Seppuku

Form of suicide practiced by Japanese samurai to avoid being captured or to restore one's honor. It involves using a samurai sword to make a lateral cut across the abdomen, followed by a vertical cut into the thorax. Seppuku-committers who fear that they might not accomplish this without the disgrace of wincing had a second standing by to decapitate them with a sword as the act was completed.

In recent years the most notable person to suicide in this manner was the novelist and ultra-nationalist Yukio Mishima, who chose seppuku after a failed comic-opera coup, in which he had kidnapped the Japanese Minister of Defence.