Harakiri

A film against the code

Masaki Kobayashi, director of The Human Condition trilogy, uses Harakiri to take apart the myth of bushidō. Shinobu Hashimoto, co-writer of Seven Samurai, adapts a novel by Yasuhiko Takiguchi. Told through flashbacks, the story presents ritual suicide as a front that protects a clan's reputation rather than an act of honour. Kobayashi said all his films resist entrenched power, this one first of all. Tatsuya Nakadai, around thirty, plays a man of about fifty, opposite Rentarō Mikuni as the unbending counsellor.

The sword, without flourish

The fights are few, which gives them weight. One of the harshest scenes in Japanese cinema shows a seppuku carried out with a bamboo blade, by a man who sold his real sword to feed his family. Hanshirō's duel with one of the samurai in a windswept field and the final fight in the courtyard rest on distance, waiting and the single cut, closer to kenjutsu than to the acrobatic swordplay of action films. According to TCM, Kobayashi halted shooting for three days to work out the final fight with Nakadai and insisted on real blades; when the actor worried, he told him, in short, to duck. Kendo or iaido practitioners will also notice the everyday details of samurai life: the two swords at the belt, the bow, kneeling in seiza.

Jury Prize at Cannes

The film opened in Japan on 16 September 1962 and was a big hit. In competition at Cannes in 1963, it shared the Special Jury Prize, with the Palme d'Or going to The Leopard. Donald Richie considered it Kobayashi's finest film and Roger Ebert added it to his Great Movies list. It holds 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The score is by Tōru Takemitsu.

Who it's for

For viewers who know chanbara through Seven Samurai or Rashomon and want a sword film that questions the samurai code instead of celebrating it.