A horrible death

Duty is heavy like a mountain, but death is as light as a feather. This is what the samurai code of honour says. Samurai were the medieval knights of Japan and served their masters with a passion. If a samurai failed at carrying out his duty, he would bring shame upon himself and his family. To save face, he was sometimes allowed to commit a gruesome form of ritual suicide (seppuku).
The samurai would dress himself completely in white and kneel. After revealing his belly, he would take a dagger, plunge it deep into his belly and make a horizontal cut from the left to the right. Blood and intestines would spill out, but  the samurai was not allowed to scream in pain, because this would be dishonourable. To end his suffering, the samurai would give a signal, and another samurai would come to his aid to cut off his head with a single slash of the sword. It was then examined how far the dead samurai had cut himself, and the bigger the cut, the more honourable his death. If you were a female samurai, you could also kill yourself, but you weren’t allowed to cut open you belly. You’d have to slit your own throat, which was called jigai.