The Institutions of Suicide and Redress（4）（2/2）
《武士道》作者：（日）新渡户稻造 2017-04-14 12:42
;—and yet revenge was justified only when it was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One’s own wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal’s oath to avenge his country’s wrongs, but he scorns James H***lton for wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife’s grave, as an eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray.
Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their raison d’etre at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of f***ly vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is no need of kataki-uchi. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.
As to seppuku, though it too has no existence de jure, we still hear of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have to concede to seppuku an aristocratic position among them. He maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by madness, or by morbid excitement.”[3] But a normal seppuku does not savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost sang froid being necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which Dr. Strahan[4] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the Irrational or True, seppuku is the best example of the former type.
From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called the seord the soul of the samurai.
[Footnote 1: Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.]
[Footnote 2: I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.]
[Footnote 21: Morselli, Suicide, p. 314.]
[Footnote 22: Suicide and Insanity.]
Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their raison d’etre at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of f***ly vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is no need of kataki-uchi. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.
As to seppuku, though it too has no existence de jure, we still hear of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have to concede to seppuku an aristocratic position among them. He maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by madness, or by morbid excitement.”[3] But a normal seppuku does not savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost sang froid being necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which Dr. Strahan[4] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the Irrational or True, seppuku is the best example of the former type.
From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called the seord the soul of the samurai.
[Footnote 1: Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.]
[Footnote 2: I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.]
[Footnote 21: Morselli, Suicide, p. 314.]
[Footnote 22: Suicide and Insanity.]