Harakiri

Harakiri is a 1962 Japanese film directed by Masaki Kobayashi, produced by Shochiku, with Tatsuya Nakadai as the ronin Hanshirō Tsugumo and Rentarō Mikuni as the senior retainer Kageyu Saitō. It is set in the early Edo period, when the abolition of many domains had left large numbers of samurai without stipends. Tsugumo arrives at the Iyi house and asks to commit seppuku in its courtyard. Saitō, taking him for another ronin angling for money, recounts what befell an earlier petitioner, Motome Chijiiwa, who was found to have no intention of dying and was compelled to disembowel himself with a bamboo blade. Tsugumo then explains his own connection to him. The film is composed in symmetrical framings from fixed positions within the courtyard, and reserves its only action sequence for the end. It received the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Mainland China

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Hong Kong

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Taiwan

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English

Harakiri

Original

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• Tatsuya Nakadaias Hanshiro Tsugumo
• Rentarō Mikunias Kageyu Saito