‘I was last night sent officially to witness the execution by harakiri (self-immolation through disembowelling) of Taki Zensaburo… As the harakiri is one of the customs of this country which has excited the greatest curiosity in Europe… I will tell you what occurred…’
In The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase, my anthology of dispatches from British diplomats abroad, this one, dating from 1868, is the oldest. The first eye-witness account of harakiri ever given by a European, it’s also the most grisly. I cannot match the horror or novelty, nor can I match its author, Bertie Mitford, in fine writing. But having just returned from my first visit to Japan, I thought to offer you a three-ha’penny postscript to Mitford’s fifty-guinea prose: on a practice infinitely less shocking, yet in its way as strangely ceremonious.
Travelling independently in Japan for ten days, mostly outside the cities, we fast became aware of the Japanese near-obsessive delight in washing, and their particular love for natural thermal baths.
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