Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011)
Directed by Takashi Miike
Starring: Ebizo Ichikawa, Eita, Hikari Mitsushima
Available: Amazon Prime Video, DVD, Blu-ray

During my recent visit to Bryan Mercadente’s house, we agreed to watch a film together. Or rather, Bryan selected the film, having skimmed—rather lazily—the synopsis. He assured me we were about to see a blood-soaked samurai horror, something to excite the nerves. Within the first five minutes of Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, I suspected otherwise. By the end, I was sure: Bryan had accidentally picked a film far more intelligent and more moving than he had realised.

It is only later, writing this review, that I discover this is a remake of a 1962 classic that is widely regarded as a masterpiece. I have not yet seen the original. If it surpasses Miike’s version, it must be an astonishing work, because Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai is, in its own right, close to a masterpiece.

Bryan insisted, of course, that he hated every minute and has refused to write a review. I do not believe him. I think he was just as deeply affected as I was and that he could not, within the structures of his usual style, find the words to do the film justice. He pretended to laugh when I cried at the end, but it was a hollow laugh. I am certain he felt the same wrenching sorrow that I did.

At its surface, the film tells a grim story. In 17th-century Japan, a young, impoverished samurai arrives at the gate of a great house. Claiming he has no way to regain his honour through ordinary means, he requests permission to commit hara-kiri—ritual suicide—before the lord’s assembled retainers. Such acts, historically, allowed a disgraced man to retrieve his lost face in death, preserving his family’s dignity.

The retainers suspect a trick: “suicide bluffs” had become a minor scourge—desperate samurai would threaten ritual suicide in order to extract charity. Intent on making an example, they call the youth’s bluff. When he confesses he has no real sword—only a bamboo replica—they force him to go through with the suicide anyway. The resulting scene is almost unwatchable: a drawn-out, harrowing ordeal as the young man tries to kill himself without a steel blade, breaking bones and tearing flesh in front of a crowd that prates about honour even as it demands cruelty.

If the film had ended here, it would already have been a powerful, if limited, tragedy. But it is the second layer—the revelation of who this young man is, why he has come, and what the retainers truly represent—that transforms the film into something close to the sublime, something that moved me to tears then, and that leaves me saddened even now. The story unpeels itself slowly, through flashbacks and subtle performances, revealing that the real dishonour lies not in poverty or desperation but in the smug inhumanity of those who parade their virtue while lacking all mercy.

By the end, the audience is left not merely saddened but accused: we are asked to consider the cost of systems built solely on honour without charity, of traditions that preach virtue but forget humanity.

As I watched the final scenes, I thought of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon The Duty of Charity to the Poor (1732). Edwards warned that a society must not merely value honour but must cultivate mercy. He writes:

‘Tis the most absolute and indispensable duty of a people of God to give bountifully and willingly for the supply of the wants of the needy.

The samurai code portrayed in this film, stripped of mercy, becomes not nobility but brutality. One can admire honourable conduct; indeed, one of the great sorrows of our own time is that Britain is ruled entirely by men and women without any sense of honour. Parliament is a sty, the civil service a brothel, the courts a joke. Bryan is correct: only some form of deep and cleansing revolution can save what remains of England.

Yet honour alone is not enough. An honour system without the tempering force of Christian charity produces monsters—monsters with impeccable manners and polished swords, but monsters all the same.

Edwards cautions:

Your money and your goods are not your own. They are only committed to you as stewards, to be used for him who committed them to you.

He reminds us that neglect of mercy is a crime no less grievous than theft or sacrilege:

It is not merely a commendable thing for a man to be kind and bountiful to the poor, but our bounden duty, as much a duty as it is to pray, or to attend public worship.

The failure of the samurai retainers in Hara-Kiri is precisely this: they mistake rigid adherence to form for true virtue. They forget that men are made in the image of God, and thus deserving of mercy:

We should love our neighbours as ourselves; for men are made in the image of God, and on this account are worthy of our love.

If there is a Christian subtext to Miike’s film—and I believe there is—it is that Christ died not for the righteous, but for the desperate and the broken. What would become of us, asks Edwards, if Christ had been as ready to excuse himself from dying for us, as men commonly are to excuse themselves from charity to their neighbour?

It is a hard question. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai does not answer it fully. No film could. But it forces the viewer to wrestle with it, and that alone marks it as a serious and noble work.

Visually, the film is beautiful. Nobuyasu Kita’s cinematography is rich but restrained: muted colours, lingering close-ups, and careful compositions that draw out the stillness and sorrow of the story without ever descending into sentimentality. The pacing is slow, even stately, but never tedious. Every moment builds on the last.

The acting is superb. Ebizo Ichikawa, as Hanshiro, gives one of the finest performances I have seen in recent cinema. His portrayal captures not only the samurai’s outward dignity but also his interior torment, his simmering grief, and finally his righteous fury. Eita, as the young Motome, is equally moving—he brings to life the full pathos of a proud but broken man, caught in a system that grants him no mercy. Hikari Mitsushima, as Miho, gives a performance of rare emotional delicacy, suggesting an entire life of love and pain in a few carefully weighted scenes.

I will certainly seek out the original 1962 film. If it surpasses Miike’s version, it must be truly extraordinary.