| Samurai Movies (29) |
April 21, 2022
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| [Seppuku] It was a shocking and sad movie. The movie's name was 'Ichimei', 'ichi' is 'one', 'mei' has two meanings, 'life' and 'order'. In the first scene of the movie, a middle aged samurai dressed in shabby clothes came to a han's residence, called 'Edo yashiki'. At the entrance, he asked for a favor from them to let him use their entrance way to commit seppuku, killing himself by cutting his stomach open. His han had been disqualified by the Tokugawa Shogunate by a small mistake. Since then, he became a ronin and was living on small earnings, but he had reached his limit. He would like to die with the last honor of committing seppuku in this traditional residence. In Edo, there were a lot of hans' residences because of sankin-kotai. The residence also acted as a branch office of each han. A representative of the residence was called 'karo'. After the karo at the residence listened to his subordinate's report, he grinned, and said, "Again?" He ordered the subordinate to bring the ronin to his office. The karo knew that this guy was here just to beg for some money, reasoning with committing seppuku. There was a trend among poor ronin, in which they would go to a rich han's premises and announce they wanted to commit seppuku. Avoiding troubles, each han would pay them some  money, and the person would leave. Actually, if the person committed seppuku, they would have to clean it up which would take a lot of time, and then they would have to handle the dead body, and would have to report it to the authority. Maybe it would be very troublesome. Maybe, one smart ronin had gotten this idea and others followed suit. Talking with the ronin, the karo started talking about a young ronin who had come here a half year before asking the same favor ~committing seppuku at the entrance. When the young ronin came and asked them to allow him to commit seppuku in the entrance, a group of this han's samurai thought that it was a good chance to stop this bad trend. Three young samurai willingly offered to support this person's seppuku. For samurai, two swords, one long and one short, were symbolic of the 'samurai spirit'. Every samurai held those swords in public at all times. Seeing the two swords, citizens would bow at them. But, even so, almost all samurai never 'used' them in their lives. But even so, some hans, like this han, made it an importance to have sword training every day, as well as studying about how samurai should live. It was a stoic life. There was a term, "For samurai, there was no second word." The three young samurai felt offended when the young ronin wanted to commit seppuku, but was just really expecting money. They thought any samurai, even ronin, shouldn't do that. And maybe they also had a cruel hope of wanting to see a real seppuku in person. But, the young ronin wasn't a person who just wanted money easily, he had a serious reason for the money, it was urgent ... (To be continued ...) |
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No. 475
*follow suit :ならう