ANCIENT JAPANESE CUSTOM

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 9 March 1935, Page 11

ANCIENT JAPANESE CUSTOM

Hara - - Kiri Still Occasionally Practised To-day

QNCE again the ; Japanese passion

obligatory'or voluntary.. Ari-official or noble who had broken the law or been disloyal usually received . a message, accompanied by a jewelled dagger from the Emperor. This polite invitation to kill himself was invariably accepted by the victim, who carried out the cereiiiony with elaborate and prescribed ritual.

for self-sacrifice has been illustrated by the suicide of a rural police inspector, who, according to a cable, recently killed himself because of his sense of disgrace in having guided a Royal procession down a wrong street in his district.

Bren to-day such suicides are highly, regarded in Japan. From very early times this method of atonement to the Throne was a much-valued privilege of the noble (“daimyo”) or warrior (“samurai”) classes of Japanese society. The national method of suicide is “hara-kiri,” a word meaning “stomach-cutting.” Occasionally this painful method is still practised by modern suicides. Originally permitted only to the noble classes, it has become to-day the national form of self-sacrifice. In the olden days “hara-kiri” was either

Obligatory suicide was abolished in 1868, but for centuries beforehand the number of “hara-kiri” deaths, both obligatory and voluntary, amounted to 1500 annually. If a medieval noble had, in his own idea, violated the warrior code, his dishonour was wiped out by the voluntary “hara-kiri.” Voluntary “harakiri” was thus normally practised by men rendered desperate by private misfortune, or oijt of loyalty to a dead or murdered superior, .or evenas a protest against a fancied wrong.