In 1993, Japanese author, Wataru Tsurumi, unintentionally sabotaged his career when he published The Complete Manual of Suicide.

The macabre book is a collection of unusual tips on how to kill yourself—each chapter focuses on a different method of suicide like overdosing, jumping from buildings, hanging, drowning, slashing wrists, gassing, and more, according to AFP journalist Harumi Ozawa.

Tsurumi describes—in a matter-of-fact tone—the grim effects of each suicide method. He talks about the appearance of the body afterwards, the amount of pain it would cause, and the look of the scene to those who found the body.

This is what is described in the gassing chapter:

“It’s a lot of work as you have to bring in the exhaust hose opening and seal up the room, but it also is a painless suicide scheme and the body stays visually clean afterwards.”

As you can imagine, this wasn’t the best publicity for Japan—a country that is pigeonholed as having a long-held suicide epidemic.

Tsurumi’s career was over, even if the guide sold around one million copies in Japan. The entire book was allegedly never translated into English.

And the author was actually blamed for Japan’s high suicide rates shortly thereafter.

In the book, he recommends the Aokigahara forest as a good spot to die. In recent years, the forest has become a popular destination for those seeking to end their life.

Interestingly, while Japan’s suicide rate is relatively high in comparison to other nations, the country’s suicide rate has actually been on a rapid decline since the 1950s.

Some people superficially suggested that Japan’s unusually high suicide rate was a result of a sort of leftover Samurai honor code.

Tsurumi, however, takes a more philosophical approach to the subject. He writes that the monotony of modern life is meaningless. And if you think this way, you’re not an evil person.

The alleged prologue of the book reads as a nihilistic, realistic, and deeply reflective doctrine on the nature of life and death.

He wrote:

“It’s useless to say ‘[life] is dull and boring.’ We are all unlucky. We were born on this stage of past events. We will wake at 7 AM, either going to work or going to school afterwards. We will repeat the pointless speeches. At work, we keep saying senseless things while we keep on working over different senseless projects, for a few weeks, a few months or a few years. New inventions will be introduced at a slow pace. The slow-paced politician will keep on accepting bribes. The TV programs keeps on bringing excitement to its audience at a slow pace. After we switch off the TV, it will be just another ordinary day. Yukio Mishima once wrote the lines, ‘ordinary life is even more horrible than a war,’ in his autobiography Confession d’un masque. We tolerated the nervousness caused by the terrifying ordinary life, in return for the ridiculous ‘calm and bright future.’ We have to be careful throughout our life, trying in vain to avoid any mistakes. There’s no happy ending like the ones in the comedies. This is the first element leading to suicide.”

And while the author holds a very bleak view about modern life, his goal is not to convince people to commit suicide. Instead, Tsurumi wants to open the dialogue about death—he hopes that we won’t view suicide victims in such a negative and shameful light. Life isn’t always butterflies and unicorns. Rather, it can be dark and depressing (just like his book).

And he hopes his writings will resonate with people who are going through a dark period in their lives.

“The truth is, I’ve wanted my readers to live,” he told the AFP.