Word: harakiri
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...coast, and Hue on Annam's coast. The French fought with planes and tanks; the rebels answered with mines, boobytraps, snipers and ambushes. The rebels claimed that Germans in the French Foreign Legion were deserting; the French answered that Japs in the Vietnamese army were committing harakiri...
...military hospital, Tojo explained why he had tried to kill himself with a pistol instead of by traditional harakiri: he had had no aide (kaishaku) to stand by and strike off his head with a two-handed sword after he had slit his abdomen with a ceremonial dagger. In some recent Japanese pistol suicides a kaishaku with a pistol stood by to blow out the suicide's brains. Said Tojo: "I did not want to mess up my head...
Asked if he would commit harakiri, Yamashita grinned and shook his close-cropped head: "Hara-kiri? No, no harakiri." A U.S. soldier who had helped establish contact with Japan's ferocious "Tiger of Malaya" conferred on him a new nick name: "The Gopher of Luzon...
Listeners to NBC's key Manhattan station, WEAF, one day last week heard Newscaster Don Goddard say: "... a rumor came bounding into the newsroom. Emperor Hirohito is one of those in Japan who has committed harakiri...
There is a right and a wrong way to commit harakiri. In the case of General Anami and Vice Admiral Onishi, it is presumed that they donned the usual ceremonial robes, knelt on a dais, surrounded by friends and officials. When the jeweled hara-kiri dagger had been handed to them, they would have made many bows to the Emperor. Then they would have plunged the razor-like dagger into the left side below the waist, at the same time drawing it toward the right. They would thus have fulfilled the hara-kiri command: to die with honor, when...