Harakiri (1962)

[alhoon]

I watched this movie expecting to see Samurai slicing their guts open for honor, after defeat in the battlefield and their watching their war exploits before hand etc.
What I got actually was a deeply moving story that makes quite clear why Harakiri or other forms of honorable death/suicide were considered, especially in the mindset of 1630's Japan with a little but nice swordplay.


The movie is not an action movie. It's a movie about honor, tradition, family and poverty.
Aaaand how peace can ruin the life of "innocent" honorable warriors that find no employment.

Well, I can understand that as bad for the warrior class of society, but I can't say I consider it a bad thing overall.
There have been different ways to deal with it.
In Roman empire, farmland so the ex-soldiers that survived could support themselves and their families.
Medevial warriors on the other hand just turned bandits and in times of "peace" they fought and stole provisions.
Samurai... lived in poverty or in extreme cases made suicide to avoid such fate.

[Trike]

Medevial warriors on the other hand just turned bandits and in times of "peace" they fought and stole provisions.

This is the theme of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It deals with the idea of samurai with too much leisure and how they interact with commoners. Fantastic movie!

[alhoon]

It is in my samurai movies to watch list.

[HuManBing]

Sanjuro is fantastic as well. Very much a story of machinations and village plotting between factions, where popular perception is as important as the stroke of a swordblade. Probably my favorite Mifune/Kurosawa movie.

[alhoon]

This is the theme of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It deals with the idea of samurai with too much leisure and how they interact with commoners. Fantastic movie!

Watching the 1954 movie now (have watched the first hour out of 3 1/2), and it's very good.
What dreadful times we seem to have evaded! Peasants getting stepped upon, Warriors (Samurai) realizing that friends and relatives are dead by the time they grow up and they're alone... it seems less than 2% had the quality of life the average person now has.

[Trike]

Yeah, every time I catch myself wishing I lived in the past I mentally slap myself.

Medicine, war, disease, slavery, starvation, ignorance, isolation,... uh, nature. The past is full of terrible things. I say, "To the future...and beyond!"

Of course, we have a lot of that same terrible stuff now. But I still feel lucky to have been born in modern times. Of course, when you think about it. No matter when I was born, it would have been modern times.

[Zettaijin]

Japan isn't all that big and giving sufficient land to every "deserving" warrior lead to some issues at some point as land simply started to run out. Don't forget that those very same samurai would end up having kids and these kids would inherit land which would be split among the siblings.

Same thing happened in Europe.

Long before that, when the warrior class first became the ruling class by gradually overthrowing the established nobility in the Kamakura era, things became even more grim for peasants who were brutalized even more severely by the hardened men.

These fellows had been slaughtering the northern Ainu for some time (mostly a means to keep them occupied and far from the "civilized" nobility) and had no shame in bullying already overworked and impoverished peasants for their food.

For all the romanticism we forget that samurai were eventually a brutal ruling class or servants of an equally brutal ruling class. Furthermore, they themselves were divided into well defined classes with some warriors being so lowly in stature as to receive a pittance for their services.

Oh and as an aside, seppuku is the more familiar term in Japan with harakiri being more popular outside the islands. Same Chinese characters though (belly and cut).

[Zettaijin]

I think the myth of the noble warrior is a very strong one. Japanese samurai, European knights, and even contemporary "noble soldiers" are a staple of every form of media.

Perhaps we secretly fear the treacherous, powerful man who would overtake us after realizing that it is he who holds the monopoly of physical violence over the territory.

[Trike]

There's a good angle to the noble warrior idea, as well. We have always sent men out to fight and kill. We like to view them as noble because of that sacrifice but also because it makes the battles we send them to fight seem more noble. It's easier to support the war effort if you do not understand the true nature of the battles.

[Zilfer]

True, sounds like a self defense mechnisim so we don't go crazy.^

Keep telling yourself it's for a good cause, because otherwise you don't really have much to fight for. Good way to put it.