Seppuku

In my English class, we were asked to underline any words, phrases, or names that we could not write a three pager paper on(at least without any help) from the article "Hey Little Girl is your Daddy Home" by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Then after selecting a few, we wrote them on the board and we all, independently, chose one to do research on. The word I chose was hari-kari. I though it looked interesting. So here we go on my journey to find the meaning of the word. Kari-kari, only called that by foreigners, and wrongly (Oxford Illustrated), is a Japanese suicide ritual. It is the Japanese vulgar term for it. It deals with voluntarily or obligatory disemboweling oneself and it is done with the help of a sharp knife (Benet's Reader's). The correct term is harakiri but the Japanese themselves actually call it seppuku. This is because they think of it as more elegant since it is derived from the Chinese. This form of suicide occurred mostly within the samurai (military) class in Japan during the Middle Ages. It was done as an alternative to being captured or being disgraced in war and was considered extremely honorable and respectable. In some cases, some samurai were given the option to partake in seppuku as opposed to "public execution of the death penalty (Oxford Illustrated)."
Hurst explains that the ritual dates back to the late Heian period in history. It was done because torture was so common once captured by the enemy in war and suicide before being captured was much preferred (section Shinigurui, Crazy for Death).
Unfortunately, seppuku is not a very written-about topic and I was not able to gather information from five sources. Every source that even mentioned any of the names of this suicide, as there are several, only defined it and gave a tiny section of background information and it all seemed to be repetitive. Hopefully, through time, I'll be able to discover key words that are associated with seppuku in order to search with and find more information. Until then, I hope this suffices!