Harakiri (1962 film)

Harakiri
Directed by	Masaki Kobayashi
Written by	Shinobu Hashimoto Yasuhiko Takiguchi
Produced by	Tatsuo Hosoya
Starring	Tatsuya Nakadai Rentaro Mikuni Shima Iwashita Akira Ishihama
Music by	Tōru Takemitsu
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date	September 16, 1962 (Japan)
Running time	135 min.
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

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 the story of Hanshiro Tsugumo, a rōnin ("wave man" - a warrior without a lord), who was ordered to stay alive after his lord was deposed - instead of committing seppuku ("stomach-cutting" - a form of ritual suicide). He is told to live so that he can care for his daughter, grandson and son-in-law, the son of the lord's highest Samurai ( "those who serve in close attendance to nobility") and closest friend of Tsugumo who commits Harakiri with his lord.

Plot

On May 16, 1630, Hanshiro Tsugumo arrives at the estate of the Iyi clan, 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. To deter him Kageyu Saito, counselor of the clan, tells Hanshiro a warning story wherein another ronin, Motome Chijiiwa – formerly of the same clan as Hanshiro – had made the same request and the samurai retainers of the house forced him to complete the ceremony and kill himself. When Motome's sword is revealed to be a fake made of bamboo, they refuse to give him a blade and insist that he disembowel himself with it, so that Motome's death is agonizingly painful. Despite this warning, Tsugumo maintains his request to commit suicide.

While preparing for the ritual, Tsugumo recounts to Saito and the retainers that his lord's house was considered a threat and toppled by the shogunate, whereupon his friend, another samurai, committed seppuku and left Tsugumo to look after his son, Motome Chijiiwa. Required to protect Chijiiwa and support his own daughter Miho, Hanshiro lived in poverty and worked menial jobs to support his family. In later years Chijiwa and Miho were married and had a son, Kingo, but continued to live in poverty. When Miho and Kingo became ill and could not afford to pay a physician, Chijiiwa threatened seppuku at a lord's house. Soon after his seppuku, Miho and Kingo died from their illnesses.

Hanshiro then reveals that before coming to the Iyi house, he tracked down two retainers of the house, Hayato Yazaki and Umenosuke Kawabe, whom he defeated easily and disgraced them by cutting off their topknots. A third retainer, Hikokuro Omodaka, comes to Hanshiro's home and challenges him to a ritual duel. Hanshiro and Hikokuro climatically duel in a brief but tense sword fight, where Hanshiro breaks Hikokuro's sword. Instead of honorably surrendering, Hikokuro continues to fight and his topknot is taken as well.

When Hanshiro finishes his account, Saito angrily orders the retainers to kill him; whereupon Tsugomo kills four and wounds eight while slowly succumbing to his wounds. When a new group of retainers arrive armed with guns, Tsugumo begins seppuku but is shot. Kawabe and Yazaki are ordered to commit seppuku, while Omodaka is reported to have done so already; their deaths, and the four inflicted by Hanshiro, are to be reported as from "illness", lest word be spread that the Iyi House has lost face to 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. 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 or 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 appears when Tsugumo is able to fight off a great many retainers with a sword, yet is helpless against three guns; a foreshadow of the Meiji restoration, wherein sword-bearing samurai were defeated by the "new" Japanese military.

Reception

On February 23, 2012 Roger Ebert added 'Harakiri' to his list of 'Great Movies'. He writes "Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy. Harakiri, one of the best of them, is about an older wandering samurai who takes his time to create an unanswerable dilemma for the elder of a powerful clan. By playing strictly within the rules of Bushido Code which governs the conduct of all samurai, he lures the powerful leader into a situation where sheer naked logic leaves him humiliated before his retainers."

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.

Remakes

The movie was remade by Japanese director Takashi Miike as 3D movie named Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai in 2011. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Main cast

• Tatsuya Nakadai - Hanshiro Tsugumo
• Rentaro Mikuni - Kageyu Saito
• Shima Iwashita - Miho Tsugumo
• Akira Ishihama - Motome Chijiiwa
• Tetsuro Tamba - Hikokuro Omodaka
• Ichiro Nakaya - Hayato Yazaki
• Yoshio Aoki - Umenosuke Kawabe

External links

• Harakiri at IMDb
• Harakiri at AllMovie
• Criterion Collection essay by Joan Mellen
• "切腹 (Seppuku)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-07-16.