Jigai

The wife of Onodera Junai, one of the 47 rōnin prepares to commit suicide to accompany her husband in death. Her legs are tied to maintain a decorous position during death throes. Death will be administered by a cut of a tanto or kaiken to the throat - distinct from seppuku for men. Print by Kuniyoshi from the series *Seichu gishin den* (Stories of the Faithful Hearts) 1848.

Female ritual suicide in pre-modern Japan.

History

Turnbull (1996, 2008, 2012) provides extensive evidence for the practice of female ritual suicide, notably of samurai wives, in pre-modern Japan. One of the largest mass suicides was the 25 April 1185 final defeat of Taira Tomomori establishing Minamoto power.^[1] The wife of Onodera Junai, one of the Forty-seven Ronin, is a notable example of a wife following by suicide the seppuku (disemboweling) of a samurai husband.^[2] A large number of honour suicides marked the defeat of the Aizu clan in the Boshin War of 1869, leading into the Meiji era. For example in the family of Saigō Tanomo, who survived, a total of twenty-two female honour suicides are recorded among one extended family.^[3]

Religious and social context

Voluntary death by drowning was a common form of ritual or honour suicide. The religious context of thirty-three Jodo Shinshu adherents at the funeral of Abbot Jitsunyo in 1525 was faith in Amida and belief in afterlife in the Pure Land, but male seppuku did not have a specifically religious context.^[4] By way of contrast, the religious beliefs of Hosokawa Gracia, the Christian wife of daimyo Hosokawa Yusai, prevented her from committing suicide.^[5]

In literature and film

The expected honour-suicide of the samurai wife is also frequently referenced in Japanese literature and film, such as in Humanity and Paper Balloons^[6] and Rashomon.^[7]

Terminology

The word jigai (自害) means "suicide" in Japanese. The usual modern word for suicide is jisatsu (自殺).^[8] Related words include jiketsu (自決), jijin (自尽) and jijin (自刃). In some popular western texts, such as martial arts magazines, the term is associated with suicide of samurai wives.^[9] The term was introduced into English by Lafcadio Hearn in his Japan an attempt at interpretation (1923).^[10] an understanding which has since been translated into Japanese and Hearn seen through Japanese eyes (Tsukishima, 1984).^[11] Joshua S. Mostow (2006) notes that Hearn misunderstood the term jigai to be the female equivalent of seppuku.^[12] Mostow's context is analysis of Puccini's Madame Butterfly (1904) and the original Cio-Cio San story by John Luther Long. Though both Long's story and Puccini's opera predate Hearn's use of the term jigai, the term has been used in relation to western japonisme (Van Rij 2001).^[13]

References

^ Stephen R. Turnbull The Samurai: A Military History 1996 Page 72 "Thus began the most tragic mass suicide in the history of the samurai. The Emperor's mother was next to jump into the sea, but was hauled out by a Minamoto samurai who caught her hair in a rake. The wife of Shigehira was also about to jump ...
^ Mary Ritter Beard The force of women in Japanese history 1953 Page 100 "1703), entering the Onodera family through her marriage to Junai Hidekazu, took her own life as he took his, out of the"
^ Stephen Turnbull The Samurai Swordsman: Master of War -2008 Page 156 "In the family of Saigo Tanomo, a senior retainer of the Aizu han, his mother, wife, five daughters, and two sisters killed themselves. Other women in his extended family also committed suicide, making a total of twenty-two female deaths from ."
^ Mark L. Blum Collective Suicide at the Funeral of Jitsunyo chapter in Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism ed. Jacqueline Ilyse Stone, Mariko Namba Walter 2008 - Page 164 "I know of no canonical or popular writing that encourages jigai ōjō; in fact one finds numerous statements denouncing it. And yet its persistence in the popular imagination as something extraordinary and deserving of respect is also well attested. ... At the same time, all the above suicide victims were devotees of faith in Amida and the religious goal of reaching his Pure Land, and death by voluntary drowning was a traditional form of jigai ōjō, whereas seppuku was not. Nonetheless ..."
^ Stephen Turnbull Samurai Women 1184-1877 2012 "In one celebrated case the religious beliefs of the wife of a daimyo prevented her from committing suicide. This was Hosokawa Gracia, the staunchly Christian wife of Hosokawa Yusai. The steps taken to avoid such disasters could be as awful ..."
^ Alastair Phillips, Julian Stringer Japanese Cinema: Texts And Contexts 2007 Page 57 "The other samurai does not have the courage or honesty to face his degradation and it is left to his wife to stage a double suicide by killing him and then herself with a humble knife. The scene in which the wife takes out the knife in readiness ..."
^ Orit Kamir Framed: Women in Law and Film 2005- Page 64 Rashomon... "his lost honor, the samurai uses his wife's dagger to commit the suicide she should have committed. His act manifests how, when not used properly by the woman on herself, the dagger, representing the woman, becomes the vehicle of the ..."
^ じがい 1 0 【自害】 - goo 辞書
^ Black Belt magazine Dec 1980 - Page 47 "The samurai men were probably most famous for their ritual seppuku suicides (disembowelment), more commonly known as hara-kiri (literally, "belly slitting"). Samurai women had their own form of ritualistic suicide, called jigai. This type of "
^ Lafcadio Hearn Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation 1923 reprint 2005 Page 318 "Among samurai women — taught to consider their husbands as their lords, in the feudal meaning of the term — it was held a moral obligation to perform jigai by way of .."
^ 築島謙三 Tsukishima Kenzo translator and editor ラフカディオ・ハーンの日本観: その正しい理解への試み (Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation) 1984 Page 48 "いろいろその機能に変化が生じてきたけれども、この切腹、自害は上代日本の宗教的の証拠と考えるとすれば、それは大きな誤まりであって、むしろこのような行為は由来宗教的な性格をもこのような自己犠牲をテ—マにした悲劇を日本の国民はいまなお愛好し ..."
^ Joshua S. Mostow Iron Butterfly Cio-Cio-San and Japanese Imperialism - essay in A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, And Contexts of Madame Butterfly editor J. L. Wisenthal 2006 - Page 190 "Lafcadio Hearn, in his Japan: An Interpretation of 1904, wrote of 'The Religion of Loyalty': In the early ages it appears to have been ... jigai [lit., 'self-harm,' but taken by Hearn to mean the female equivalent of seppuku], byway of protest against ..."
^ Jan Van Rij Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, & the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San. 2001 Page 71 "of the samurai class could not be sold by their family but they could sell themselves; and finally the act of jigai, suicide by a dagger or short sword piercing the neck, was reserved for women of the samurai class to which, in Long's story, ..."

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[1] Stephen R. Turnbull The Samurai: A Military History 1996 Page 72 "Thus began the most tragic mass suicide in the history of the samurai. The Emperor's mother was next to jump into the sea, but was hauled out by a Minamoto samurai who caught her hair in a rake. The wife of Shigehira was also about to jump ...

[2] Mary Ritter Beard The force of women in Japanese history 1953 Page 100 "1703), entering the Onodera family through her marriage to Junai Hidekazu, took her own life as he took his, out of the"

[3] Stephen Turnbull The Samurai Swordsman: Master of War -2008 Page 156 "In the family of Saigo Tanomo, a senior retainer of the Aizu han, his mother, wife, five daughters, and two sisters killed themselves. Other women in his extended family also committed suicide, making a total of twenty-two female deaths from ."

[4] Mark L. Blum Collective Suicide at the Funeral of Jitsunyo chapter in Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism ed. Jacqueline Ilyse Stone, Mariko Namba Walter 2008 - Page 164 "I know of no canonical or popular writing that encourages jigai ōjō; in fact one finds numerous statements denouncing it. And yet its persistence in the popular imagination as something extraordinary and deserving of respect is also well attested. ... At the same time, all the above suicide victims were devotees of faith in Amida and the religious goal of reaching his Pure Land, and death by voluntary drowning was a traditional form of jigai ōjō, whereas seppuku was not. Nonetheless ..."

[5] Stephen Turnbull Samurai Women 1184-1877 2012 "In one celebrated case the religious beliefs of the wife of a daimyo prevented her from committing suicide. This was Hosokawa Gracia, the staunchly Christian wife of Hosokawa Yusai. The steps taken to avoid such disasters could be as awful ..."

[6] Alastair Phillips, Julian Stringer Japanese Cinema: Texts And Contexts 2007 Page 57 "The other samurai does not have the courage or honesty to face his degradation and it is left to his wife to stage a double suicide by killing him and then herself with a humble knife. The scene in which the wife takes out the knife in readiness ..."

[7] Orit Kamir Framed: Women in Law and Film 2005- Page 64 Rashomon... "his lost honor, the samurai uses his wife's dagger to commit the suicide she should have committed. His act manifests how, when not used properly by the woman on herself, the dagger, representing the woman, becomes the vehicle of the ..."

[8] じがい 1 0 【自害】 - goo 辞書

[9] Black Belt magazine Dec 1980 - Page 47 "The samurai men were probably most famous for their ritual seppuku suicides (disembowelment), more commonly known as hara-kiri (literally, "belly slitting"). Samurai women had their own form of ritualistic suicide, called jigai. This type of "

[10] Lafcadio Hearn Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation 1923 reprint 2005 Page 318 "Among samurai women — taught to consider their husbands as their lords, in the feudal meaning of the term — it was held a moral obligation to perform jigai by way of .."

[11] 築島謙三 Tsukishima Kenzo translator and editor ラフカディオ・ハーンの日本観: その正しい理解への試み (Lafcadio Hearn's Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation) 1984 Page 48 "いろいろその機能に変化が生じてきたけれども、この切腹、自害は上代日本の宗教的の証拠と考えるとすれば、それは大きな誤まりであって、むしろこのような行為は由来宗教的な性格をもこのような自己犠牲をテ—マにした悲劇を日本の国民はいまなお愛好し ..."

[12] Joshua S. Mostow Iron Butterfly Cio-Cio-San and Japanese Imperialism - essay in A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, And Contexts of Madame Butterfly editor J. L. Wisenthal 2006 - Page 190 "Lafcadio Hearn, in his Japan: An Interpretation of 1904, wrote of 'The Religion of Loyalty': In the early ages it appears to have been ... jigai [lit., 'self-harm,' but taken by Hearn to mean the female equivalent of seppuku], byway of protest against ..."

[13] Jan Van Rij Madame Butterfly: Japonisme, Puccini, & the Search for the Real Cho-Cho-San. 2001 Page 71 "of the samurai class could not be sold by their family but they could sell themselves; and finally the act of jigai, suicide by a dagger or short sword piercing the neck, was reserved for women of the samurai class to which, in Long's story, ..."

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