The Complete Manual of Suicide

The Complete Manual of Suicide (完全自殺マニュアル) is a Japanese book written by Wataru Tsurumi. It was first published on July 4, 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, and carbon monoxide poisoning. It 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 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.

He covers 11 categories of suicide methods:
 * 1) Overdosing
 * 2) Hanging
 * 3) Self-defenestration
 * 4) Slashing the wrist and carotid artery
 * 5) Car collision
 * 6) Gas Poisoning
 * 7) Electrocution
 * 8) Drowning
 * 9) Self-immolation
 * 10) Freezing
 * 11) 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 censors only graphical depictions of the sexual organs, this book was not censored by the government. Some 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, including several cases of the suicides of junior high school students. The book neither encourages nor discourages suicide, and as well does not tell those considering suicide to seek help, though wordings such as "completely painless" and "marvelous experience" are used to 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, 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 "Complete Manual of Suicide"' (僕達の完全自殺マニュアル) ISBN 978-4872331530 where he published fan letters and hate mail he had 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.