The Japanese manner of suicide called _hara-kiri_ or _seppuku_, a custom of world-wide celebrity, is another thing which is well to be commented on here. If any foreigner should suppose that _seppuku_ has been very frequently committed in the same manner as we see it practised on the stage, he would be greatly misled in appreciating the true national character of the Japanese. On the contrary, _seppuku_ has not been a matter of everyday occurrence, having taken place far less frequently than one hears now-a-days about railway accidents. Moreover, when it was performed, it was carried out in decent ways, if we may use the word decent here, and not in the grotesque mode displayed on the Japanese stage, accompanied by sardonic laughter, with bowels exposed after cutting the belly crosswise. The reason why the Japanese warrior resorted to _seppuku_ in committing suicide was not to kill himself in a methodically cruel manner, but to die an honourable and manly death by his own hand. For such methods of committing suicide, as taking poison, drowning, strangling oneself, and the like, were considered very ignoble, and especially unworthy of warriors. Even to die by merely cutting one's throat was held to be rather effeminate. The fear of the protraction of the death agony was looked on as a token of cowardice, and therefore to be able to kill one's self in the most sober and circumstantial manner, and at the same time to do it with every consideration of others, was thought to be one of the requisite qualifications of a brave warrior in an emergency. In short, for a suicide to be honourable, it had to be proved that it was not the result of insanity. Thus we can see that not the spirit of cruelty but martial honour was the motive of committing _seppuku_, and it would be unfair to stigmatise the Japanese as a cruel people because of the practice. Still I am far from wishing to vindicate this custom in all its aspects. The fact that this method of killing one's self continued during the whole of the Tokugawa regime as a penalty, without loss of honour, for capital crimes of the _samurai_ show that the humane culture of the age left much to be wished for.