Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

entrance, at the same time as the principal enters by the north, and take
their places on the mat that is placed crosswise.
Nowadays, when the hara-kiri is performed inside the palace, a temporary
place is made on purpose, either in the garden or in some unoccupied
spot; but if the criminal is to die on the day on which he is given
in charge, or on the next day, the ceremony, having to take place so
quickly, is performed in the reception-room. Still, even if there is a lapse
of time between the period of giving the prisoner in charge and the execution,
it is better that the ceremony should take place in a decent room
in the house than in a place made on purpose. If it is heard that, for fear
of dirtying his house, a man has made a place expressly, he will be
blamed for it. It surely can be no disgrace to the house of a soldier that he
was ordered to perform the last offices towards a Samurai who died by
hara-kiri. To slay his enemy against whom he has cause of hatred, and
then to kill himself, is the part of a noble Samurai; and it is sheer nonsense
to look upon the place where he has disembowelled himself as polluted.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century, seventeen of the retainers
of Asano Takumi no Kami performed hara-kiri in the garden of a
palace at Shirokané, in Yedo. When it was over, the people of the palace
called upon the priests of a sect named Shugenja to come and purify the
place; but when the lord of the palace heard this, he ordered the place to
be left as it was; for what need was there to purify a place where faithful
Samurai had died by their own hand? But in other palaces to which the
remainder of the retainers of Takumi no Kami were entrusted, it is said
that the places of execution were purified. But the people of that day
praised Kumamoto Ko (the Prince of Higo), to whom the palace at
Shirokané belonged. It is a currish thing to look upon death in battle or
by hara-kiri as a pollution: this is a thing to bear in mind. In modern
times the place of hara-kiri is eighteen feet square in all cases; in the
centre is a place to sit upon, and the condemned man is made to sit facing
the witnesses; at other times he is placed with his side to the witnesses:
this is according to the nature of the spot. In some cases the
seconds turn their backs to the witnesses. It is open to question, however,
whether this is not a breach of etiquette. The witnesses should be consulted
upon these arrangements. If the witnesses have no objection, the condemned
man should be placed directly opposite to them. The place
where the witnesses are seated should be removed more than twelve or
eighteen feet from the condemned man. The place from which the sentence
is read should also be close by. The writer has been furnished with
a plan of the hara-kiri as it is performed at present. Although the
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