Suicide is time-honoured choreography.
The ritual of seppuku consists of three cuts: one cut to the belly with a short-sword, left to right; a second cut to the belly, if the samurai wishes to demonstrate extraordinary bravery and control; and then the kaishaku, the beheading by a samurai’s second.
Each cut requires skill, precision, and absolute commitment. A female from a samurai family assumes a dignified kneeling position and with a short-blade she slits her throat. Through discipline she wishes upon death to become statuesque in repose.
Three years after writing The Way of the Samurai, his commentary on the eighteenth century treatise, Hagakure, Yukio Mishima staged a coup d’etat in Tokyo.
Mishima was no mere mortal. He is considered one of the most vital post-War writers, helping Japan navigate through a new reality of tradition and modernity, occupation and rebuilding. He penned novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He was a charismatic film actor and model and a pioneer in bodybuilding, emphasizing physical health and masculinity in an emasculated society. He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
On November 25, 1970, Mishima emerged onto the balcony of a Ministry of Defense building he had occupied along with four members of his private militia, called the Tatenokai. He speechified to soldiers below, who heckled him in reply. He returned inside intending to seppuku.
Mishima completed the first two cuts. His work was done. However, the trembling second botched the third stroke, the beheading, the first time. The second tried again, botching it a second time. A second-second stepped in to deliver a third-third. Such was the ending of a poet-warrior. It is known as Mishima Jiken, the Mishima Incident, translated alternatively as, the Mishima Situation.
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Once there was a scholar names Johann Robeck who was born in 1672 and who was known as Calmaria Suedi Philosophica or the Calm and Philosophical Swedish Squid. In the few years leading up to 1735 the Squid composed a treatise in defense of Morte Voluntaria and against prevailing condemnations such that in 1735 the Squid waded into the river Weser to drown. The Squid did drown as a case of doing so it is done. The first volume of the Calm (Ataraxia) Squid’s Treatise On Suicide was published posthumously, in 1736, under the very long title, Exercitatio philosophica de εὐλόγῳ ἔξαγωγῇ sive morte voluntaria philosophorum et bonorum virorum, etiam Judaeorum et Christianorum; or, Philosophical exercise on εὐλόγῳ ἔξαγωγῇ [holy and blessed departure] or the voluntary death of philosophers and good men, including Jews and Christians. Watch me vanish behind this cloud of ink, says the Squid.
Then, in 1753 the second part of the treatise was published, again posthumously, under the even longer and slightly sharper title, De Morte Voluntaria Exercitatio sive Examen Calumniarum Nugarum et Falliciarum Quibus Tanquam Argumentis Utuntur εὐλόγῳ ἔξαγωγῇ Consensus Generis Humani Salvtis et Gloriae Bonorum Vivorum Honestarumque Feminarum Hostes et Oppugnatores; or, basically, a treatise to refute slanders, liars, enemies, attackers, pimps, hookers, and drug addicts.
The prevailing sentiment against suicide for a long time was that human life is a gift from God and as a creature of the Divine we each are obliged to do whatever God wants with our own free will, including not killing ourselves. The stakes of belief were high since most were sure that suicides were condemned to an eternal hellfire accordingly.
Given the gift of life by way of the Holy Spirit (dono spiritus sancti), responds the Suede Squid, we are not God’s chattel consigned to keep living. In fact, saith the Squid, the gift of being, as being a gift, establishes no consideration and so no obligation to the divine on being or not being. This was playing the Reverse UNO Card in a game with God.