Harakiri

"What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow."

1962 2h 15m JA

🤯

8.5

MASTERPIECE

🔥

100%

CERTIFIED FRESH

💯

METACRITIC

⭐

8.6

IMDB

★8.5TMDB · 1,297🍅100%Rotten Tomatoes●85Metacritic★8.6IMDB · 90,669

ActionDramaHistory

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.

“What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow.”

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Where to watch · US

Criterion ChannelSubscription

Cast

Tatsuya Nakadai
Hanshiro Tsugumo
Akira Ishihama
Motome Chijiiwa
Shima Iwashita
Miho Tsugumo
Tetsuro Tamba
Hikokuro Omodaka
Masao Mishima
Tango Inaba
Ichirō Nakatani
Hayato Yazaki
Kei Satō
Masakazu
Yoshio Inaba
Jinai Chijiiwa

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Writers: Shinobu Hashimoto
Languages: Japanese
Countries: Japan

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

64 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi, shot by Yoshio Miyajima. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Tōru Takemitsu. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Hisashi Sagara shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Tatsuya Nakadai and Akira Ishihama and Shima Iwashita carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0056058 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Masaki Kobayashi directs. Yoshio Miyajima behind the camera. Tōru Takemitsu scores. Hisashi Sagara cuts. Produced in Japan. Dialogue in Japanese.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

164 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
2Directed by Masaki Kobayashi, shot by Yoshio Miyajima. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
3Original score by Tōru Takemitsu. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
4Editor Hisashi Sagara shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
5Tatsuya Nakadai and Akira Ishihama and Shima Iwashita carry the top of the cast.
6Marketing tagline: "What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow.".
7IMDB entry: tt0056058 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Classified under 21 themes, including "suicide", "japan", "samurai", "asia".
9Released under 12 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima
Original score: Tōru Takemitsu
Editing: Hisashi Sagara
Costume design: Mitsuzô Ueda
Makeup / hair: Yoshiko Kimura
Runtime: 135 min · 2h 15m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: JA
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: Harakiri (1962)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 85/100
IMDB rating: 8.6/10 · 90,669 votes
MPAA: Not Rated

Awards

9 wins & 3 nominations total

Also by

Masaki Kobayashi

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

badelf2012-08-19
★ 10/10
This is an amazing Japanese classic written and filmed without flaw. The action unfolds in story-telling within story-telling. This is a film about truth. Whose truth? That is the unfoldment. In a perverted way, this amazing piece of work has become predictive of Western corporate banking. Perhaps you'll see what I mean at the end of the film.
Filipe Manuel Neto2023-05-22
★ 7/10
It's a film that might scare modern audiences a bit, but it deserves the opportunity we want to give it. In addition to having a very strong film industry, Japan is a country with a very rich past that we in the West tend to devalue. A somewhat ethnocentric attitude, more typical of small minds. For a long time, the Japanese were a people divided by several feudal princes who fought among themselves, disputing power and regional influence. It was in this context, moreover, that the first contact between the Japanese and the Portuguese took place, the first Westerners to disembark, demonstrably (Marco Polo speaks of the Japanese, but he probably never went there), on the islands of Japan, where they took the first firearm, the Christian faith and a strong cultural influence: even today, in the Japanese language, there are hundreds of words directly imported from Portuguese. The film that brought me here tells us about one of the most fascinating traditional figures of Japan: the samurai, a warrior similar, in essence, to the European knight. They were educated people who were willing to live off the war, as paid mercenaries. In a land where each feudal lord wages war for himself, with his own troops and against his neighbors, it was not difficult to live off war. It would be difficult to live in peace! The samurai had a code of conduct, the Bushido, which dictated rules according to which they guided their lives, seeking to live and die with honor. Honor was more important than life and therefore, in certain situations, it was expected that the samurai knew how to die and was willing to do so, even if by his own hands, in a suicide ritual. The film begins when a samurai, left unemployed by a long peace, turns to an old man and asks to be allowed to die. In response, he hears a story that occurred some time before, and in which a samurai in the same situation made an identical request in the expectation of receiving money, and ended up having to commit suicide, and with a wooden weapon. The film then reveals an important fact: this first samurai is the father-in-law of the man who killed himself, and who wanted money to feed his sick wife and son. And in fact that warrior is not there in order to simply die, but in order to avenge the son-in-law wronged by human hypocrisy. The film is quite dense, and the fact that it is so different from Western cinema and, even more so, in black and white, can quite scare the current public. However, it is worth resisting this impulse to reject it and giving the film a chance. It's very well done, it has a pretty good story, which is nothing behind big Hollywood hits. The script takes advantage of the situation to expose the brutality of the rigor imposed on the samurai by means of a moral code so absurdly demanding that it ended up being inhumane. Contrary to what happens in some films, even western ones, this film does a good historical contextualization of the story it tells us, not being too difficult to understand what is at stake. I'm not the best person to talk about the director or the actors, I don't know them, but I can say that we have the participation of Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoshiro Aoki and Akira Ishihama. On a technical level, I think it's impossible to avoid noticing the quality of the sets and filming locations, as well as the sharpness and quality of the cinematography.