Nevertheless, this qualifying statement should be made. A study of the
origin and development of the national method of self-destruction shows
that suicide by seppuku, or opening of the abdomen, was first a custom,
and then a privilege. It took, among men of honor, the place of the
public executions, the massacres in battle and siege, decimation of
rebels and similar means of killing at the hands of others, which so
often mar the historical records of western nations. Undoubtedly,
therefore, in the minds of most Japanese, there are many instances of
_hara-kiri_ which should not be classed as suicide, but technically as
execution of judicial sentence. And yet no sentence or process of death
known in western lands had such influence in glorifying the victim, as
had seppuku in Japan.
The Family Idea.
The Second Relation is that of father and son, thus preceding what we
should suppose to be the first of human relations--husband and wife--but
the arrangement entirely accords with the Oriental conception that the
family, the house, is more important than the individual. In Old Japan
the paramount idea in marriage, was not that of love or companionship,
or of mutual assistance with children, but was almost wholly that of
offspring, and of maintaining the family line.
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