Bamboo torture is a form of

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...

and

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

where a

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

shoot In botany, a plant shoot consists of any plant stem together with its appendages, leaves and lateral buds, flowering stems, and flower buds. The new growth from seed germination that grows upward is a shoot where leaves will develop. In the sp ...

grows through the body of a victim, and is reported to have been used in

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

and

South Asian South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; ...

countries such as

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

, and especially

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, but without reliable evidence.

Recorded usage

A "

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

civilian", in his travel description from 1820s India, referred to this use of bamboo as a well-known punishment in

Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. The use of live trees impaling people as they grow was recorded in the 19th century, when the Siamese used nipah palm sprouts in the same way as bamboo torture on the Malays during the 1821

Siamese invasion of Kedah The Siamese invasion of Kedah was a military operation mounted by the Kingdom of Siam against the Sultanate of Kedah in November 1821, in the area of what is now northern Peninsula Malaysia. Background The Sultanate of Kedah had been a trib ...

, among other punishments. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, stories circulated of

Japanese soldiers Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese dia ...

inflicting "bamboo torture" upon Allied

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...

, securely tying the victim in place above a young bamboo shoot. Over several days, the sharp, fast-growing shoot would first puncture, then completely penetrate the victim's body, eventually emerging through the other side. In her ''Hakka Soul'' memoir, Chinese poet and author Woon-Ping Chin mentions the "bamboo torture" as one of the tortures that locals believed the Japanese performed on prisoners. The cast of the TV program ''

MythBusters ''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internation ...

'' investigated bamboo torture in a 2008 episode and found that a bamboo shoot can penetrate through several inches of

ballistic gelatin Ballistic gelatin is a testing medium designed to simulate the effects of bullet wounds in animal muscle tissue. It was developed and improved by Martin Fackler and others in the field of wound ballistics. It is calibrated to match porcine musc ...

in three days. For research purposes, ballistic gelatin is considered comparable to human flesh, and the experiment thus supported the viability of this form of torture, though not its historical accuracy.

References

{{reflist Asian instruments of torture Bamboo weapons Criminal homicide Execution methods Propaganda Torture in China Torture in Japan

Recorded usage

See also

References