Love and Honour 武士の一分

Today, my wife and I went to watch the movie "Love and Honour" (武士の一分) starring Kimura Takuya and Dan Rei. The story is about a samurai Mimura Shinnojo (played by Kimura Takuya) who lose his sight while carrying out his duty. The story was about how he went on to pick up the pieces of his life after losing his sight.

The similarity between kenjutsu and taijiquan can be found in my article on my taiji blog. Here I will talk about bushido. When Mimura was poisoned (he was a food taster for his samurai lord), one of the first reactions was not to save him, but to warn the lord that there is something wrong with the food. A food taster's duty is to protect his lord from poisoned food; his death would have been in vain if his lord had taken the poisoned food. If in dying he had discharged his duty to protect his lord, he would be honoured. And in fact he was, for his lord decided to continue to keep him in service even though he can no longer see.

One of the beliefs in bushido is that no matter what a man does, he can atone for his mistakes by ending his own life. If he cannot right the dishonour on his name, he can do it by killing himself. Which shows when Mimura was resolved to die should he be unable to kill the samurai who dishonoured his wife.

And when he won the duel, he did not deal the finishing blow (he managed to cut off his opponent's arm). This was out of respect for his opponent, who was also samurai. He left it up to his opponent to finish his own life, if he still had any honour left in him. And his opponent knew that Mimura has given both of them an honourable way out (if Mimura had just killed him, there would be investigations, and subsequently the dishonour done to Mimura's wife would be revealed), so he took it and ended his own life without having to disclose the reason for doing so.

Bushido on Wikipedia
Hagakure, a book about bushido