What if the Hollywood ninja guy grabs the victim’s hair (this particular corpse-to-be is sporting a nice ponytail) and knees him really hard in the small of his back?
Thank you toodlepip. Somehow I missed those. I’m getting better at searching though–but there’s always so many other interesting things to distract --Look! a squirrel! 
@Mr. Excellent: Sure. But if you’re determined enough… (I’m thinking people who committed seppuku/hara kiri as role models for someone deciding that a little pain wouldn’t stop them from killing themselves.)
1.) There’s probably a world of difference between stabbing and slicing with a sharp knife and torquing your own head around hard enough and far enough to snap it.
2.) It’s my understanding that it would have been pretty unusual for someone to completely disembowel himself and then slowly die that way. I think usually he’d make the initial stab or so, and then somebody else would lop his head off.
- Still, if I really, really, really want to go…
Which was one of the reasons why I initially questioned the technique As Seen On TV. It seemed that there was a quick, painless way to commit suicide. Now, of course, I understand that it isn’t quite that easy, simple, or painless. Darn you, writers of fiction! - Mine too. If you were regarded well enough. If not, they might let you go for a while. It was a mark of honor not to cry out in pain and beheading by your second kept you from having to tolerate long, drawn out agony. At least, according to James Clavell’s book “Shogun” and from what I was told by a couple of my friends who studied iaido (Japanese swordsmanship). Granted, they were parroting what their teachers told them so I can’t guarantee the cite.
IIRC, *Shogun *is definitely **not **100% historically accurate.
Oh probably not, but I enjoyed it and learned several Japanese words.
Again, IIRC, his Japanese wasn’t that hot, either. Although the errors might have been more on the morphosyntactic than lexical end.