The long samurai sword gets a lot of attention for being so beautiful, such a work of art in itself, and of course for bringing all the glorious slicing death in battle. Samurai in peacetime, or wandering masterless samurai, i.e., ronin, scraping for a livelihood and often starving in the streets, could always count on hara-kiri to get them out of a hopelessly dishonorable existence. But for any stray visitors who don’t, it’s the honorable death available to samurai warriors who can’t manage to be killed in combat. You eXiled regulars know all about seppuku, of course. In these troublous times, it’s just what the doctor ordered. So I was more than happy to sit there drinking in the whole slow, stately, highly composed meditation on samurai codes punctuated with carefully placed scenes of bloody agonizing seppuku. A movie about ritual self-disembowelment was a fitting end to the week I had.
I was feeling pretty low, so I watched Takeshi Miike’s Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai.
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