
''
Mishima is the person who makes me regret mostly that I am a gaijin.
Of all the people in Japanese history who have evoked that feeling in me, I
confess that Mishima is not on the list. Musashi, yes. Hidetsuna, yes.
(He's the one who reportedly shaved his head to rescue a peasant child,
scorning class privilege and social rank, in the episode Kurosawa borrowed
for "Seven Samurai.") Hiroshige and Hokusai, yes. Mifune, yes again -
because only in Japan, I think, can you have one of your great dramatic
actors in the same person as one of your leading action stars: Spencer
Tracy and John Wayne in one, so to speak. The poet who wrote _The Narrow
Road to the Far North_, even. (Yet another name I've forgotten over the
years.) Again, this is not meant to criticise you. What is it about
Mishima that affects you so, if I may ask?
> --- In samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com, Nate Ledbetter wrote:
> >
> > Has nothing to do with the weapon being used.
>
>
> Unless the blade is really dull, in which case it would be "jè.
>
> :P
hara-yaburi -- "jè - Which didnt seem to transfer well. I tell
ya, yahoo can put a real damper on jokes sometimes.
Perhaps, but even with my pitiful smattering of Japanese, I got a chuckle
out of it. Mostly a matter of context. "Belly-bashing" or the like, I
presume?
My thanks to all of you who reminded me of Mishima Yukio's name, and
corrected my history.