Seppuku approaching her, they would find that she had ended her life long before they reached her. Stephen R. Turnbull provides extensive evidence for the practice of female ritual suicide, notably of samurai wives, in pre-modern Japan. One of the largest mass suicides was the 25 April 1185 final defeat of Taira no Tomomori establishing Minamoto power. The wife of Onodera Junai, one of the Forty-seven Ronin, is a notable example of a wife following seppuku of a samurai husband. A large number of honor suicides marked the defeat of the Aizu clan in the Boshin War of 1869, leading into
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