seppuku

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“Each time samurai would commit the ritual suicide of seppuku, they would first read the death poem they had prepared in order to summarize their life and make sense of it,” Murakami said.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026

As a result, I was more familiar with Mishima’s life — the turn to ultraright nationalism, the attempted coup and his ensuing death by seppuku — than with his art.

From New York Times • Nov. 23, 2024

Cicadas have a much higher-stakes conundrum when it comes to their sort of reproductive seppuku: they die shortly after mating, offering themselves up in order to ensure the continuation of the next generation.

From Scientific American • Jun. 14, 2021

It sounds as if she would gladly commit seppuku, if only that didn’t require the sin of cultural appropriation: “I am wholly sorry for the pain and anger I caused you,” she wrote.

From The Wall Street Journal • Aug. 21, 2016

A study of the origin and development of the national method of self-destruction shows that suicide by seppuku, or opening of the abdomen, was first a custom, and then a privilege.

From The Religions of Japan From the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by Griffis, William Elliot