Synopsis: When a penniless warrior Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) arrives at the doorstep of the noble Ii house, asking for the use of the house’s courtyard to commit seppuku (honorable suicide), the house’s ranking officer Kageyu (Koji Yakusho) is uncertain how to respond. This is not the first time such a request has been made in the last year, and rumors abound of ronin (masterless samurai) coming to high ranking noble houses making false requests hoping to be turned away with a few coins instead of actually being asked to go through with it. It’s a dishonorable act, a form of gambling and begging at the same time, and it is rude as hell. However, Hanshiro has not come to this house coincidentally. He knew the man who came here with the same request months before. In order to dissuade Hanshiro, the head of the house shares a story about the previous incident, trying to figure this new fellow out. The ronin who came to the house months before tried such a bluff and was ultimately convinced to carry through with the deed nevertheless. The story is a harrowing one, and it turns on matters of principle and honor. As it turns out, Hanshiro knew this ronin and has his own story, which casts the events in a completely different light. There is more than a matter of honor on the line here. There is a matter calling out for revenge. The stories that are being told will point out falsehoods in one another, oversights and untruths. By the end, the stage is set for a large sword fight, and while director Takashi Miike is renowned for his ability to deliver bloody violence and terror, HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI (2011) shows off the director’s talent for establishing pathos and subtle power. When the violence occurs, though the bloodiness is restrained, it still has the power to move us.
DANIEL’S TAKE
After seeing his two other period piece films, Trista and I decided to check out HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI to finish off Takashi Miike’s trio of period pieces. We came to it expecting something more along the lines of 13 ASSASSINS (2010) or BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL (2017), and were rather surprised by what we got. HARA-KIRI is a well-wrought, moody and stylized piece of samurai cinema, but it is surprisingly heartfelt. This is not to suggest it is a gentle movie. In fact, the film is unflinching in its capacity to show us the face of human suffering and merciless in its ability to pull heartstrings.
At the core of this tale of suicide, murder, honor, and revenge is a family. Not the noble Ii household, the family is Hanshiro’s. The man himself is a widowed ronin and father who takes care of both his own daughter, Miho (Hikari Mitsushima), as well as his dead friend’s son Motome (Eita). After a bad decision to rebuild fortress walls despite no authorization to do so from the emperor forces the Shogun to disband Hanshiro’s unit and leaves him penniless, the warrior retires to a small town to raise the children as well as he can and to make/sell umbrellas. Needless to say he is a better warrior than a businessman, but he tries. His ward and daughter both grow up together. Of course, being so close, the two young people develop a friendship that blossoms into love. Their marriage and subsequent pregnancy underlies the mystery in the film.
And there is a mystery, all right. Who was the samurai who came to the Ii house before? Well, he is known to Hanshiro’s family, and is the reason for Hashiro’s arrival at this house’s doorstep in the cold winter. What’s more, the fate that ronin suffered at the hands of some of the house’s own people relates as well. The samurai responsible for coercing the ronin to following through with the act and causing him needless suffering have not yet checked in after having gone out the night before. Those samurai seemed to have disappeared. Hanshiro lets slip he knows more than he should by requesting them by name to be his seppuku aids.
To the unversed, seppuku (or hara-kiri) is the traditional form of suicide as atonement for dishonor, a ceremonial process by which a man disembowels himself and then waits for his trusted second to take off his head. As one might imagine, slicing open the guts is not a quick death. It is a slow one, quite painful. The removal of the head (supposedly while leaving a thin strip of flesh connecting the severed throats) is a merciful end to an unavoidable and yet long-coming demise.
The art of ritual suicide is a messy one, of course. Hara-Kiri is not intended to be neat or clean. It is intended to be painful, allowing the performer to scourge away dishonor and weakness through an act of brutality. The suicides performed in this film do no shy away from the painful side of the act, and in fact the suicide of the ronin who arrived months prior to Hanshiro’s visit is made even more agonizing by the fact that it is performed through the use of a blunted wooden blade instead of a proper katana or wakizashi (the traditional paired swords used by samurai in the period). There is the shameful discovery that he sold his swords and keeps wooden versions on his person to maintain the illusion of still being an adherent of the art of war known as bushido.
The requirement that the ronin use the wooden sword is actually due to the Ii house’s desire to prevent other warriors from coming to their doorstep in search of some quick coin for a faked suicide request. If you want to scare off thieves, then make a known thief pay in a terrible and public way. In this case, the man requesting seppuku those months prior to Hanshiro’s arrival was “encouraged” to move forward with his request (one might say coerced) using the weapons he arrived with. When it was revealed that he did not have steel swords, he was “encouraged” to perform the act with what he did have (one might say bullied). When he pleaded for one day to make his final goodbyes, promising to return, those requests were denied as attempts to avoid the honor bestowed. He then made a final (and shameful) request for a pittance of money to be given to a woman and child, which was agreed upon, and so carried through with the act. The end result is a scene that is at once powerful and repulsive.
This particular deed is a gruesome enough spectacle without embellishment. The character’s pain is palpable, and although we wish it might end quickly, the camera lingers. The scene draws on with its own deliberate pacing. Such a death is not a slow one, and the scene echoes this. The gathered Ii samurai have known only times of peace, so this is their first experience with the ugliness of death and their faces show it. Even Kageyu, who is old enough to have known violence, is repulsed and yet he remains inscrutable in an attempt to honor the act.
Plenty of strength is needed to drive the wooden sword’s tip into the gut and too much causes it to splinter. With a cruel Ii family samurai waiting alongside the performance of this deed, goading the poor bastard to twist the broken weapon and do the work proper before he will finish the fellow, there is a heart-rending level of cruelty on display that amplifies the pain of one man’s unwished for self-murder.
With Hanshiro, the Ii house faces another possible bluff, and Kageyu shares the story as well as he particular vision of honor and responsibility. However, there is more to the story, a human side that explains the ronin’s seemingly shameful act. The woman and child who received the money are Kageyu’s daughter and grandchild who were sick and in desperate need of money for a doctor. As the film nears its final, glorious clash, the audience is given the uncomfortable position of seeing two perspectives that are both right, one traditional and one more contemporary. The film questions the importance of matters of honor and how easily they can blind an otherwise good man to another’s suffering.
Takashi Miike knows not only how to film violence in general, he knows how to tell stories through violent scenes. It’s a skill he has been honing throughout his career, and HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI certainly shows how well developed this skill is. There are few actual deaths in the film, but those on display are not the results of a numbing hack and slash fest. Those lives and their ends have impact. In fact, the film manages to make as much use out of a sliced lock of hair or a still shot of ceremonial armor on display in a blood red room as it does with bloody blade work, which is an impressive feat.
The film is a remake of one of the classics of world cinema, which I am sorry to say I have not seen. I look forward to eventually correcting this oversight. Not right now, however. Miike’s film is too raw a wound at the moment. I will need time to recover before venturing into a similar world. Though I cannot say how the newer film fares when compared to the original, I can say that Miike’s camera work and directing are standouts in a career peppered with numerous highlights, which include the aforementioned 13 ASSASSINS and BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL, as well as the child-friendly GREAT YOKAI WAR (2005), the blazingly offbeat HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001), horrifying and brilliant AUDITION (1999), the gut-wrenching MASTERS OF HORROR episode IMPRINT (2006), gonzo flicks like ZEBRAMAN (2004), as well as grisly yakuza flicks like DOA (1999) or FUDOH: THE NEXT GENERATION (1996) and dozens of other. The man has an incredible body of work, and the high marks are impressive. For me, HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI easily ranks among his highest efforts.
Viewers in the mood for something fast and nasty should probably look elsewhere. However, when the mood strikes for a heartbreaking and touching piece of cinema that still manages to ask difficult questions and show human suffering (with no interest in Spielberg-style sentimentality), then grab that copy of HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI. It may not be wall to wall blood, but it’s certainly engrossing.
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Takashi Miike’s HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI is currently available in DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming copies. Well worth a watch.
Next week we will take a look at something altogether different. I am not sure yet what we will review on Movie Monday. Drop by to find out!
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This article copyright © 2018 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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