Does Hiro die in East is East, and if so, how?

In T. C. Boyle’s novel, Hiro dies at the end. His death comes as the culmination to disillusion and what he perceives as his disgrace. He is finally apprehended by the police and ends up in the hospital. He understands that in one way or another, Ruth and the other Thanatopsis guests have betrayed him. Hiro’s dream of America will never become reality. He copes with his hospital stay by planning how to take his own life, bolstered by his attachment to the samurai code, as interpreted in the 20th century, which he had learned about through reading the novels of Yukio Mishima. He gradually transforms the handle of a plastic spoon into a shiv, a home-made stiletto, and uses it to commit seppuku—ritual suicide by disemboweling.