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Harakiri

Original title: Seppuku · Turkish title: Seppuku

“What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow.”

1962 · 2 h 13 min
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
DramaMystery

Cast

Tatsuya Nakadai Rentaro Mikuni Shima Iwashita Akira Ishihama

Credits

Written by: Yasuhiko Takiguchi

Plot

In seventeenth-century Japan, an old ronin, Hanshiro Tsugumo, asks a feudal lord's house for permission to commit ritual suicide in its courtyard. The officials, who have been troubled by impoverished samurai making such requests as a ruse to obtain money, tell him of a young man who recently did the same. Hanshiro's story reveals the true reason for his visit. Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 film is a bitter attack on the hypocrisy of the code of honour, with a fierce performance by Tatsuya Nakadai.

Sinekatalog’s take

A ronin arrives at a clan's gate asking to die with honour, and a slow, bitter story of hypocrisy unfolds. Kobayashi's tight framing and moral anger make it one of the sharpest samurai films ever.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 8.6 / 10 (94,841 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset; Rotten Tomatoes snapshot from October 2026. Scores change over time.

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