These are Japanese concepts and terms, and I'm surprized you couldn't just look up the definitions.

Bushido means "the way of the warrior" and was considered the samurai code - though never formally codified - like the chivalric code for knights of the high middle ages in Europe. There's a very rigid version one sees in modern chanbara movies & TV and in kabuki plays. There's also the more realistic version that shows up in history, where in times of conflict a clan would try to have at least some members on both sides so that no matter who won most of the clan could survive

TRIGGER WARNING: details on suicide.

Seppuku is a highly ritualized form of painful macho suicide that developed. I've helped stage one ... for Kabuki Hawaii's Production of Kanedehon Chushingura/The 47 Ronin, which is a bushido play par excellence. I can't bring myself to see the new movie.

The traditional means of suicide in Japan had been hanging, using a loop of silk like one's obi/sash, not a noose, tied by both ends to an overhead beam. Seppeku developed as a way of voluntary death to avoid public execution. It can be done fairly ad-lib, anywhere you get the privacy to, but it can also be carefully arraged, with a platform of tatami mats covered with felt to absorb the usual large amount of blood. The sprays of pine at the corners, signifying "long life" seem very incongrous symbols, but they're traditional.

The principal wears a simple white kimono with the obi worn very low under the belly. He choses among his friends a person of notable swordsmanship, called the second in English. The principle kneels in the center of the mat, his second crouching behind him and to one side. Another attendant brings a wooden tray-stand on which is a tanto knife, wrapped in heavy paper covering the handle and most of the blade.

The principle opens his kimono to bare his belly. He picks up the tanto, sets the point against one side of his abdomen, and drives it inward. He then pulls it across through his abdominal organs to the other side, then cuts upward toward his solar plexis.

This is the full seppukku cut. It is excruciating and rquires heroic resolution. It atones for the greatest shortcomings. To lie there and bleed to death is unusual, but it's part of the seppuku in Chushingura.

Normally, when the principle has plunged the tanto into his belly and naturally leans forward in agony, his second springs to his feet, drawing his sword, and beheads the principle, putting him out of his misery. It may be agreed that the second will wait for the horizontal cut to be completed, unless he sees the principle falter and become unable to continue.

In the case of a judicial seppuku, it will be witnessed by an official sitting back a good ways, and the second may be provided by the government - an executioner. These are often held in gardens or courtyards, with the nicest ceremony.

If they worry a man will be unable to do it, the tanto is of wood. It is placed in front of him so that he will have to lean forward to reach it, and as he does so the second beheads him. It still counts as a seppuku

The female equivalent of seppuku is done without any ceremony that I know of. She takes a tanto in both hands with the edge forward, drives it in one side of her neck and out the other, and slices forward through her windpipe.

These are bushido-approved suicides for samurai. A merchant, a miller, a normal person, is not going to have the resolution for this. They will hang themselves or drown themselves, as in most love-double-suicides. It takes long mental training to be able to embrace such an horrific death.

Part of bushido training was supposed to be developing an acceptance of death, almost a disdain for living. Men would commit seppuku, not only as a penalty for a criminal act like murder, treason, or lese-majeste, but in atonement for a failure or simply to join their lord in death. The death of emperor Hirohito triggered a rash of loyalty suicides.

"What is bushido" entire is a book, and my thumbs are tired. I leave that to the next.