Headline, July 13 2025/ HISTORY : ''' JAPAN SAMURAI'S JARRS '''

HISTORY : 

''' JAPAN SAMURAI'S JARRS '''

GUIDE TO SAMURAI RITUALS translated into English. A gory set of manuals explains how warriors would kill themselves.

In 1970, a 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'etat 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, signalling 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 grace.

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 floor.

'' Kaishaku : The Role of the Second '' is the title of four rare instruction 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 material 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 the 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.

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