Seppuku
Harakiri
- Release Date
- September, 16th, 1962
- Running Time
- 135 min
- Genre
- Feature
- Color
- -
- Screening Format
- -
[ Directed by ]
[ Cast ]
[ Staff ]
- TAKIGUCHI Yasuhiko ── Screenplay
- HASHIMOTO Shinobu ── Screenplay
- MIYAJIMA Yoshio ── Cinematography
[ Production Company ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Distributor (Japan) ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Story ]
In the seventeenth century, Hanshiro Tsugumo, a masterless samurai, or "ronin", enters Lord Ii's Edo mansion and begs to be allowed the use of a place to perform the ritual of harakiri as he cannot go on living in such dire poverty and shame. The majordomo Kageyu relates the fate of another young "ronin" whose bluff had been called.
Hanshiro is really the young ronin's father-in-law in search of revenge and has brought with him the top-knots of three master swordsmen who forced death upon the youth, instead of killing them outright, which was the supreme disgrace for a swordsman.
Insisting upon the right to disembowel himself, Hanshiro demands the services of these swordsmen as his seconds, but they claim illness and remain in hiding.
Realizing the true situation, Kageyu orders his men to slay Hanshiro at all costs. But many are slain before Hanshiro finally performs harakiri as Kageyu's men shoot him down.
Kageyu believes that Lord Ii's honor has been maintained by forcing his three master swordsmen to die by their own hands, and so uphold the Code of the Samurai.
【Quoted from Unijapan Film Quarterly 1962 5.4】
[ Contact (International) ]
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