Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

A Japanese businessman, horn-rimmed and ambitious, decides to market a Hara-Kiri Kit.

Packaged in cellophane and painted cardboard, the price of the kit in Yen is neither too high nor too low for the average customer. It consists of the usual sword in stainless steel with a plastic handle, a patent leather sheath, and a full ceremonial robe (belted at the waist, disposable) in one of three sizes - Large, Medium, and Very Small. An enclosed Manual, printed on vellum, lists in alphabetical order all the Whens and Hows of Hara-Kiri - full instructions telling when, on what occasions, and how it is to be done. Also included, for beginners, is a plastic strip eighteen inches long, ‘A’ marked at one end, ‘B’ at the other, a dotted line in-between, which is taped to the abdomen as directed before inserting the sword at the point marked ‘A’. Finally for a few Yen, only a few Yen extra, your name is printed in pictographs on the box, the sheath, and the front of the robe itself.

Once production of the kits has begun, the advertising men take over :- NOW AT A PRICE EVEN YOU CAN AFFORD! blurb the blurbs, the posters, and the TV commercials. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN ARISTOCRAT! - scream huge orange letters across the bill-boards.  Now for the first time everyone, even the poor, can if necessary afford a suicide in the most traditional way of all. Soon Yen-waving crowds cram the shops and supermarkets of the Hara-Kiri-Kit Company, all the way from Nagasaki up to Hirosaki.  Shares climb as sales of the kit soar high above the clouds. Villas of the firm’s directors multiply like mushrooms in the suburbs of Tokyo.  But despite this everyone, especially the Director himself, somehow know that this cannot continue for long.    

Suddenly one morning there is panic and shock at the Company’s offices; a rival firm has hit the market! Everywhere technicolour ads splatter the pages of the newspapers, fill the screens of the TV networks. A new company, the Hara-Kiri-Plasti-Co, offers at half the price, half the weight, a gift-wrapped kit for Hara-Kiri . The kit contains a sword of silver plastic, its sharpness tested retested and guaranteed; and the usual Sheath, Robes, Plastic Strip and Instruction Manual; but in addition they include an LP record of commentary and instructions for beginners, with traditional music in the background.  Consternation fills the offices of the Hara-Kiri-Kit Co; shares have dropped and prices plunged. They are ruined, now bancrupcy knocks on the door.  Sitting on the floor of the central office, the Director assembles his staff around him. They squat in silent rows while he reads out the accountant’s last report.

When he has finished, the Director sends one of his men down to the warehouse where the kits are stored.  Bring back four dozen, he says, wiping his horn-rimmed glasses. But soon the man is back empty-handed and mumbling; something about ‘all gone’ .. . and ‘taken by creditors’...reaches the Director’s ears. Slowly he gets up and walks towards the telephone, which has not yet been disconnected. He looks for a phone number in a newspaper advert, dials, and then says - ‘Hara-Kiri-Plasti-Co?....'   Meanwhile the others arrange themselves in waiting groups around the room. Someone busies himself in a corner, plugging a large record-player into the wall..........