Genre: Noise Ambient

01 Selecting the Tanto
02 Jumonji-giri
03 The Favored Kaishakunin
04 Bushido
05 Burial Ground (the 47 ronin)

Seppuku, for those of you who are unaware, is the formal term given to the practise of ritual suicide prescribed for the samurai class of warriors of feudal Japan, should they fall into the hands of enemies for instance or as a punishment for some disgrace. The more informal term, hara-kiri (or more often the incorrect ‘hari-kari’), is the one by which it is better known in the West. Both terms describe accurately the method by which it was effected – roughly translated both terms mean belly-cutting (from left to right), which is the method codified by bushido (the Way of the Warrior), the philosophy adhered to by the samurai soldier. There is a similar ritual called oibara which a samurai would enact after the death of his master.

Such a ritual, and the mystical overtones and the inseparable connection between the practise and Japanese national identity, are a continuing source of fascination for Westerners – as is evidenced by the release of this five-track CD by American outfit Korperschwache (a German word meaning ‘organic decay’, a term which was often appended to death certificates of the victims of the Auschwitz gas chambers). It is after all a completely alien concept which is anathema to our culture and way of thinking; but even so we can sense something of the honourable in a warrior committing suicide in this way. Probably the most famous act of seppuku, and one of the most recent, was that of Yukio Mishima, the author and playwright, in 1970; this was his final act when his plea for the armed forces to rise up against their political masters and restore the emperor’s rightful powers was greeted with jeers and mockery and consequently failed to ignite the coup d’etat he’d hoped to instigate.

The species of mystical overtones attached to the practise are ably characterised by the five pieces on here; heavily overloaded and fuzzed-out guitar are the primary vehicles used to convey these ideas. One of the characteristics noticeable on each of these pieces is the sweet harmonics that cut through the fuzz, the ambience of which is spookily descriptive of the elevated philosophy surrounding the concepts of bushido and seppuku. A ‘spiritual’ and ‘high-minded’ aura is perceptibly present, fully enveloping the music, and is perhaps an indicator of the high regard that RKF of Korperschwache holds the practise in, or at the very least the philosophy appertaining to it; it can also be seen as an indicator of how bushido and seppuku are absolutely inseparable from both the physical Japan and the very idea of Japan itself, in exactly the same way that the connection between blood, soil and people was seen in terms of German nationalism just prior to and during WWII.

If I was to point exactly to a favourite type of ambient sound, then this would be it. Long drawn out slabs of overdriven and reverb-drenched guitar chords and feedback, stretched and distorted, running up and down the scale and letting the natural and accidental harmonics, undertones and overtones knife through to add flesh and blood to the whole. It’s a singularly elevated album, based as it is on a way of thinking that exemplifies the Japanese warrior caste mindset, which is totally outside of any social or historical context here in the West. I don’t know, it may even go some way towards helping us to understand why there are still those in modern Japan who wish to return to those values; the people who think that Japanese society has been compromised by, and lost its soul to, imported ‘Western’ democratic ideals. That may be taking it too far perhaps, but even so this may be in itself be a small way of emphasising how good I consider this CD to be.

(And now, a small glossary of terms: tanto – the small single- or double-edged dagger used to commit suicide with that was sheathed with the katana; jumonji-giri – the act of committing seppuku without a kaishakunin; kaishakunin – a second participant whose role was to behead the person who has committed seppuku to prevent an agonisingly long and pain-ridden death, omitted from those rituals where one was not wanted or where seppuku was imposed as a form of punishment; ronin – a masterless samurai.)