Word: kiri
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Thus, in the 18th year of the Era of Enlightened Peace, an ideological hara-kiri was committed on the anachronistic body of Shintoism. For Japan and all the Far East the consequences of Emperor Hirohito's proclamation might well be profound...
...after two Associated Press correspondents forced their way into his house for an interview, U.S. Army intelligence officers turned up to take Tojo away for questioning. The irate warmonger made faces at them througlf a window, retired to an inner room where he had already made hara-kiri preparations, ignominiously and hastily shot himself below the heart with a 32-calibre pistol. Given a 50-50 chance to live, he cried: "I want to die." His death would be only a beginning. In Manila Colonel Alva Carpenter was preparing a war-criminals list running into thousands of names. Prison-camp...
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...
...many Japanese the shame of surrender was even harder to take. "Large numbers" of people, reported Radio Tokyo, were committing hara-kiri before the Imperial Palace...
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...