302 Harakiri

[Martha]

Harakiri



Following the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi’s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for a new position, try to force his hand and get him to eviscerate himself—but they have underestimated his beliefs and his personal brand of honor. Winner of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize, Harakiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi is a fierce evocation of individual agency in the face of a corrupt and hypocritical system.

Disc Features

- High-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Video introduction by Japanese-film historian Donald Richie
- Excerpt from a rare Directors Guild of Japan video interview with director Masaki Kobayashi, moderated by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda
- Video interviews with star Tatsuya Nakadai and screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Joan Mellen and a reprint of Mellen’s 1972 interview with Kobayashi

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[Jem]

Re: Harakiri

Furthermore, as with all art, by veiling these films as period dramas and simple sword fight movies, it was possible to disguise their political criticism and lampooning of the government. Often times, the films were cynical indictments of the Japanese feudal system (emperor and all) and of the over reliance on honor and the group over the individual. Specifically, films like Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri (1967) are critical of the over-value placed on bushido and the samurai's loyalty to the clan being more significant than life itself. The critique reads that all lives and their deaths that occur in an impersonal and pointless social order become, inexorably, impersonal and pointless as well. The reward for following the rules or rebelling against them is ultimately the same: identical destruction.

[Jun-Dai]

More on the film: IMDb - strictly film school - Donald Keene

[The Invunche]

About time.

[Cinephrenic]

I'm glad they came to this. Sword of Doom and now Harakiri.

[Panda]

Fine, fine film. Sags a bit in the middle, but its concluding passages more than make up for it.

Does this mean there's a chance we'll get "The Human Condition" trilogy?

Panda

[tavernier]

Oh, God....The Human Condition from Criterion? Pant, pant, pant....

[Lino]

Hopefully, Samurai Rebellion is on the way too.

Glad this is getting a CC spine. Now I can ditch my horrid Panorama disc.

[daniel p]

Hopefully, Samurai Rebellion is on the way too.

Glad this is getting a CC spine. Now I can ditch my horrid Panorama disc.

Yeah, was thinking maybe Samurai Rebellion could have #304 - would be nice to have them close together...

[Jun-Dai]

How the hell did they go from the correct spelling to the current misspelling of the title?

[tartarlamb]

Sounds like a pretty disappointing package for $39.95. A commentary, at least, would have been nice. I was going to blind buy this, being a huge fan of Kwaidan and Samurai Rebellion, but I think I'll let have to let this one pass.

[What A Disgrace]

Sounds like a pretty disappointing package for $39.95.

I'm pretty sure its a typo, unless the "More!" is enough to constitute another disc.

[Jun-Dai]

I was going to blind buy this, being a huge fan of Kwaidan and Samurai Rebellion, but I think I'll let have to let this one pass.

You could always rent it, couldn't you?

[rlendog]

How the hell did they go from the correct spelling to the current misspelling of the title?

I thought the title was a transliteration of the Japanese title into English letters. If so, I don't think the title can be misspelled, since it is not intended to spell an English word in the first place.

[The Invunche]

I thought the title was a transliteration of the Japanese title into English letters. If so, I don't think the title can be misspelled, since it is not intended to spell an English word in the first place.

Except that Harakiri has become the accepted/official spelling of the title as well as the action itself. Anyway, isn't the Japanese title Seppuku?

[der_Artur]

Anyway, isn't the Japanese title Seppuku?

Yes it is. And it is the more formal word for this act.

[kortik]

Oh my God. this is awesome I am a big big big fan of this film.
Cannot belive that this is happening.

Check out my comparison on DVD Beaver

I was so into this film that I bought the JP R2 DVD with the superb transfer but compare this to HK Panorama its and judge yourself.

I am defently getting this. Hope we get some extras etc. and a good quality transfer the same or maybe better that the JP DVD that I have.

PS nobody (not everyone) in US and other western countries know what Seppuku mean. But Harakiri is a common and recognizable word imho.

Everyone should check this film out once you see it it will blow your mind. You'll love it.

[Caligula]

Anyway, isn't the Japanese title Seppuku?

Yes it is. And it is the more formal word for this act.

Help me out here: Aren't seppuku and harakiri two different things? I was always under the impression that seppuku was the female act of ritual suicide (a dagger is grasped by both hands and used to vertically slash the throat, whilst harakiri is the male version (usually performed with an assistant) where a dagger of knife is used to diagonally slash the abdomen whereafter the assistant decapitates the suicide. Or am I wrong about this? And if I am right, isn't the title a faulty translation?

[kortik]

its the same thing: Seppuku=Harakiri. Seppuku is a formal term.

[The Invunche]

Bonzai != banzai.

Just thought I'd tell you.

[Jun-Dai]

Harakiri and seppuku both refer to cutting open the stomach. They are in fact the same two characters, but in reverse order:　腹切 (harakiri) and 切腹(seppuku). The first character in harakiri (i.e., the second character in seppuku) is the character for stomach, and the second character (the first, in seppuku) is cutting. Harakiri uses what is called kunyomi, the Japanese-origin pronunciation of characters, and seppuku uses what is called onyomi, the Chinese-derived pronunciation of characters. There are a number of words like this in Japanese (synonyms where one word uses the reverse order of characters and the opposite type of pronunciation), and in general the kunyomi reading is less formal, and the onyomi version is more common in writing.

The other kind of seppuku (persuasion) uses different characters altogether. One of the reasons Chinese-derived pronunciations are less common in spoken Japanese is that there are a tremendous number of homonyms like this.

[dvdane]

If you read the title it says 切腹(Seppuku) and not Hara Kiri, which is the US title, as the American distributors changed the title, as they feared the American audience wouldn't know what Seppuku was.

This has towards the analysis of the film lead to many misreadings, as there are significant differences between the act of seppuku and the act of hara kiri.

There are strict rules for seppuku and numerous forms, some being punishment, others being protests. Contra to this, while they all are hara kiri, the act of hara kiri has no significance, and is an informal way of talking about it.

[kortik]

sweet explanations. Well lets talk about film now that we know what the title means.

[Godot]

Harakiri and seppuku both refer to cutting open the stomach. They are in fact the same two characters, but in reverse order:　腹切 (harakiri) and 切腹(seppuku).

Yet another example of why you are "Member of the Year!!" Thanks for that thoroughly interesting aside. You are the freaking man.

How far back do most Japanese characters date? Are new ones still being created, or are new words written (sounded?) out with syllables?

[Jun-Dai]

I don't really know the timeframe, but I believe that Japanese characters came from China in a series of waves. I understand that it's not generally known in Japan, but that there are sub-categories of the Chinese readings of characters based on the dynasty. The most common, I think, is kan-on, or readings from the Han dynasty.

Prior to a certain point several hundred years ago, the written form of Japanese was Chinese. As an ideographic language, it is possible to have different languages with essentially the same writing system (hence Cantonese and Mandarin, which are probably further apart in many ways that Spanish and Italian), and Japanese was at one time one of these. Like the whole French/German roots of English thing, Japanese is a mix of Chinese and an older form of Japanese, where the fancy, bookish, scholarly words are of Chinese origin, and the plain, quotidian, spoken words are of Japanese origin. Thus, people are much less likely to say seppuku (unless they are emphasizing the ritual aspects of it), and they are somewhat less likely to write harakiri.

New words are constantly being created in Japanese, but they are mostly borrowed words, written in a special syllabary for borrowed words and onomatopoeia, and majority of these are borrowed from English. The number of characters used in Japanese is decreasing, and the number of English-derived words is always increasing. I certainly haven't heard of any new characters coming into the Japanese language in the last century.