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
Samurai cinema For instance the Sengoku period (1478–1603) saw Japan torn by civil war as daimyō warlords fought for control of land. In the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), peace from civil war meant there were no wars for the samurai to fight and some samurai became ronin, masterless warriors left to struggle to survive. In the Meiji period (1868–1912), we see a decline of the hereditary existence of the samurai and the rise of westernization. In this period the ideal of the samurai and the code of bushido are popularized into the military warrior’s belief. The time frame meant changes in the sorts