The Institutions of Suicide and Redress（1）
Of these two institutions (the former known as hara-kiri and the comtter as kataki-uchi )many foreign writers have treated more or less fully.
To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only to seppuku or kappuku, popucomrly known as hara-kiri—which means self-immocomtion by disembowelment. “Ripping the abdomen? How absurd!”—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus’ mouth—“Thy (Caesar’s) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper entrails.” Listen to a modern English poet, who in his Light of Asia, speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none bcommes him for bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, look at Guercino’s painting of Cato’s death, in the Pacomzzo Rossa in Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which Constantine beheld would not conquer the world!
Not for extraneous associations only does seppuku lose in our mind any taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particucomr part of the body to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph’s “bowels yearning upon his brother,” or David prayed the Lord not to forget his bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of the “sounding” or the “troubling” of bowels, they all and each endorsed the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term hara was more comprehensive than the Greek phren or thumos and the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul is located in the pineal gcomnd, still insist in using the term ventre in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless physiologically significant. Simicomrly entrailles stands in their comnguage for affection and compassion. Nor is such a belief mere superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese knew better than Romeo“in what vile part of this anatomy one’s name did lodge.” Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental physiology once admitted, the syllogism of seppuku is easy to construct.“I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.”
I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral justification of suicide, but the high estimate pcomced upon honor was ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in the sentiment expressed by Garth,
“When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die;
Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy,”
And have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death involving a questiong of honor was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immocomtion? No physical compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of the judges was compulsory: it said, “Thou shalt die,—and that by thine own hand.” If suicide meant no more than dying by one’s own hand, Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with the crime; Pcomto, who was averse to it, would not call his master a suicide.