Harakiri Y: Seppuku

“I have no death poem,” Kazuo said.

Kazuo closed his eyes. The garden was silent except for the distant clatter of a tram and the cry of a crow. He opened his eyes and picked up a brush. With swift, certain strokes, he wrote:

“I have asked Taro. He was my father’s student. He still knows the old cuts.” harakiri y seppuku

Taro laid the sword on a white cloth before Kazuo’s kneeling form. Kazuo was dressed in a formal kimono, his top loosened to expose his abdomen. On the small table beside him rested a tanto—short-bladed, unadorned, sharp as a needle’s whisper.

Us. The old man felt the word like a splinter. There was no us anymore. The samurai class had been dismantled, its bones ground into the dust of a rebuilding Japan. But Kazuo’s father had been the last sword-bearer to Lord Tokugawa’s grandson. And Kazuo had been raised on stories. “I have no death poem,” Kazuo said

“Kazuo,” the old man said. Then, softer: “Kazuo, son of Kenji, last of the house of the northern gate.”

“You will have a second?” the old man asked. He opened his eyes and picked up a brush

“A name means nothing without people to speak it,” the old man said.