The author | cold research author team - Pi Lan read history
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Editor's note: Some time ago, the plot of the collective cutting of the abdomen of the concubines of Xichu in the popular "Sword Line in the Snow" made many viewers complain, believing that it was the chaotic entry of Japanese elements in the play, and the brain hole that made the woman cut her abdomen was full of slots. After all, in the impression of ordinary people, cutting the abdomen is often the exclusive method of death of Japanese samurai, and it seems strange that Chinese concubines are buried with cut abdomen. However, if you trace the earliest written records of "cutting the abdomen" in history, these plot sections of "In the Snow" cannot actually be said to be simply the brain holes of the screenwriter. In this article, we will talk to you about this topic.
▲ The belly cutting plot in "The Knife Line in the Snow"
According to japan's "Chronicle of the Customs of the Banmo Country", The God of the Light Sea broke up with her husband, and in anger, he cut his abdomen with a knife at the edge of a swamp pond in Kawahe, where they lived, and then jumped into the swamp and died. According to legend, it is also for this reason that the fish that grown in this swamp where the god of the sea committed suicide by caesarean section have no internal organs. If we do not delve into the difference between "abdomen section" and "abdomen cutting", as well as the authenticity of myths and legends, this should be the earliest record of abdominal cutting in Japanese literature. Generally speaking, even legends often have real character archetypes as a basis, so before the legend spread, in this place of Kawaheri, there may really be a woman who committed suicide by caesarean section because of a break with her husband, and finally, in the word of mouth, this story evolved into a myth and remained.
However, because the "Record of the Terroirs of the Banmo Country" itself is a terroir with a large number of Records of Zhiwei, for many scholars, they are reluctant to adopt such lowly credible written material. Therefore, when many Japanese scholars mention the culture of cutting the abdomen, the most common mention is Fujiwara Hosuke in the "Talk of the Ancient History", who was surrounded after fighting with the enemy, so he chose to cut his abdomen and commit suicide.
It is worth noting that the first person in Japan to cut his abdomen did something more hard-core than the abdomen itself after cutting his abdomen: he pulled out his intestines on the spot. This kind of hard-core operation is not only an example of Fujiwara Hosuke, such as in the Sakai City Eleven Deadpool Incident, the first Miura Ino no Yoshimoto, after cutting open his abdomen, he planned to throw his intestines to the French consul, but the Daisuke behind him was afraid of another disaster and cut off his head without success.
In fact, this method of throwing enemies with their intestines, from the early Sengoku period to the Edo period, was a very important part of the Japanese samurai's cutting of the abdomen, and the pain caused by this behavior was even greater than that of the abdomen itself, and its bloody meaning was far greater than before. As a result, in the Edo period, when the form of the abdominal cutting ceremony became more and more fixed, the act of dragging intestines and throwing people during abdominal cutting was explicitly prohibited. Of course, for those who are about to commit suicide by cutting their abdomen, we do not know how binding this prohibition is.
▲Sakai City Incident
In addition to the hard-core way of throwing intestines, as the abdomen is more and more ritualized, its rules are also increasing. It can be said that the samurai of the Edo period in Japan cut their abdomen, far less wild and bloody than the previous Sengoku period. Many readers may have heard of the so-called "wrong person", the abdomen is one of the most fat positions in the human body, but the blood vessels are not rich, due to the angle of force, coupled with the fear of self-destruction, it is actually difficult for the suicidal person to stab the knife into the abdomen how deep, according to the Japanese folklorist Chiba Del, most of the time the tip of the knife can only pierce into about 5 to 7 cm, the short-term blood loss is only about 200cc, and donating blood is almost the same. Even without treatment, the injured often do not die immediately, but will die after a long struggle in the sharp pain of being stabbed in the internal organs. For example, as recorded in the Book of Righteousness, when Yuan Yijing cut his abdomen, he continued to stab himself horizontally and vertically several times, but he himself did not die immediately, and he was even able to wipe the sword used to cut his abdomen clean in severe pain, and finally died because of excessive blood loss. It can be said that the pain caused by the death method of cutting the abdomen is far better than taking poison, hanging oneself, and beheading.
Therefore, in order to reduce the pain of the abdominal cutter, the wrong person appeared. In the beginning, the wrong people were only responsible for checking whether the cut-belly samurai was dead, and sometimes they would be responsible for checking the expression of the deceased who had been ordered to commit suicide when they died, and once they found that the deceased was dead, the expression was painful and vicious, such as spitting out his tongue, staring at the eyes, etc., they would use a knife to engrave a cross on the soles of the deceased's feet. According to the Kodaira Monogatari, this was to prevent the deceased from harboring a grudge and the ghosts of the deceased from coming out to do evil, and the later Japanese Kaga Domain's intermediaries would also do the same to the samurai who were ordered to cut off their stomachs because of their crimes. In the Edo period, the duties of the wrong people changed, and their main duty became to help the abdominal cutter relieve the pain and cut off the other party's head when the pain was unbearable.
In the Edo period, the number of people who served as the wrong person was usually the relatives and friends of the abdomen cutter, and the number of people was 2 or 3, in addition to the big jie wrong who was responsible for beheading, there was also the assistant error who prepared a short knife for the abdomen cutter, and the small error that specialized in examining the condition of the corpse. A suicide, full of rituals, and no one else. Although there are often 3 people who are wrong, the most important of them is still the main knife's big mistake, beheading itself is also a technical work, especially in Japan, the good technology of the big mistake will deliberately leave a piece of skin and flesh connected to the neck for the deceased when beheading, to prevent the head from being completely separated, which is also known as "holding the head", which seems to be related to the "parents of the body's skin" in the "Filial Piety Sutra". However, in most cases, do not have too high requirements for Daisuke, as a non-professional executioner, daisuke even if the sword skills are superb, the first time to cut off people's heads is inevitably nervous, a careless cut or only cut in half is possible, such as the Japanese writer Mishima Yukio cut the abdomen, his intermediary is even cut four knives to complete the task. It really hurts when I think about it.
Yukio Mishima
Mistakes did not exist in the early Sengoku period in Japan, and there will be no help to alleviate their suffering and end their lives early. It can be said that in the mainstream view at that time, the most important reason why the samurai cut their abdomen appeared tall was that it could show their tolerance for pain and their contempt or contempt for death.
At that time, there were already some fixed ways of cutting the abdomen, in addition to longitudinal cutting, oblique tangential, compound line cutting, double compound line cutting, the most common is a kind of cutting called horizontal one-word cutting. The abdominal cutter will insert a knife from the left rib and pull a knife along the abdomen, according to the knife marks, this method of abdominal incision is also known as a one-word abdomen. But how can this simple and bland method of death satisfy the obsession of those Warring States macho men for cutting their abdomen? Therefore, in addition to the one-word abdomen, at that time, there was also the same principle of the two-word abdomen and the three-word abdomen of the abdomen - the former method of doing this kind of practice may theoretically be realized, but the three-word abdomen, which is to scratch around the stomach as rotten meat, may have exceeded the physiological limits of human beings. It is worth noting that the source yijing in the aforementioned Book of Righteousness is said to have cut itself several times from three different directions, which can be called an epic difficulty of cutting the abdomen, but because the credibility of the Book of Righteousness itself is not high, this record is probably difficult to convince.
▲Stills of the Source Yijing
In fact, a large number of early Records of Cutting The Belly in Japan, aside from the aforementioned Records of the Customs of the BanmoKu, most of them also do not originate from historical documents, but from the military records of the 13th century or so, which were specially purchased and read for the samurai class. For example, the Taiping Ji, the Baoyuan Monogatari, and the Yijing Ji mentioned in the previous paragraph. Although most of these monogatari books are based on real history, because most of their readers are from the samurai class, for the most realistic reason of "good selling", the author inevitably over-renders the characters of this class when creating character plots.
So the characters we see from these military chronicles, especially the protagonists, are all generous and heroic warriors who die generously, and their death plots are also depicted with great magnificence. As for those earlier historical documents, although the death of these characters will be recorded in the life of these characters, but limited by the length of the relationship, in these more reliable historical materials, in fact, rarely describe the specific plot of their abdomen in detail, and sometimes even do not even mention the word "abdomen", which also shows from one side that before this, the concept of abdomen cutting has not really been formed.
In addition, although Japanese samurai often give people the impression of "killing themselves in minutes", most people are afraid and panicked when they face death, which is an instinct. It is also the reason why there is a failure to cut the abdomen and the occurrence of the wrong person. In the middle of Edo, in order to reduce the pain of cutting the abdomen while retaining the exclusive "honor" of the samurai class, a new method called "fan belly" began to appear throughout Japan. The abdominal cutter does not need to really cut the abdomen, but replaces the abdomen cutting knife with a fan, and makes a false stroke on his abdomen, and the wrong person will immediately cut off his head. This ritualized way is also a point that many people often complain about.
▲Genroku Akabane Incident
However, after all, cutting the abdomen is not to pull the pork, but to use the knife on oneself. Many times, the survival instinct of human beings will explode before the execution, which is also a common human feeling. For example, the famous Forty-Seven Ronin in the Yuanlu Ako Incident, after avenging their lord Ako Domain, were ordered to commit suicide by cutting their stomachs. It can be said that these forty-seven people had already made up their minds to die before the revenge, but from the relevant literature, some of these forty-seven people committed suicide. It can be seen that in the face of life and death events, even those who look fierce and abnormal, it is difficult to really be unaffected.
bibliography:
1.ZHANG Bo. The Historical Factors Behind the Japanese Custom of "Cutting the Abdomen" - A Re-exploration of the Origin of "Cutting the Abdomen" from the Perspective of Cultural History
2.Hu Xinyang. Analysis Nihon Bushi Dono kiri
3.Zheng Huina. Historical records have seen The Japanese suicide by cutting the abdomen
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