Word: kiri
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...logic of the illogical has never penetrated the American mind. Judging by the less subtle standards of Western civilization, no act seemed more certainly doomed to a fruitless failure than that of the anonymous Japanese who several months ago committed hara-kiri near the American Embassy in protest against the exclusion law. In this country a man who committed suicide, however elaborately, in rebuke to the foreign policy of Japan would rightly be regarded as a fool; one active worker would be of more value to the cause than a thousand mute inhabitants of the grave. Yet in Japan...
...memory of his deed will be a stimulus to haired of the United States nor that nationalists and militarists will make the most of the tradition to kindle the spirit of war. Americans may never be able to comprehend the tangled heritage of poetry and religion that gives hara-kiri such a control over the Eastern imagination, but at least they may see the results of such control. A hint may even filter through to the effect that what to one nation may seem nothing but a diplomatic incident to another may become an issue of national importance...
Four men committed hara-kiri in emulation of the unknown Japanese who slew himself two weeks ago before the Old U. S. Embassy (TIME, June...
Outside the old site of the American Embassy in Tokyo, an unidentified male, about the age of 40, committed hara-kiri (suicide by disemboweling). With a small dagger he slit his abdomen crosswise and then upward "in the classical way" and slashed his neck. Two letters were found by his corpse, one to "The People of the Japanese Empire," which was not published, but was understood to call upon the nation to rise and avenge the insult of the U. S. Immigration Act; one to "The American Ambassador and the American People...