Samurai and Ninja: The Real Story Behind the Japanese Warrior Myth That Shatters the Bushido Mystique (20 page)

That being said, if a samurai did transgress against the current moral code there was one sure way to regain honor—ritual suicide.

Suicide and Seppuku

Ritual suicide is an iconic image which has become a hallmark of the samurai. However, again the romantic element has allowed to flourish and truth has been obscured leaving the topic as not fully explored. The following section will give an insight into the ritual and meaning; however, for a more comprehensive read on this subject see
Seppuku
by Andrew Rankin.

Ritual suicide is called by many names and while most revolve around terms to cut open the stomach, the most popular two in today’s world are
Seppuku
and
Hari-kiri
. The basic idea is to open the stomach and to expose the guts and innards to the world so that a samurai may take control of his own death instead of letting another take his life. This is done when all else has failed and the enemy may capture them; it is also done to correct a mistake that other actions will not correct. Ritual suicide was not a static ritual and forms changed depending on the time. According to the work of Rankin, the older forms of seppuku appear to be more spontaneous and in battlefield situations, examples such as samurai opening their stomachs on castle walls while the fortress burns around them or sitting down, still bloody from a battle, a samurai writes a death poem and opens up his stomach. Then as time progresses a fixed ritual takes place, drinks are offered to the condemned, small but sombre parties are held, poems may be written and measurements for the ceremony are mapped out as food is laid on thin wooden sheets placed upon small tables. Our image of the seppuku ceremony is altogether quite correct; the main issue is the darker side of the story, the fact that many men did not wish to commit suicide and that an unknown percentage were forced into the act. What cannot be known is how many people willingly opened up their stomachs to kill themselves for the loss of a lord or to atone for a “crime” and how many were forced into the act because their families and their future line were under threat. Therefore a middle lane approach must be taken again and the idea that sometimes, some samurai could be heroic and romantic and that they did in fact die for their lords and they did commit this ritual with the proper intent; while at the other end of the scale it must be remembered that there were many who did not wish to perform suicide and that the regulations of the ceremony itself were constructed to stop a person from striking out at those who had commanded such a death.

The following points are used in seppuku to stop the victim from taking control:

Paper around the wakizashi short sword

A short sword is placed on a tray for the victims to use to disembowel themselves with. The handle is removed and the tang of the blade is wrapped in thick paper, and only the end section of the tip of the blade is left exposed. This is done so that the victim cannot take up the short sword and kill those around them and escape.

The distance between the examiner and the victim

The examining official should sit approximately eleven-and-a-half feet (three-anda-half meters) away from the victim. This is so that the victim cannot jump up and take the sword of the sitting official and kill those around him.

The Second should observe the attitude of the victim and adjust to fit.

The Second is the man that decapitates the victim. There are three basic positions that a Second can adopt or move through (see the illustration on the opposite page). Their task is to observe the feeling and actions of the victim, and they may have to kill the supplicant before the ceremony starts if they think that action is required:

1. They should kneel down about five feet (one-and-a-half meters) from the victim with one knee up, ready to pounce and kill the victim if he looks like he is about to move to an offensive action.

2. If the victim looks like they are going to commit suicide without incident then the Second moves to stand to the victim’s left, the big toe of his right foot in line with the victim’s hip.

3. If the victim looks agitated or the Second gets the feeling that the victim is going to move on the offensive just before the moment that they should cut open their own stomach, then the Second will move in close and position themselves almost central and behind them. The Second will place the sword blade on the back of their left hand, with the tip pointing towards the center of the back of the victim. If the victim makes a move then the Second will stab with the tip through the back of their ribs, killing them.

The victim should face the sun or moon.

The victim should always have the sun, moon or illumination to their front. This is so that they cannot see the shadow of the executioner and his sword swing. Seppuku is an intriguing part of samurai culture, yet at times it should be considered oppression and forced suicide, making it
execution
and
not
suicide. A samurai may be forced to commit suicide so that their “crimes” do not fall on their families. It has to be remembered that entire samurai families may be eradicated because of one person’s “crimes.” Alongside this, the above methods of defending against a victim of seppuku and their possible attack are all sure signs that some people who were forced to commit suicide clearly did not wish to and could and did attack officials—making the history of ritual suicide in Japan one of forced execution, heroic deeds and last-ditch attempts at life. Seppuku must be seen as a blood ritual that elevated the honorable, killed the innocent and was used as a tool to take control. However, Japan had a long tradition of warriors following their lords in death, rituals that existed before the samurai, and this fact should not be ignored. And it should be remembered that countless individuals killed themselves to journey to the afterlife and accompany their lord in death, so much so that the act of killing yourself to follow your lord to the afterlife was banned in Japan in the Edo Period; while some samurai would not die by their own hand, many willingly did.

The Major Players

The history of Japan and of the “major players” in its development is vast, expansive, political and complex. In the West we generally focus on a few of the main characters from samurai history and tend to have a limited understanding of the intricacies of the “story” itself (which is understandable as it is vastly complex). Therefore, the following list is a short description of those people commonly discussed and where they fit into the story of the samurai—this will help you to understand the basics of a “samurai narrative” and at least start to form a structure in your mind of the overview of the samurai story. More samurai profiles and outlines can be found at the back of
Samurai War Stories
.

The 1100s

Minamoto no Yoritomo
was a member of the Genji clan and the victor of one of Japan’s most famous wars, the Genji versus the Heike clan.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune
was of the same family and time as the above; he is also often connected to the origin of shinobi or covert tactics.

Ise no Saburo Yoshimori
was a general under the above Minamoto no Yoshitsune and is thought to be connected with the origin and history of the shinobi—he is the supposed author of the 100 ninja poems.

Taira no Kiyomori
was a member of the above-mentioned Heike clan that flourished under him; he died of disease.

The 1300s

Kusunoki Masashige
served the Emperor of Japan against the rise of the Ashikaga clan. Kusunoki is considered one of the greatest Japanese generals of all time and is a paragon of loyalty, allowing himself to die due to a bad command given by his lord, even though he knew it meant his death. He is also mentioned in shinobi literature as being connected to the ninja, not as a shinobi himself but as an unconventional tactician.

The 1500s

The sixteenth century included the Warring States Period and was a time of blood, fire, and destruction. It was filled with treaties, broken treaties, political moves and shifts and should be understood as a highly complex time in Japanese history filled with war but which lead to an era of peace. Many samurai changed allegiance, formed new pacts and the country was in a state of turmoil. The people below are the main players of that time and are followed by the location they are most associated with.

Takeda Shingen
in Kai, considered to be one of the greatest warlords in Japanese history, died of disease before his military campaigns ended.

Uesugi Kenshin
in Echigo, he engaged in many battles and is famous for his battles with Takeda Shingen.

Oda Nobunaga
in Owari and Gifu, the first of the great unifiers of Japan, united Japan towards the end of the Sengoku Period but died due to a rebellion within his ranks.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi
in Osaka, followed on after Nobunaga and continued to hold a unified Japan and then invaded Korea.

Ishida Mitsunari
in Omi, protector and regent to the son of the above Hideyoshi, he went to battle with and lost against Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the Sengoku Period.

Tokugawa Ieyasu
in Edo, after the death of Hideyoshi he took the country by force, which culminated at the Battle of Sekigahara where he defeated the last of his opposition and started the golden “age of peace.”

Samurai and Shinobi Literature

While there are thousands of volumes of samurai literature left to the world, they are of course in Japanese and “lost” in vast collections; therefore the following list is of those documents which are available in English. It must be remembered that it is often the case that documents are chosen for publication for different reasons and that published samurai documents predominantly focus on ethics and not war. The reason for this is that essays on ethics fit in more with our modern mind-set as the reality of samurai battle is sometimes too harsh to consider. The aim of my team—the Historical Ninjutsu Research Team—is to bring about a new line of published work that exposes the truth and a more balanced view of what was being written in samurai times, a work in progress. Often the date of writing and stance of the author can affect the feeling of the history of the samurai, so as a reader you must take care as to when the document was written and why. Remember that the slices of English translations that are available can skew our understanding of the world of the samurai, giving us tunnel vision and a localized view of what samurai thought and did.

Epic samurai stories and poems translated into English:

Heike Monogatari
—The Tale of Heike

Hogen Monogatari
—Tale of the Disorder in Hogen

Taiheiki War Chronicle
—The war chronicle in which Kusunoki Masashige appears

Samurai military and practical manuals in English:

Yoshimori’s 100 shinobi poems

A collection of shinobi poems attributed to Ise no Saburo Yoshimori, a general under the Minamoto family; these have been translated in
Secret Traditions of the Shinobi
.

The Shinobi Hiden

A ninja manual said to be written by Hattori Hanzo in 1560, the date of which has been contested by some but is still a topic of debate, translated in
Secret Traditions of the Shinobi
.

The shinobi scrolls of the Gunpo Jiyoshu