Samurai William Quotes

“Although the Japanese were said to be courteous and without deceit, they showed an alarming propensity for violence and brutality. They frequently strangled their own children—so as to avoid wasting precious food supplies—and had a strangely melancholic disposition. Ritual suicide—seppuku—was commonplace and often extremely bloody. Any man intent on taking his own life would dress in his finest silken costume, unsheathe an enormous curved sword, and, “lancing his body acrosse, from the breast downe all the belly, murthereth himselfe.”
― Giles Milton, Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan