Note 10 — Chapter XI · THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE CONTINUED

The mode of suicide common in Japan may be noticed here. It is called by the natives literally to “cut the belly.” The name “happy dispatch” seems to have been a felicitous suggestion of some foreigner. It is said to be done by a cut across the abdomen, and sometimes another cut is said to be made in the form of a cross. But any one who knows anything of the subject will think this nearly an impossibility, from the extreme difficulty of making the two other cuts necessary to make a cross. This would be a very butchering and trying job, and would bring on only a lingering death. So far as can be judged from the way it is performed in theaters, the knife, a short well-sharpened instrument, is inserted into the abdomen, and then drawn across the backbone, so as to sever the great blood-vessels, the aorta and ascending vein, which are there of such a size as to allow of death from their division in a few seconds. There seems to be no drawing across the abdomen. What is called swallowing gold leaf in China is in reality inhaling it when rubbed to a sort of flaky powder. It seems to choke the air-vessels, and so produce suffocation.