"Hara-kiri" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pain. The honorable method by which a samurai who had transgressed some law or failed in some point of etiquette, might leave this world is well known to all, the "seppuku," the elegant name for the vulgar term "hara-kiri" or "belly-cutting." To one who is sensitive to tales of blood, unexpurgated Japanese history must be a dreadful thing. The vastness of the multitudes who died by their own hands would be incredible, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of the Tales have already appeared in the Fortnightly Review, and two of the Sermons, with a portion of the Appendix on the subject of the Hara-Kiri, in the pages of the Cornhill Magazine. I have to thank the editors of those periodicals for permission to ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... marked man." He was not afraid of what could be done to him. His delicate conception of his dignity was defiled by a degrading experience. He couldn't stand that. No Japanese gentleman, outraged in his exaggerated sense of honour, could have gone about his preparations for Hara-kiri with greater resolution. To go home really amounted to ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... &c (punishment) 975; man-eater, apache^, hatchet man [U.S.], highbinder [U.S.]. regicide, parricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, feticide, foeticide^, uxoricide^, vaticide^. suicide, felo de se^, hara-kiri, suttee, Juggernath^; immolation, auto da fe, holocaust. suffocation, strangulation, garrote; hanging &c v.; lapidation^. deadly weapon &c (arms) 727; Aceldama^. [Destruction of animals] slaughtering; phthisozoics^; sport, sporting; the chase, venery; hunting, coursing, shooting, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that obtained in old Japan, not only for self-defence but for offensive purposes, either in respect of family feuds or individual quarrels, which were almost invariably settled by the arbitrament of the sword. That weapon was also used for those suicides known as hara-kiri, the outcome of wounded honour or self-respect, which were such prominent features in the Japanese life of the past. Some Western writers have attempted to poke a mild kind of fun at this proneness ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... then take his own life, in order to call attention to his beliefs and to prove their sincerity. Such an instance occurred only last year in Tokyo, [1] when the young lieutenant of militia, Ohara Takeyoshi, killed himself by harakiri in the cemetery of Saitokuji, leaving a letter stating as the reason for his act, his hope to force public recognition of the danger to Japanese independence from the growth of Russian power in the North Pacific. But a much more touching sacrifice in May of the same year—a ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn |
