A Western equivalent to harakiri/Sepuku?

How would the world look if Europeans had an equivalent to Japan's Harakiri/Sepuku way of escaping dishonour?

Harakiri/Sepuku is something along the lines of Ritual suicide, for those who did not know (Or care...)
 
Well, there's always the old trope of British officers in India who, if one of their number dishonoured himself beyond redemption would go into his room after dinner and leave a revolver with one loaded chamber on his dressing table.
 
Well, there's always the old trope of British officers in India who, if one of their number dishonoured himself beyond redemption would go into his room after dinner and leave a revolver with one loaded chamber on his dressing table.
That would probably be the closest example so far.
 
Well, there's always the old trope of British officers in India who, if one of their number dishonoured himself beyond redemption would go into his room after dinner and leave a revolver with one loaded chamber on his dressing table.

I believe and I am not sure that this a fairly common western military custom. If you fuck up big than the person who caught you gives you a gun with a bullet. I think several Wehrmachy officers did this, although I can't name names. I think the British had this custom as well, not just in India though.
 
I read somewhere that the pre-Christian Lithuanians had a custom like this, and were fiercely loyal to their king. Maybe during the frequent Crusades against them, one of the German orders tries to implement a policy like this after seeing how disciplined the Lithuanian armies could be? From there it could spread to the rest of Europe.
 
Well, there's always the old trope of British officers in India who, if one of their number dishonoured himself beyond redemption would go into his room after dinner and leave a revolver with one loaded chamber on his dressing table.

Tsarist Russian officers too, or so the romatic image goes.
 
The problem with western sepuku is christianity, which sees suicide as a major sin. On the other side, as stated above, there were nevertheless traditions of "honorable suicide". In fact, it seems to me that this is a very intuitive concept for humanity.
 
The problem with western sepuku is christianity, which sees suicide as a major sin. On the other side, as stated above, there were nevertheless traditions of "honorable suicide". In fact, it seems to me that this is a very intuitive concept for humanity.


Considering what (except in a few unusually civilised periods of history) could happen to those who were taken alive, it was apt to be an eminently sensible option.

Look up what Saul did on Mount Gilboa, then look up Samson to see why he (probably) did it.
 
Considering what (except in a few unusually civilised periods of history) could happen to those who were taken alive, it was apt to be an eminently sensible option.

Look up what Saul did on Mount Gilboa, then look up Samson to see why he (probably) did it.

But I wouldn't call it a "honorable suicide" to avoid torture. In the cases you cite suicide has nothing to do with morale, it's about a quick death. An english colonial officer in India didn't fear torture.

Nevertheless, you've got a point that for those poeple living without "honour" - whatever that means - would probably be very close to torture.
 
I believe and I am not sure that this a fairly common western military custom. If you fuck up big than the person who caught you gives you a gun with a bullet. I think several Wehrmachy officers did this, although I can't name names. I think the British had this custom as well, not just in India though.

Yeah- I just used the example I'd seen most often referenced.

I also remember reading a story in James Michener's The Covenant. A Scottish cavalry officer was ordered to lead his troopers against an entrenched Boer position- he knew that it wouldn't do any good and it was just an order given for the sake of the senior officers being seen to do something and he refused, saying that he wouldn't get his men killed for nothing. His superior officer snarled something along the lines of "Damn you, sir, you will attack that position". He decided to take his commander's order at face value, saddled up and advanced on the Boer lines alone. The Boers, wondering what the hell this apparent madman was doing, knew that he posed no threat and none of them really had the stomach to shoot as he drew closer and increased pace from the canter to the gallop. One of the Boers who knew something about the British Army figured out what must have happened and knew that this officer probably faced shame and court martial if he returned alive decided to put him out of his misery and shot him. Stuff like this counts as seppuku by proxy, I suppose.

Now that's just a fictional source but Michener exhaustively researched his work and would mention any complete fabrications in notes at the beginning of his books so incidents loosely like this may actually have happened.
 
The problem with western sepuku is christianity, which sees suicide as a major sin. On the other side, as stated above, there were nevertheless traditions of "honorable suicide". In fact, it seems to me that this is a very intuitive concept for humanity.

It seems to me that in Western military tradition this is rationalised by making it a matter not simply of personal honour but of tribal honour, as it were. The loaded revolver scenario would come into play when it was the honour of the regiment that was seen as being at stake. If it were a matter of personal honour I doubt anyone would essentially force the choice of suicide upon the individual. Rationalising it in Judeo-Christiany philosophy I suppose one could see it as seeking redemption for having sinned against one's fellow men. Implicit judgment has been passed and the decision of death in payment for dishonour has been made collectively, not individually, and the individual is conditioned to see himself as merely carrying out a sentence. The sin of suicide could be seen as being projected onto the group and the individual is actually paying a just price, not actually committing suicide per se- he is merely the mechanism that pulls the trigger, the decision is not with him but with conditioning and the tribe of the regiment.

That's my (probably half assed) take on it anyway.
 
The Christian prhobition makes anything like the Japanese tradition unlikely, but there was a Stoic tradition of honourable suicide and it was revived in early modern Europe. That's where things like 'here's a gun, you know what to do' or 'goodbye,mother, do not look for me' come from. it is different from suicide in the face of torture or rape - indeed, the times when this was a likely fate frowned on taking that escape route.

idea of an 'honourable way out' could well find even greater acceptance iof it wasn't so badly tarred by the death cult of modern nbationalism and fascism. Ultimately, the suicide of a dishonoured person is an individualist act, but it is understood mostly as a sacrifice 'for the greater good' perverted to the point of requiring it of the innocent. Take that out of the equation - somehow, I don't know how - and we could still see it as a commonplace idea rather than a hopelessly conservative gesture limited largely to petit-bourgeois Modernisierungsverlierer.
 
That is a mouthful! But what does it mean?

Basically, the losers of modernisation processes. People who used to have safe jobs, decent incomes, and a stable environment, kind of miss those things and don't quite understand why they're supposed to be happy about the march of time.
 
It seems to me that in Western military tradition this is rationalised by making it a matter not simply of personal honour but of tribal honour, as it were. The loaded revolver scenario would come into play when it was the honour of the regiment that was seen as being at stake. If it were a matter of personal honour I doubt anyone would essentially force the choice of suicide upon the individual. Rationalising it in Judeo-Christiany philosophy I suppose one could see it as seeking redemption for having sinned against one's fellow men. Implicit judgment has been passed and the decision of death in payment for dishonour has been made collectively, not individually, and the individual is conditioned to see himself as merely carrying out a sentence. The sin of suicide could be seen as being projected onto the group and the individual is actually paying a just price, not actually committing suicide per se- he is merely the mechanism that pulls the trigger, the decision is not with him but with conditioning and the tribe of the regiment.

That's my (probably half assed) take on it anyway.
That's a good take, but not complete. The tribal honour of one's class or country was at stake here, too, sometimes. Or family honour. Sometimes, 'doing the right thing' in this way removed (well, lessened) the stigma of the man's dishonour that his family had to deal with later.

But, yes, I do believe there was very often some sort of collective honour involved.
 
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