The Complete Manual of Suicide

The Complete Manual of Suicide

First edition cover
Author	Wataru Tsurumi
Original title	完全自殺マニュアル
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Subject	Suicide
Publication date	1993
Media type	Print
Pages	198
ISBN
OCLC	845651040

The Complete Manual of Suicide (完全自殺マニュアル, Kanzen Jisatsu Manyuaru, lit. Complete Suicide Manual^?) is a Japanese book written by Wataru Tsurumi. He wrote on the problem of "hardness of living" in Japanese society.

It was first published on July 4, 1993 and sold more than one million copies. In the postscript Manyuaru says: ”To think that at the worst crucial moment one can escape from the pain by committing suicide, one can live for the moment easier. So by distributing this book, I want to make this stifling society an easier place to live in. This is the aim of this book. And I never intend to encourage readers to commit suicide.”

Although this book is a manual, the author explains his philosophy throughout, and opposes to the social pressure to live strong. And in every suicide method, he rates different aspects of suicide such as painfulness, gruesomeness of the body, probability of failure and costs in event of failure, and so on. The fact that one can easily identify the least painful and easiest method of suicide was controversial at the time of the publication.

Since the book was intended to be a manual, the author did not spend too much space on discussing the reasons and philosophy behind suicide. Although he does rhetorically pose the question "Why must one live?" Wataru simply lays out the methods of suicide one by one and then analyzes each of them in detail.

This 198 page book provides explicit descriptions and analysis on a wide range of suicide methods such as overdosing, hanging, jumping, and carbon monoxide poisoning. The book provides matter-of-fact assessment of each method in terms of the pain it causes, effort of preparation required, the appearance of the body and lethality. He covers 11 categories of suicide methods: