Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/233

Rh his tomb was constantly decked with flowers, incense was burnt before it, verses were hung over it, pilgrimages made to it. The would-be assassin of Count Ōkuma met with scarcely less glorification. At last, in 1891, the government actually felt itself constrained to issue an ordinance prohibiting costly funerals and other posthumous honours to deceased criminals.

Harakiri is not an aboriginal Japanese custom. It was evolved gradually during the Middle Ages. The cause of it is probably to be sought in the desire on the part of vanquished warriors to avoid the humiliation of falling into their enemies hands alive. Thus the custom would come to be characteristic of the military class, in other words, of the feudal nobility and gentry; and from being a custom, it next developed into a privilege about A.D. 1500, as stated above.

Harakiri has sometimes been translated "the happy despatch," but the original Japanese is less euphemistic. It means "bellycutting;" and that is what the operation actually consists in, neither more nor less. Or rather, no: there is more. In modern times, at least, people not having always succeeded in making away with themselves expeditiously by this method, it became usual for a friend—a "best man," as one might say to stand behind the chief actor in the tragedy. When the latter thrust his dirk into himself, the friend at once chopped off his head.

It is an odd fact that the Japanese word harakiri, so well-known all over the world, is but little used by the Japanese themselves. The Japanese almost always prefer to employ the synonym seppuku, which they consider more elegant because it is derived from the Chinese. After all, they are not singular in this matter. Do not we ourselves say "abdomen," when what we mean is plain Saxon—well, we will not shock ears polite by mentioning the word again. Latinisms in English, "Chinesisms" in Japanese, cover a multitude of sins.

Suicide of a more commonplace type than harakiri has always been extremely common, especially what is termed shinjū, that is, suicide for love. Numberless are the tales of men who,