Suicide is self-education. Suicide demands training and preparation.

“Teach yourself to bear the loss of loved ones bravely,” counsels Seneca. For this prepares one to apply the lesson to oneself.” The Hagakure instructs that one prepares for death in everyday life. The two are inextricable.

Every morning, the samurai … would bathe, shave their foreheads, put lotion on their hair, cut their finger nails and toenails, rubbing them with pumice and then with wood sorrel, and without fail, pay attention to their personal appearance. It goes without saying that their armor in general was kept free from rust, that is was dusted, shined, and arranged.

Although it seems that taking special care of one’s appearance is similar to showiness, it is nothing akin to elegance. Even if you are aware that you may be struck down today and are firmly resolved to an inevitable death, if you are slain with an unseemly appearance, you will show your lack of previous resolve, will be despised by your enemy, and will appear unclean.

It is neither busy-work nor time-consuming. In hardening one’s resolution to die in battle, deliberately becoming as one already dead … there will be no shame.

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[1] Seneca, Essays and Letters, 205.
[2] Hagakure, 39.