Sarah Paine

And here you can see the consequences of this, right?

If you're focusing on no fears of death, and if you can't succeed, living on is a disaster.

Think of the Banzai charges, when Japanese remnants would go headlong into oncoming machine gun fire, knowing full well what was gonna happen.

This is not the way other armies have behaved.

Different value system.

All right.

In addition to at death, this Bushido literature's emphasis on honor.

Back to Yamamoto.

The way of avoiding shame is different.

It's simply death.

Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate.

Think of General Tojo and Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku.

If you suffer a catastrophic defeat, here's the solution.

In the event of a mortifying failure, you're going to wind up committing suicide because the alternative, if you live on in shame, you're bringing everyone you're associated with shame.

So how does the suicide work?

It's seppuku or harakiri.

The samurai who's doing it kneels down with short sword.

He plunges it into his belly, tries to do a full revolution.

And then his second, usually a close associate, takes the long sword, if he does it right, one sweep, head and lap, upright corpse, blood everywhere.

Diplomats in the 19th century, Western diplomats, were told to witness this.