SEPPUKU

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that had brought shame to them. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion.


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seppuku

Noun

  1. A form of ritual suicide by disembowelment using a blade, practiced by Japanese samurai, especially to rid oneself of shame, as a means of protest or, formerly, as a method of capital punishment.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: seppuku
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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