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Hara-kiri


Seppuku (切腹, "cutting [the] abdomen/belly", formal on reading of original Kanji), sometimes metathesized as harakiri (腹切り, "abdomen/belly cutting") which is a native Japanese kun reading, is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was used either voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture) or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. 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 drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the abdomen open. If the cut, done with a movement, is done deep enough, it can cut the descending aorta, inducing a massive blood loss inside the abdomen, with very fast death.

A Japanese form of ritual suicide, the term "seppuku" derives from the two Sino-Japanese roots setsu ("to cut", from Middle Chinese tset) and puku ("belly", from MC pjuwk). It is also known as harakiri (腹切り, "cutting the belly"), a term more widely familiar outside Japan, and which is written with the same kanji as seppuku, but in reverse order with an okurigana. In Japanese, the more formal seppuku, a Chinese on'yomi reading, is typically used in writing, while harakiri, a native kun'yomi reading, is used in speech. Ross notes,


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