Page:Under the Sun.djvu/357

Rh : how they must do this, not that, stab themselves from left to right, and not from right to left. Strangely fascinating, indeed, are the “Tales of Old Japan,” and among them most terrible is the account of “the honorable institution of the Hara-kiri.” I will try to describe it, keeping as well as I can the tone of Japanese thought: —

In the days of Ashikaga the Shiogun, when Japan was vexed by a civil war, and prisoners of high rank were every day being put to shameful deaths, was instituted the ceremonious and honorable mode of suicide by disembowelling, known as Seppuku or Hara-kiri, an institution for which, as the old Japanese historian says, “ men in all truth should be very grateful. To put his enemy, against whom he has cause for enmity, to death, and then to disembowel himself, is the duty of every Samurai.”

Are you a Daimio or a Hatamoto, or one of the higher retainers of the Shiogun, it is your proud privilege to commit suicide within the precincts of the palace. If you are of an inferior rank, you may do it in the palace garden. Everything has been made ready for you. The white-wanded enclosure is marked out; the curtain is stretched; the white cloth, with the soft crimson mats piled on it, is spread; the long wooden candlesticks hold lighted tapers; the paper lanterns throw a faint light around. Behind j’on paper screen lies hidden the tray with the fatal knife, the bucket to hold your head, the incense-burner to conceal the raw smell of blood, and the basin of warm water to cleanse the spot. With tender care has been spread the matting on which you will walk to the spot, so that you