Suicide methods method of suicide, practiced mostly in the medieval era, though some isolated cases appear in modern times. For example, Yukio Mishima died by seppuku in 1970 after a failed "coup d'état" intended to restore full power to the Japanese emperor. Unlike other methods of suicide, this was regarded as a way of preserving one's honor. The ritual is part of "bushido", the code of the "samurai". As originally performed solely by an individual, it was an extremely painful method by which to die. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloth, the
Yukio Mishima grandmother, Natsuko, who took the boy, separating him from his immediate family for several years. Natsuko was the granddaughter of Matsudaira Yoritaka, the "daimyō" of Shishido in Hitachi Province, and had been raised in the household of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito; she maintained considerable aristocratic pretensions even after marrying Mishima's grandfather, a bureaucrat who had made his fortune in the newly opened colonial frontier in the north and who eventually became Governor-General of Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin Island. Through his grandmother, Mishima was a direct descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Natsuko was prone to violence and morbid outbursts, which are occasionally alluded