News at Eleven: [Yukio] Mishima is quoted on the subject of

seppuku: "I cannot believe in Western sincerity because it is invisible, but in medieval times we believed that sincerity resided in our entrails, and if we needed to show our sincerity, we had to cut our bellies and take out our visible sincerity." [Robert] Hass goes on to say that "Mishima's own hand shook badly four years later when he was making a five-inch horizontal cut in his lower abdomen. Apparently the body tries to expel the knife and one has to push hard against the musculature."

from The Brooklyn Rail: Everything Under the Sun

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