#tl;dr stop romanticizing his death!!!! he fucked kakashi over with it

[xuer]

saw someone on here (I can’t remember who) who glorified hatake sakumo’s suicide by theorizing he committed seppuku so kakashi could live a life out of his father’s shadow and without his actions on That Mission and subsequent disparagement by the village hanging over his son’s head.

I vehemently disagree with this sentiment.

first of all, seppuku, if anyone is unaware, is a ritualistic suicide where you disembowel yourself and slowly bleed to death. it was historically and most notably committed by japanese samurai as a form of atonement or punishment for disgraced warriors. it was also (and originally) used as a way to avoid being tortured or captured by enemies.

the post I referred to above stated their “headcanon” was that sakumo used this to atone for his sins. in return I ask, what sin did he commit exactly? yes, he was vilified by his comrades for choosing his teammates over the mission, but reading over his character and looking at his personality, I don’t think it is something he would have regretted. in the pain arc kakashi himself said he understood the sacrifice sakumo made for the sake of the village, referring to his mission, not his death.

up until his depression, sakumo was an extremely humble and straight-laced character, and under normal circumstances I think he wouldn’t have hesitated to do it again even if people shunned him for it. in fact, personally, I don’t think sakumo had anything to apologize for at all except the suicide itself, and that’s exactly what he did in the anime. it’s a widely accepted belief that he killed himself out of shame (but not as atonement; there is a clear difference).

but all of this isn’t even my main point. my main issue with that post is the fact that they used a cultural form of honor-suicide to paint sakumo out as some loving father who sacrificed himself for kakashi’s future, when in reality he probably didn’t even have kakashi in mind.

yes, sakumo loved kakashi, and it’s obvious in the way he treated him and how kakashi adored and idolized his father. but depression is a nasty thing. it can ruin your relationships and your integrity. it can change the way you think and the outlook you had on everything. it can make you feel like your entire life is broken beyond fixing. and it can rip your loved ones away from you without it actually doing anything to them. it makes you forget about them, it makes you have tunnel-vision, it makes you obsess over things that in turn hurt the ones that you love and love you.

I don’t think sakumo was thinking straight when he killed himself. he was already neck-deep in a depressive episode and was despised by most of his village, even those he risked his career to save. even if he somehow deluded himself into believing him dying would be beneficial to kakashi’s well-being, any sane person could tell you it wasn’t. kakashi himself could tell you it wasn’t. he would rather have his father alive and disliked by the village than dead in his home for his corpse to be discovered by his own son. what rubbed me the wrong way about that post is the fact that the tone of the whole thing painted sakumo’s suicide as justifiable in any way.

at the end of the day, I think you can theorize his motivations however you want. this post is also just an alternate opinion.

but even if sakumo thought he had kakashi’s best interest in mind, he was absolutely misguided, and if there’s one thing I dislike, it’s making his suicide out to be as some righteous sacrifice to give kakashi a better upbringing, because it definitely didn’t.