The idea is to place, side by side, the voluntary death of the Japanese militia during the war in the Pacific with those of the Islamist jihad in order to grasp, from within, the meaning of this death act. We will first present the concept of the altruistic, selfless voluntary death with the use of typologies of suicide by Emile Durkheim and Jean Baechler. Then, we will confront the concept with the suicide attacks of the Japanese kamikaze and the suicide attacks of the Islamists. Finally, we will examine the pertinence of the term kamikaze to designate these two different operations, accomplished in extremely different cultural and political contexts.