In 1970, the celebrated novelist Yukio Mishima committed seppuku, a gruesome form of ritual suicide that originated with Japan’s ancient samurai warrior class. After a failed coup d’état at a military compound in Tokyo, the 45-year-old writer knelt and drew a knife across his belly, cutting laterally from left to right and then upward and downward in a fatal L. Once he had disemboweled himself, Mishima lowered his neck, signaling a trusted second, or kaishaku, who was a member of his private militia, to swiftly behead him with a single stroke of a sword.
But the hands of Mishima’s second trembled so intensely that he botched three attempts, and another follower had to deliver the coup de grâce. Shamed, the kaishaku knelt and stabbed himself in the abdomen, too. Instant decapitation awaits the second who makes a hash of his duties, which is how the most notorious seppuku of modern times ended with two severed heads on the compound’s floor.
“Kaishaku: The Role of the Second” is the title of a new compendium of four rare instructional manuals that have been translated into English for the first time. The earliest, titled “The Inner Secrets of Seppuku,” dates to the 17th century and was originally a work of kirigami, a half sheet of white mulberry paper folded into a book.
“The manuals contain secret teachings that traditionally were only passed along by word of mouth,” said Eric Shahan, who translated the texts. An American-born English teacher based in Japan, Mr. Shahan has a passion for translating ancient martial art books. He came across the two oldest guides, “Inner Secrets” and “Secrets Traditions of Seppuku,” a manual written in 1840, in their original handwritten forms last year in libraries in Japan.
The other two guides detailed kaishaku techniques during the Edo period, from 1603 to 1868. Mr. Shahan came across them in obscure, mid-20th century handbooks on sword-fighting styles.
The compendium answers such questions as what a kaishaku should wear to a beheading (it depends on the social status of the condemned), whether sake should be offered (too much and things can get unruly), and how to properly perform the lop (leave just enough flesh attached for the head to fall naturally forward into the executed man’s arms).
There are even step-by-step instructions on how to construct an oke, the box to store the head: 40 strips of wood bound with six rings of metal wrapped counterclockwise and the words of the Lotus Sutra inscribed on the sides. As for disposal of the body, place it unbathed on a folding screen, roll the head onto the screen with the wooden handle of a water ladle and have a Buddhist priest consecrate the sword.
Decapitation etiquette is further refined in “Secrets Traditions of Seppuku.” After the beheading, the kaishaku is expected to hand the blood-soaked sword to an attendant and then cover the body before putting it inside the coffin. “The reason is that it would be hard to hold your bloody sword and help with the body at the same time,” Mr. Shahan said.
During the turbulent 12th century in Japan, a period marked by warring clans, seppuku offered samurai a means to demonstrate their resolve and avoid the dishonor of being captured. “The grand style was to take one’s entrails in both hands and give them a vigorous throw in the enemy’s direction,” the French cultural anthropologist Maurice Pinguet wrote in a 1984 study titled “Voluntary Death in Japan.”
The first samurai to commit seppuku in recorded history was Minamoto no Tametomo, a rogue warlord who was banished to the island of Oshima for his part in the Hogen Rebellion. In exile, he raised an army, took over the entire Izu chain and mustered his troops for an attack on the mainland. But in 1170, the emperor’s forces invaded Oshima, and Tametomo, faced with defeat and capture, sliced open his belly. It was believed that the spirit rested within the stomach and that slitting the stomach would set the soul free, Mr. Shahan said.
A warrior of lower rank assisted the suicide by striking off Tametomo’s head with a halberd, a two-handed polearm fitted with an ax blade and a spike. “Later samurai found Tametomo’s death to be ideal, and the concept of a second is said to have emerged from that,” Mr. Shahan said.
By the 15th century, seppuku had evolved to other purposes, such as an expression of grief, a demonstration of loyalty and a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai. (Female samurai had a different take on self-sacrifice, typically either slashing their own throats or stabbing themselves in the heart, a common fate for widows of samurai who had committed seppuku or brought dishonor. Their suicides were often solo undertakings that did not involve a kaishaku.)
Although twice outlawed in the 1600s, the practice remained a voluntary option for criminals until 1873, when it was officially banned by the Meiji government and replaced by life imprisonment.
Svetlana Korneeva, a sociologist at Jissen Women’s University in Hino, Japan, called the publication of the new translations “highly significant.” She said that by the Edo period, a seppuku manual was a standard fixture in every feudal lord’s home, should the need arise.
Of all the advice dispensed in “Kaishaku: The Role of the Second,” the most surprising concerns how to handle a samurai who has been sentenced to seppuku but is too cowardly to complete the ceremony. It is recommended that the kaishaku provide the condemned with a small writing desk, an inkstone, paper and a brush. He should then encourage the samurai to take all the time he needs to write.
One manual counsels: “The kaishaku should wait until the man reaches out to take the writing implements, thereby exposing his neck.”
Guess what happens next.
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