A thoughtful post on Seppuku at Fu Rin Ka Zan:
http://furinkazanblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/truthful-manifestations.html
You are currently browsing articles tagged seppuku.
“What is so ghastly about exposed intestines? Why, when we see the insides of a human being, do we have to cover our eyes in terror? Why are a man’s intestines ugly? Is it not exactly the same in quality as a youthful, glossy skin? [...] Why does there seem to be something inhuman about regarding human beings like roses and refusing to make any distinction between the insides of their bodies and the outside? If only human beings could reverse their spirits and their bodies, could gracefully turn them inside out like rose petals and expose them to the spring breeze and to the sun…”
– Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Tags: entrails, guts, intestines, ordeal by roses, roses, seppuku, spirit
“Purity, a concept that recalled flowers, the piquant mint taste of a mouthwash, a child clinging to its mother’s gentle breast, was something that joined all these directly to the concept of blood, the concept of swords cutting down through the shoulder to spray the air with blood. And to the concept of seppuku. The moment that a samurai “fell like the cherry blossoms, his blood-smeared corpse became at once like fragrant cherry blossoms. The concept of purity, then, could alter to the contrary with arbitrary swiftness. And so purity was the stuff of poetry.”
- Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses
Tags: cherry blossom, kendo, league of the devine wind, purity, seppuku
From Budo: The Art of Killing
