During the Tokugawa Shogunate, many samurai clans were abolished, and clan lords were often forced to commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide). Many of the lords forbade their followers to follow suit. Because of this, countless swordsmen became masterless, ending up impoverished. One day a middle-aged samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai of Sword of Doom) asks to commit hara-kiri at the local ruler’s castle. Flashbacks ensue explaining the tragedy of his son-in-law (Akira Ishihama), also a masterless samurai, who had been so desperate to obtain money for a doctor for his terminally ill wife and child, he had bluffed his way into the same castle to commit hara-kiri, hoping instead the lord would offer him employment. When the high-ranking samurai there (Tetsuro Tanba, Yoshiro Aoki and Ichiro Nakatani) had become enraged at what they believed was a growing trend to obtain sympathy, they had instructed the lord’s advisor (Rentaro Mikuni) to make Ishihama follow through with his request. Nakadai gradually reveals his true identity to the ever more flustered Mikuni, humiliating the three men who forced the issue, and finally engaging in an extended one man killing spree of the castle’s swordsmen. WW2 had radicalized director Masaki Kobayashi’s (Kwaidan) opposition of totalitarian regimes and the hypocrisy behind them – Hara-Kiri and Samurai Rebellion remain his most potent indictments. Hara-Kiri won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1963. Takashi Miike did a remake in 2011.
Chris D discusses Harakiri on the New Beverly blog.
Read the excellent Senses of Cinema profile on director Masaki Kobayashi.
