LogFAQs > #979864448

ssjevot posted...

No it wasn't. Actually the movie Seppuku (called Harakiri in the West) is a pretty good movie about how much of a joke the entire thing was for the most part. There was basically a problem with poor samurai threatening to commit seppuku (but not actually intending to) in order to get more money from their lord. It also shows how little honor factored into the real world. It's just a movie, but in general if you move outside romanticised samurai fiction you see a lot of stuff like that. The entire trilogy of samurai movies by Yoji Yamada is also a nice realistic portrayal of samurai "honor".

I like that movie, even if a bit of it feels like emotional blackmail with just how fucking unlucky that family is. But you're saying honor mattered little, which isn't conflicting with my statement about how suicie was common. Hell, the plot of that movie only works because of how common seppuku wass. Honor and bushido are overblown concepts and rarely actually adhered to by what were increasingly useless nobles, but the extremely hierarchical and bureaucratic culture is what enforced such practices.