Seppuku San story by John Luther Long. Though both Long's story and Puccini's opera predate Hearn's use of the term "jigai", the term has been used in relation to western japonisme which is the influence of Japanese culture on the western arts. While the voluntary seppuku described above is the best known form, in practice the most common form of seppuku was obligatory seppuku, used as a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai, especially for those who committed a serious offence such as rape, robbery, corruption, unprovoked murder or treason. The samurai were generally told of their offense in full
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a 1999 American-German-French-Japanese crime action film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Forest Whitaker stars as the title character, the mysterious "Ghost Dog", a hitman in the employ of the Mafia, who follows the ancient code of the samurai as outlined in the book of Yamamoto Tsunetomo's recorded sayings, "Hagakure". Critics have noted similarities between the movie and Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 film "Le Samouraï". Ghost Dog sees himself as a retainer of Louie, a local mobster, who saved Ghost Dog's life years earlier. While living