Very cool. Sorry to keep bringing it up, but there was a scene in Shogun where something happened and one of the leaders looked to a guy next to him and said "give me a poem about that". The guy thought a bit and then rattled off a Haiku. It made me think of you.
haha don't be sorry—it's nice to see you are enjoying it so much. Yeah, in old Japan that was a think. Or writing a poem before killing yourself. Did I say old Japan? Even today some people do it!
I was actually just thinking the other day about some of the suicide forests I have heard about and things like that. It made me wonder if the old seppuku thing is a big influence for that. As a westerner it seems horrific (I mean it is right), but since ritual suicide was so common there in the past, it might not be as shocking outside of the US. The forests thing I mean.
I wouldn't say seppuku was all that common, actually. Our modern image is warped by samurai movies these days. The only people who would have done seppuku were the samurai, but they only accounted for about 10% of the population. Regular people viewed the samurai with hatred and suspicion and would have considered seppuku as pretty crazy.
But anyway, yeah, these days our attitudes have been influenced by media and some types of suicide or reasons for it have taken on a more noble image. Some people who do it in Japan may have that in mind. But it's usually more of an escape of depressed people, same as in the West.