Evaluation of the treatment outcome by the cohort analysis method is an important part of tuberculosis (TB) control. In the Japanese TB surveillance system, the treatment outcome is automatically classified by computer according to a pre-set algorithm, so the treatment outcome is evaluated very rigidly. In the case of new sputum smear positive pulmonary TB cases (n = 8,999) newly notified in 2008, the patients' treatment outcomes based on the annual report 2009 database were as follows: "success," which combined "cured" and "completed," was 47.7%, "died" was 19.1%, "failed" was 1.1%, "defaulted" was 3.8%, "transferred out" was 2.8%, "on treatment after 12 months" was 11.8% and "not evaluated" was 13.6%. In addition to evaluation of the treatment outcome by the cohort method, the proportion of deaths was observed among all forms of TB patients (n = 24,571) who were newly registered in 2008. In total, 17.3% of all forms of TB cases died within one year after the beginning of treatment. The proportion corresponding to this was 23.7% for new sputum smear positive pulmonary TB and 23.5% for re-treatment sputum smear positive pulmonary TB. Among the new sputum smear positive pulmonary TB patients (n = 2,136) who died within one year after the beginning of treatment, 37.0% of them died within one month after the beginning of treatment, 51.6% died within two months and 61.9% died within three months.