Harakiri

Harakiri is part of "my canon," a totally arbitrary and subjective list of my 100 favorite movies. For reviews of other movies on this list, look for the Top 100 category on the right sidebar. 

Edo, 1630: in the city that will become Tokyo, only three decades into the Tokugawa shogunate’s 250-year reign of Japan, a ronin appears at the House of Iyi. Disheveled, dour, compelled by a grim resolve, the ronin, Tsugumo Hanshiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), requests the use of the clan’s forecourt to commit harakiri, or ritual suicide by disembowelment. Though harakiri (or seppuku, to use its formal Japanese name) was perceived as an honorable action by samurai who had lost their masters and were forced to roam Japan during peacetime, there seems to be an ulterior motive in Hanshiro’s request; he speaks with the stoic dignity that defines the bushido code of honor, but his piercing glare simmers with rage. So begins one of the finest samurai films ever made: Harakiri (1962), a haunting, bitter allegory by Masaki Kobayashi that reflects Japan’s postwar “economic miracle” as much as it does the movie’s 17th-century feudal setting.

Hanshiro is invited into the Iyi clan’s lush antechamber, where the Iyi counselor, Saito (Rentaro Mikuni), politely receives his grim request. But Saito tries to dissuade Hanshiro from carrying out his plan by relating a similar story: another ronin from the same defunct clan, Chijiwa Motome (Akira Ishihama), had recently approached the House of Iyi with the same request. Well aware that desperate ronin, shamed and penniless, had taken to requesting harakiri so clans might take pity on them and induct them into their ranks, the House of Iyi settles on a drastic measure: they force Chijiwa to go through with his suicide, despite the fact that he had already pawned his swords (truly a desperate sacrifice for a samurai, whose weapons symbolize his soul) and replaced them with cheap bamboo blades. The scene in which Chijiwa disembowels himself with his bamboo short-blade, struggling to even pierce his flesh, is unbearably intense. Finally, per bushido custom, an Iyi samurai completes Chijiwa’s harakiri by decapitating him, but not before the entire clan gazes emotionlessly at the man’s debased agony. Clearly, for these warriors, upholding the strictures of the samurai code is more important than compassion and empathy towards one’s fellow man.

Undeterred by Saito’s gruesome tale, Hanshiro vows that he has every intention of dying that very day. Ushered into the clan’s lavish courtyard, Hanshiro kneels before Saito (who is perched on a throne on an elevated platform) and requests, before he commits suicide, to relate his own tale to the House of Iyi. We learn that Hanshiro was in fact Chijiwa’s father-in-law; that Hanshiro had vowed to raise and protect him after Chijiwa’s own father committed harakiri following the dissolution of their clan; and that Hanshiro had successfully maneuvered for Chijiwa to marry his daughter, Miho (Shima Iwashita). Hanshiro spends a few years of domestic bliss with his daughter and son-in-law, along with their infant son, Kingo; they’re despondently poor, but happy in their tranquility. When both Kingo and Miho fall ill, however, Chijiwa desperately seeks a way to pay for the medicine they need—a destitution that leads him to seek out the House of Iyi’s charity, a ploy that backfires catastrophically.

Kobayashi tells this story by jumping between past and present, delaying each narrative and emotional revelation until it explodes with the precision of a time bomb. Tarantino wishes he could mold time so deftly: this might be one of the most effectively plotted films ever made, with the grisly harakiri scene early on followed by a good ninety minutes of mounting intensity—and, finally, a thrilling, unsettling climax. This twisty chronology leads to some enormously satisfying plot twists, especially when we learn that Hanshiro has already shamed three Iyi retainers by severing their topknots—the decorative tufts of hair that served as symbols of samurai chivalry—in thrilling sword duels. One of these battles, staged on a mountainside with the wind howling devilishly, is nearly unparalleled among samurai films in its intensity and stylistic precision.

Harakiri doesn’t skimp on the genre pleasures, then; easily as electrifying as Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) or Kihachi Okamoto’s Sword of Doom (1966), Harakiri is a marvel of flawless craftsmanship. Yet, like Kobayashi’s later Kwaidan (1964)—a chilling horror anthology that’s also a gorgeous deconstruction of Japanese history--Harakiri is infinitely more than the genre flick it resembles. Among the jidaigeki subgenre (a vast group of Japanese historical dramas often set during the Edo period and focusing on samurai warriors), Harakiri’s closest analogue is Rashomon (1950), whose labyrinthine structure and ambiguity similarly dismantle the ironclad mores and ideologies of the bushido code. Yet even Kurosawa’s film can’t match the blistering social commentary and emotional profundity of Harakiri.

In many jidaigeki, the Edo era is viewed nostalgically, as a pastoral, peaceful epoch distinguished by chivalry and honor, before the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century began modernizing the country. Harakiri, however (as well as Rashomon), finds corruption and barbarism even in this society: the House of Iyi is willing to force a man to impale himself with bamboo in order to teach him a lesson about honoring the samurai code, and their attempts to cover up Hanshiro’s quest for vengeance (by forcing several of their own retainers to commit harakiri) speaks to an authoritarian power mostly concerned with preserving their own dominion. Kobayashi’s film is a timeless indictment of how humanity utilizes societal mores and political dogmas in order to justify their own power-hungry bloodlust.       ​

But the film also focuses its indignation onto the mid-20th century: to a greater extent than Rashomon, Harakiri subtly refracts its social commentary to comment on the time of its release. In Kobayashi’s view, it was precisely the samurai code’s obsession with honor and sacrifice, persisting several centuries later, that impelled the country to participate in World War II, which Kobayashi has described as “the culmination of human evil.” Blind allegiance to a powerful emperor and a code of nationalism resulted in the senseless murders of kamikaze pilots and legions of soldiers by a merciless government. Though he was a pacifist, Kobayashi was drafted into the army in 1941 and fought in the Pacific War; his method of resistance was to refuse any promotion that was offered to him, as he detested the military officers whose calculated decisions led to the evisceration of human lives. Clearly, he views the House of Iyi—an autocratic power that ruthlessly murders and corrupts—with the same indignation.

Following the war and several years of American occupation, Japan was thrust violently into the modern era, undergoing a shockwave of economic and social reforms designed to make Japan a major player in the modern global economy. Yet the “economic miracle” that revitalized the country depended on a blind devotion from its population to capitalist enterprise, which Kobayashi parallels with the feudal economy of the Edo period. As giant zaibatsus—massive corporations which strongly influenced political and social decision-making in the mid-20th century—steered Japan into the modern era, Kobayashi saw in them something of the untouchable corruptibility of their shogunate ancestors. Just as powerful clans in the feudalist era exerted their influence in Japan's burgeoning cities, so too did the titanic corporations of the 20th century use their indomitable wealth to steer social and political reform. Underlying the House of Iyi’s refusal to extend charity to Chijiwa and Hanshiro is the assumption that they must protect their wealth to exert their superiority—a self-preservationist mindset by which modern corporations also operate. 

Harakiri’s complex, fascinating themes regarding the venality of autocratic institutions is conveyed by a brief prologue and epilogue. The first shot of the film is not of any human character, but of the effigy that symbolizes the Iyi clan: a suit of armor with a shock of white hair, enshrined in its own protected room. The icon so revered by this clan is as hollow, Kobayashi suggests, as the bushido code they undyingly uphold. During the explosive climax of the film, as a sword-wielding Hanshiro takes on the entire shogunate, he eventually stumbles into this protected vault and uses the suit of armor as protection against the Iyi warriors' rifles, hurling their sacred icon at them in one last retaliatory gesture. The symbolism is overt and powerful: the clan is willing to fire upon their own godlike image, thus blaspheming the samurai code, if it leads to their own protection. At the end of the film, the repaired effigy is hoisted once again into its vaunted place; the tenets they live by have been tarnished and trampled, but the Iyi clan nonetheless makes a grandiose show of its allegiance to such venerated ideals. In a disturbing coda, Saito oversees the recording of this tumultuous event in the clan’s official history books, though he distorts what actually happened in order to preserve the House of Iyi’s untainted image—a haunting depiction of how those in power can transform and overwrite history, duping future generations into glorifying their supposed honor.       ​

If Japan embraced the tenets of global capitalism in the mid-twentieth century, the country’s artists—no longer silenced by the American occupiers who censored Japanese books and movies in the late 1940s—responded to such seismic change with ingenuity, ferocity, and revolutionary form. Of all the New Waves that exploded in the mid-20th century, with those in France and Italy typically the most acclaimed, the Japanese New Wave has always seemed to me the most undervalued: directors like Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Nagisa Oshima, Kon Ichikawa, and many others tore into Japanese history and politics with unleashed innovation. Though it’s a historical film, Harakiri shares a lot in common with the modern-set The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and The Face of Another (1966), by Kurosawa and Teshigahara respectively: they're all explosive allegories for how and why Japan transformed itself so profoundly in the postwar years. 

The unique plot structures, abrasive music, stylized cinematography, and dissonant editing techniques of the Japanese New Wave are all prevalent in Harakiri. Yoshio Miyajima’s high-contrast black-and-white cinematography is astonishing: the camera is static for long periods of time until it’s suddenly jostled into disorienting angles or aggressive close-ups. Meanwhile, Toru Takemitsu’s violent music, a combination of discordant jazz and traditional Japanese instrumentation, bursts to life on the soundtrack, manifesting the unbridled emotions festering within these stoic characters. Even the performances are dynamic and heightened, as Tatsuya Nakadai (who also starred in Kobayashi’s epic The Human Condition) utilizes a theatrical acting style comprised of dynamic contrasts, dance-like movements, and contortive facial expressions to achieve an emotional fury that transcends reality.

If the film sounds bleak and angry, it is: Kobayashi is sickened by the way these people treat each other, especially when they disguise their ruthlessness with overstated codes of civility. The cynicism underlying Harakiri stems from the perpetual oppression of humanity by those in power: regimes may be toppled, new rulers may ascend, but the patterns of hegemony and corruption remain the same. Even so, the harshness of Kobayashi’s themes is offset by the film’s engaging story and exhilarating style. Far from the depressing dirge it could have been, Harakiri is cathartic in a way that only truly explosive works of art can achieve.       ​

Originally published by Joyless Creatures (January 22, 2014).

Top 100

Harakiri

Grade: A

Runtime: 133m.
Country: Japan
Premiere: September 16, 1962 (Japan)
US Release: August 4, 1964

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Producer: Tatsuo Hosoya
Writers: Shinobu Hashimoto, Yasuhiko Takiguchi (novel)
Music: Toru Takemitsu
Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima
Editor: Hisashi Sagara
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita, Tetsurô Tanba, Masao Mishima, Ichirô Nakatani, Kei Satô, Yoshio Inaba, Hisashi Igawa, Toru Takeuchi, Yoshirô Aoki