hara- kiri

Travis Young


Even in the midst of the most loyal and honorable men of this world, appearance is not always a reality. We can see this point exercised in both Kikuchi Kan’s “On The Conduct of Lord Tadanao” and the movie Harakiri.
In the story of Lord Tadanao he is a very respectable man who has grown from being a young boy and never having lost or failed at anything. He begins to see that everything he knows in life is not really as it seams and that people have been fake to his face all his life. This all becomes clear to him when he over hears two samurai discussing the battles which had gone down earlier that day and how they had let the lord win and despite his semi- talent he was still no match for the two of them. This sends the lord into a fist of rage, he takes it into his own hands to torture maim and destroy the lives of anyone it takes for him to be mistreated and told he is wrong and cause him to fail at something. He unfairly throws the lives of his servants away to try and gain his own humanity from others. The word ‘humanity’ is used in the text that he has never felt what it means to lose, he has never felt true love but only submission, he has never felt anything real in his life but what those around him know that they must do, which in the end is submit. Through all his hardships, in his case, successes the lord never feels what it is truly like to live life. Even when a man for the abuse of his wife attacks him, he later sees this also as an act of submission to him, and he can find no true happiness in defeat. He than realizes that by staying in this world in which he lives he will never experience anything outside of submission to him, thus causing him to realize that in the end everything he knew people to stand for before him was false.
In the movie Harakiri the main character Hanshiro Tsugumo comes to the doors of a house and its elders with in claiming he is looking to commit hara-kiri with in their doors. Once inside and in place Tsugumo begins to slowly tell his story and pick apart the many failures and falsities of the house. He comes to be able to show them that the samurai honor in which they all hide behind is nothing but a false mask that they hide behind to cover up many of their inadequate choices in their samurai life. He shows that the honor that these houses claim is nothing but a cover up of the dishonorable things that go on within their closed doors.
In both of these stories we see that the characters uncover a false sense of honor in the men and elders that surround them. The image that is put off by the way the people act is not always as it seems and that we cannot be the ones to judge people on the image and appearance that they present themselves with. We can easily relate this to industries and major businesses in our modern world. So many people talk sweet to our face and tell us what we want to hear to please us and make everything look good on the outside so that everything appears to be ok. These stories are good warnings to us, to teach us to watch out for the glossy cover and the shiny advertisements and hold true to what we know is right and not fall into believing that everything we see is true.