parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family
vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale
of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the
injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society
will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is
no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that "hunger of the heart
which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of
the victim," as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs
in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.

As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear
of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as
long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of
self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with
fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have
to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He
maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at
the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it
may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by
madness, or by morbid excitement."[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not
savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being
necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which
Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the
Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type.

[Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.]

[Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.]

From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of
Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in
social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called

THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE
SAMURAI,

and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed
that "The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell," he only echoed a
Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It
was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was
apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a
_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession
by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk
with which he had been playing. A