SYNOPSIS:
Japanese auteur Takashi Miike take the usual approach to serious and somber melancholy story of the honor and revenge. In the 17th century, Japan was enjoying an era of calm and tranquility, which is good news for most people but bad news for the samurai, a class of professional soldiers who now find themselves without a job or a sense of purpose.
Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) is a samurai who, with no money and no prospects, has arrived in Building II, hoping to use the page as the setting for ritual suicide known as hara-kiri.
However, the ruler of the House of Representatives if Ii, Kageyu (Koji Yakusho), has heard similar requests frequently lately, and he knows most of them are emotional blackmail, attempted to persuade members of the house to give money samurai. To show what he thinks of such shameless appeal it, Kageyu tells the story of one such warrior Hanshiro, Motome (Eita), the challenge was called and was forced to take his own life with a blunt weapon made of bamboo.
But Kageyu not aware of the link between Hanshiro and Motome, and he downplayed the impact this story will have on Hanshiro. Adapted from the celebrated 1962 Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri features, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (aka Ichimei) is also one of the first 3-D feature that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival.
