Harakiri (Japanese: 切腹, Seppuku) (1962) is a Japanese film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. The story takes place between 1619 and 1630 during the Edo period and the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate. It tells of a ronin, Hanshiro Tsugumo, who instead of committing seppuku (better known in the West by the colloquial term harakiri) after his lord was deposed, was ordered to stay alive in order to care for his daughter and grandson as well as his son-in-law, the son of another samurai who had committed the ritual suicide.
Plot
May 16, 1630-at the start of the film, Hanshiro Tsugumo arrives at the house of a feudal lord, Kageyu Saito, looking for a suitable place to commit seppuku. At the time, it is told, it was fairly common for disgraced samurai to make the same request, or threat, in the hope of receiving alms from the lord of the house. But Kageyu Saito tells Hanshiro a warning story. Earlier in the year in January,another ronin, Motome Chijiiwa, made the same request and the samurai retainers of the house called his bluff: they forced him to go through with the ceremony and kill himself. Not only that, but when Motome's sword was revealed to be a fake made of blunt bamboo, they insisted that he disembowel himself with it anyway, so that Motome's death was agonizingly painful. Despite this warning, Tsugumo is not discouraged and maintains his request to commit seppuku.
While getting ready for the suicide, Hanshiro Tsugumo recounts his tale to Kageyu Saito and his retainers. His lord's house was considered a threat and toppled by forces of the shogunate. His friend, another samurai, committed seppuku and left Tsugumo to look after his son, who, it turns out, was Motome Chijiiwa. With the responsibility of looking after Chijiiwa and also his own daughter Miho, Hanshiro was unable to choose the 'honorable' way to end his life, and instead has had to live in poverty and work menial jobs in order to support his family.
When they got older, Motome Chijiiwa and Miho Tsugumo end up getting married and had a son, Kingo, but they continued to live on in poverty. When Miho and Kingo got ill, they couldn't afford the services of a physician and Chijiiwa came up with the plot of threatening to commit seppuku at a lord's house. Following his death, Miho and Kingo end up dying from their illnesses.
Before coming to Kageyu Saito's house, Hanshiro Tsugumo tracked down three retainers of the house, Hikokuro Omodaka, Hayato Yazaki and Umenosuke Kawabe, who he blames for the deaths of his family. Instead of killing them in combat, he disgraced them by cutting off the topknots of their hair; although of the three Omodaka had acted more as a honor bound Samurai should act: he has sought out Tsugumo for a ritual duel instead of trying to ambush him; had advised Tsugumo that not only was Tsugumo hovel inconvenient for a duel but also to write a letter of explanation of where he was going so as not to inconvenience his landlord and had refused to give up and continue to attack Tsugumo even when he is disgraced after his sword-the soul of a Samuari- was broken.
After finishing his story, Hanshiro Tsugumo is attacked by the retainers of the furious lord Kageyu Saito. He has to fight all of them off alone, killing four and wounding eight while slowly succumbing to his wounds. Finally, as a new group of retainers arrives armed with guns, Tsugumo commits seppuku to avoid being killed by them-but is still shot. Kawabe and Yazaki are ordered to commit seppuku, while Omodaka is reported to have done so already; they and the other casualties deaths are reported as the result of "illness"- lest word get out that the Iyi House has "lost face" {been humiliated} by a ronin.
Themes
The film presents a negative view of the emerging feudal system at the beginning of the 17th century, depicting the hypocrisy in the flimsy pretext of honor exhibited by the daimyo. At the time, harakiri was seen as a means to retain one's honor after a disgrace, better even than doing good deeds.[citation needed] The vanity of the feudal lord's counsellor Kageyu Saito is also shown: the outward appearance of honour is shown to be more important to him than real honour. He orders the retainers disgraced by Hanshiro Tsugumo to commit seppuku, and makes sure that those who were slain and who had their topknots cut off by Hanshiro are written off as casualties to illness so that his house would not appear weak. An ironic commentary is how Tsugumo is able to fight off so many retainers with just a sword, yet is helpless against three guns; a foreboding of the Meiji restoration when sword bearing samurai were defeated by the "new" Japanese military armed with guns.
Awards
The film was entered in the competition category at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. It lost the Palme d'Or to The Leopard, but received the Special Jury Award.[1]
Main cast
References
External links
