General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (一命)

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Ichimei, 一命) is a 2011 Japanese samurai drama directed by Takashi Miike, a 3D remake of Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 film Seppuku (Harakiri) based on Yasuhiko Takiguchi's 1958 short story Ibun Ronin-ki (異聞浪人記). It premiered in competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2011, where it was the first 3D film ever selected for the festival's Official Competition.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Ichimei (一命)⁴
Director / screenplay	Takashi Miike; screenplay by Kikumi Yamagishi, from Yasuhiko Takiguchi's 1958 story Ibun Ronin-ki²
Music	Ryuichi Sakamoto²
Lead cast	Ebizo Ichikawa XI (Hanshiro Tsugumo), Eita (Motome Chijiiwa), Koji Yakusho (Kageyu Saito), Hikari Mitsushima (Miho)²
Format and length	3D, 126 minutes (some listings give 127 or 128 minutes)¹^•⁴^•⁵
Release	World premiere May 19, 2011 at Cannes; Japanese theatrical release October 15, 2011 through Shochiku²^•⁴
US release	Limited theatrical release July 20, 2012 through Tribeca Film; gross of $60.2K⁶
Reception	76% Tomatometer from 42 reviews and 75% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁶

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in the early Edo period of the 17th century, after the end of the warring-states era. With many daimyo domains abolished and samurai left without work or home, a practice called kyōgen seppuku (狂言切腹), the "suicide bluff", spread among impoverished ronin: a masterless samurai would appear at the gate of a wealthy daimyo residence and ask to commit ritual suicide in its courtyard, expecting the household, which wanted to avoid the trouble, to give him money or a job instead.⁴^•⁷

One day the ronin Hanshiro Tsugumo (Ebizo Ichikawa XI) appears at the gate of the prestigious Ii clan and makes this request. The clan's senior retainer, Kageyu Saito (Koji Yakusho), tries to dissuade him by recounting what happened a few months earlier, when a young ronin named Motome Chijiiwa (Eita) made the same plea. Suspecting emotional blackmail from what they saw as a glorified beggar, the household's samurai called his bluff and forced him to go through with the suicide, which he attempted with a bamboo blade after selling his sword.⁴^•⁸^•⁷

Hanshiro then reveals the truth: Motome was his son-in-law, and he has come to take revenge against the house. At the moment of the hara-kiri he requests the assistance of Kageyu's samurai, who are coincidentally absent; when the suspicious Kageyu demands an explanation, Hanshiro tells the story of his and Motome's lives, setting in motion a showdown of vengeance against the Ii house.¹^•⁹

Source and remake history

The film adapts Yasuhiko Takiguchi's short story Ibun Ronin-ki, published in 1958, which had already been filmed in 1962 by Masaki Kobayashi as Seppuku (Harakiri) starring Tatsuya Nakadai. Kobayashi's film won the Jury Special Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.⁴^•¹⁰ Miike's version brought the same tale back to Cannes almost fifty years later, in competition.³

Speaking at the Cannes press conference, screenwriter Kikumi Yamagishi explained that in adapting the original story she had striven to keep its essence intact, and that the samurai chief is portrayed quite differently than in Kobayashi's version; according to her, the source work's protagonist takes no lives, seeking instead to bring back what the samurai code originally meant and to instruct those who had drifted from it.¹¹

Production and 3D

The film was produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa and Jeremy Thomas, with production companies including OLM, Sedic International, and Recorded Picture Company, and international sales by Hanway Films.² Shochiku, the Japanese distributor, promoted it as the first 3D period drama (jidaigeki) ever made.⁷

Miike, who had just directed the samurai film 13 Assassins, said at Cannes that he did not make the film because he wanted to film violence; it became a violent film because he was passionate about the subject matter. On the 3D process he said the subject, setting, and film set were right for 3D filming, but that 3D imposes many limitations: the film has no battle scenes because they take so long to film in 3D.¹¹ Some exterior scenes set in the city of Edo were shot at Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto.¹²

Release and reception

After its Cannes premiere, the film screened in the A Window on Asian Cinema section at the Busan International Film Festival, in competition at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, and at the London Film Festival in 2011.¹³ It opened in Japanese theaters on October 15, 2011.⁴ In the United States, Tribeca Film gave it a limited theatrical release on July 20, 2012, with a gross of $60.2K.⁶

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 76% Tomatometer from 42 reviews and a 75% Popcornmeter audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.⁶ The site's critics consensus describes it as an atypically restrained entry in Miike's filmography that loses little impact by favoring human drama over action.⁶ Reviewers noted the deliberate pacing and the emphasis on character: the Los Angeles Times wrote that Miike brings formal, elegant restraint to his usual flair for wild theatrics, using 3D to create deep spatial relations, frames within frames, and falling snow rather than the spurting blood one might expect.¹⁴ Writing in The Guardian, Philip French described the film as a dark, slow-moving story of ronin struggling to keep their self-respect in a peaceful but troubled 17th-century Japan, building to an elaborately staged duel in which a lone man armed with a wooden sword takes on a squad of samurai.¹⁵ Time Out praised the gorgeous 3D photography and Ryuichi Sakamoto's melancholy score.¹⁶

Comparison with the 1962 original

The remake follows the structure of Kobayashi's film, in which a household elder's cautionary tale of a suicide bluff is answered by the visitor's own story, but it differs in presentation. Kobayashi's Harakiri was shot in black and white and is widely treated as a classic examination of honor, hypocrisy, and institutions protecting appearances over humanity.¹⁷ Miike's version is in color and 3D, scored by Sakamoto, and, as the Los Angeles Times and Guardian reviews describe, trades the original's austerity for a formally composed, restrained treatment of the same revenge story.¹⁴^•¹⁵ At Cannes it received respectful notices but no awards, in contrast to the Jury Special Prize won by the 1962 film.³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026