The Complete Manual of Suicide

"The Complete Manual of Suicide" （Japanese:完全自殺マニュアル) is a Japanese book written by Wataru Tsurumi. It was first published on the 4th of July, 1993 and sold more than one million copies. This 198 page book provides explicit descriptions and analysis on a wide range of suicide methods such as overdosing, hanging, jumping, carbon monoxide poisoning, etc. Moreover, this is not a suicide manual for the terminally ill. There is no preference shown for painless or dignified ways of ending one's life. 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.

The book

Since the book was intended to be a manual, the author did not spend too much ink on discussing the reasons and philosophy behind suicide. It did rhetorically pose the question "why must one live?" but left the question unanswered. He simply laid out the methods of suicide one by one and then analysed each of them in detail.

He covered 11 categories of suicide methods:
# Overdosing
# Hanging
# Self-defenestration
# Slashing the wrist and carotid artery
# Car collision
# Gas Poisoning
# Electrocution
# Drowning
# Self-immolation
# Freezing
# Miscellaneous

Each chapter begins with a graph assessing the method in question in terms of: the pain it causes, effort of preparation required, the appearance of the body, the disturbance it may cause for others and its deadliness. Each of these matters is also rated by skulls, with 5 skulls indicating the highest rating.

Public Reaction

Because the Japanese criminal code only censors graphical depictions of the sexual organs, this book was not censored by the government. Only 8 prefectures designated the book as "yugaitosho" (book harmful to youth), which restricts the sale of books to minors, while some prefectures, such as Tokyo, decided against doing so. There are many suicides where the book was found along with the body; in a few cases with suicides of junior high school students. The book does not encourage nor discourage suicide, so it does not tell anyone who is thinking of ending their life to seek help. The book does indicate that certain methods are less painful and more fatal than others. Moreover, the book shows that certain popular methods of suicide have very low success rates. For this reason, some argue that the book has made suicide attempts since its publication more fatal. Some attribute Japan's high suicide rate not just to the number of people who attempt suicide but also to the fact that people utilise more fatal methods, ^[1] though to what extent the book has contributed to this trend is unknown.

After the intense criticism and debate, the author subsequently published the second book, "Our opinions about "the complete manual of suicide"" (Bokutachi no "kanzen jisatsu manyuaru") ISBN 978-4872331530 where he published fan letters and hate mails he has received. This second book somewhat helped shift the public attention to the various reasons some people commit suicide, and the controversy died down eventually. The book is still widely available. The same publisher, with a different author, published "The Complete Manual of Disappearance" (Kanzen Shisso Manyuaru) in 1994.

Film Adaptation

In 2003, Fukutani Osamu was inspired by the book and made the movie Suicide Manual.

ee also

*Final Exit by Derek Humphry.
* The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Philip Nitschke
*Suicide
*Aokigahara

References

1."Trends in mortality from suicide, 1965-99."Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2003 Nov;108(5):341-9.