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No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).
Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.
Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston
Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.
Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
About the author
Osamu Dazai
914 books7,573 followersOsamu DAZAI (native name: 太宰治, real name Shūji Tsushima) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.
With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 22,959 reviews
February 5, 2022
An algorithm recommended this to me because I enjoyed Williams' Stoner and I guess this is an example of how algorithms fail to understand the nuances of book preferences.
Sure, there are some similarities between Stoner and No Longer Human-- male protagonist narrates a mostly unremarkable life story, both are sad --but where Stoner was a sad book filled with many uplifting moments of passion, love and integrity, Dazai's book is extremely depressing. Every little event in the life of the protagonist, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is ugly, hateful, without a single speck of joy.
I don't want to be too harsh because I know this book was very personal to the author, who struggled with his own mental health and eventually committed suicide. But reading this book was a horrible experience for me and I am in a good place right now. Please do not read this if you are struggling with depression. I could feel the book dragging me down into a dark place as I was reading.
Some authors showcase the beauty in the mundane, but here the narrator finds every bit of ugliness in it. Nothing brings him joy and we are repeatedly told this matter-of-fact. The misogyny was nauseating, too.
I often enjoy dark, gritty books, but there are some minds I just don't want to be inside.
Sure, there are some similarities between Stoner and No Longer Human-- male protagonist narrates a mostly unremarkable life story, both are sad --but where Stoner was a sad book filled with many uplifting moments of passion, love and integrity, Dazai's book is extremely depressing. Every little event in the life of the protagonist, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is ugly, hateful, without a single speck of joy.
I don't want to be too harsh because I know this book was very personal to the author, who struggled with his own mental health and eventually committed suicide. But reading this book was a horrible experience for me and I am in a good place right now. Please do not read this if you are struggling with depression. I could feel the book dragging me down into a dark place as I was reading.
Some authors showcase the beauty in the mundane, but here the narrator finds every bit of ugliness in it. Nothing brings him joy and we are repeatedly told this matter-of-fact. The misogyny was nauseating, too.
I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics.
I often enjoy dark, gritty books, but there are some minds I just don't want to be inside.
February 23, 2013
I spent like three years just crazy depressed. Grim thoughts all the time, super self destructive, at once alienating and distributing "cries for help" or whatever you wanna call it... sheesh, man. It was so fucked. I'm really glad I got out of that frame of mind and I hope I never go back. No Longer Human was something I read toward the end of that phase. I probably would have been okay anyway, but this shit helped a ton. Dazai totally nails the impossibly bummed out mindset without being corny or melodramatic, and when you're basically just being a little sad black cloud all walking around, you're super cynical and things like this book are almost impossible to find 'cause your first reaction to everything is just to tear it apart and say it sucks... which is hella corny and melodramatic anyway, but if you know what it's like, like, being unbearably, unstoppably sad, and trying to put some sort of normal-ish face on it in your day to day life (between intermittent private and regrettable public freakouts probably), then well, this book pretty much covers all that really, really perfectly.
Oh, also I was loaned the book by this really cute girl who prefaced it by saying "This book reminds me of you." and once I read and finished it and had a grip on what the whole thing was actually about, I realized that that was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me. Shit man, I kinda well up a little when I think about it. Really.
Oh, also I was loaned the book by this really cute girl who prefaced it by saying "This book reminds me of you." and once I read and finished it and had a grip on what the whole thing was actually about, I realized that that was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me. Shit man, I kinda well up a little when I think about it. Really.
August 7, 2024
wow, this piece really explores the... misogyny of the artist 🤔
November 13, 2021
I'm afraid I'm not intelligent enough to comprehend this....
November 30, 2021
lowered it to 1 star just bc men are mad i didn’t like it
January 2, 2024
Society, am I right?
Big bummer. No one's really a fan. And yet here we all are, for better or worse, even against our wishes: cogs in that ol' machine.
That's the tragedy of this book.
We follow Yozo - or we follow the narrator who now has Yozo's journals. Pick your poison. Either way, we spend most of this two-parter reading Yozo's words, from his perspective, as he laments his existence outside of society - nay, outside of HUMANITY ITSELF!
And yet - Yozo is no further removed from the system, or from his fellow humans, than you or I. In fact, if you live under a metaphorical rock (or a literal one, a la Patrick from Spongebob), you may be further off than he is.
Yozo acquiesces to what he sees as the world wanting from him. In turns, he is a class clown, he is married, he is raising a child. At times he covers up what he sees as his inhumanity with addictions and morally gray (or worse) indulgences: alcoholism, prostitution, seduction.
What he defines as his lack of humanity is in fact that he must struggle to appear human - and is there anything more human than that? What better reflects what it means to be a member of society than our fight to adhere to its guidelines?
To me, at least, what makes this story (and its ending) so sad is that Yozo is not the one-of-a-kind outlier he builds his life around believing himself to be. He is just like all of us - which would have disgusted him above all.
Bottom line: I am reformed from thinking all short books are easy reads!
-----------------
pre-review
skin-crawl-y.
review to come / EXACTLY 3.75 stars
-----------------
currently-reading updates
i HATE the translation i was reading (not the edition here) so this is going back on hold.
update: #blessed to have found a different one in a very cool bookstore
-----------------
tbr review
i relate to this title (because i just ate so many peanut butter cookies i'm pretty sure i legally qualify as a baked good)
Big bummer. No one's really a fan. And yet here we all are, for better or worse, even against our wishes: cogs in that ol' machine.
That's the tragedy of this book.
We follow Yozo - or we follow the narrator who now has Yozo's journals. Pick your poison. Either way, we spend most of this two-parter reading Yozo's words, from his perspective, as he laments his existence outside of society - nay, outside of HUMANITY ITSELF!
And yet - Yozo is no further removed from the system, or from his fellow humans, than you or I. In fact, if you live under a metaphorical rock (or a literal one, a la Patrick from Spongebob), you may be further off than he is.
Yozo acquiesces to what he sees as the world wanting from him. In turns, he is a class clown, he is married, he is raising a child. At times he covers up what he sees as his inhumanity with addictions and morally gray (or worse) indulgences: alcoholism, prostitution, seduction.
What he defines as his lack of humanity is in fact that he must struggle to appear human - and is there anything more human than that? What better reflects what it means to be a member of society than our fight to adhere to its guidelines?
To me, at least, what makes this story (and its ending) so sad is that Yozo is not the one-of-a-kind outlier he builds his life around believing himself to be. He is just like all of us - which would have disgusted him above all.
Bottom line: I am reformed from thinking all short books are easy reads!
-----------------
pre-review
skin-crawl-y.
review to come / EXACTLY 3.75 stars
-----------------
currently-reading updates
i HATE the translation i was reading (not the edition here) so this is going back on hold.
update: #blessed to have found a different one in a very cool bookstore
-----------------
tbr review
i relate to this title (because i just ate so many peanut butter cookies i'm pretty sure i legally qualify as a baked good)
August 24, 2024
LXXXV
They say that “time assuages”,—
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no malady.
Emily Dickinson, Part Four: Time and Eternity, The Complete Poems
*
Everything passes. (169)
A gentle breeze brushes the branches of luxuriant trees brimming with cherry blossoms which surround the quaint park bench I chose as my reading spot. A diaphanous cloud softly attached to the sun creates the sensation of being part of a watercolor painting bound to become the antithesis of an actual winter day. Away from the bustle of an anonymous city, from the thoughts that keep accumulating after roaming awkwardly around the mind, trying to repress relentless pangs of sadness. The only sound I would like to hear is the one pages make as they silently turn in order to unfold this heartrending story; one page after the other, reverberating through the Gardens, ensuring the quietude which, by virtue of a book's mere presence, clears my mind completely. If only for a few hours. Or for the briefest minute unable to last sixty wretched seconds.
I wonder if I have actually been happy.
No Longer Human, published in 1948, is a timeless piece of writing that portrays the sense of isolation of Oba Yozo, a confused child who became a troubled man; roughly, a deceitful person unable to show his true nature to most people, a man disqualified as a human being.
The book is mostly composed of three memoranda; the last one is divided into two parts. Dazai interwove significant personal experiences into his writing; it was somewhat striking to identify those autobiographical aspects as I read our tormented protagonist's story.
The first memorandum is about Yozo's childhood. From an early age, he felt overwhelmed by a profound sense of alienation, which was increased by the presence of his overbearing father. In the end, incapable of understanding human beings, confused by their selfishness and artificial personalities, he steps into the world and becomes another unauthentic person, begetting the perception of having a jocose and amusing manner in the eyes of people around him. In his mind, such farce was the only way he could find to face the creatures he feared the most: humans. As these attempts take place, he ends up harboring a feeling many of us are familiar with but, in another display of egotism triggered by human condition, perhaps the limitations of our surroundings, we tend to think we are the only ones feeling that way.
All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? – I don't know.
I could connect with some of Yozo's reflections, naturally. I am not someone who immediately trusts in people, especially after many close encounters with disappointment. In that sense, I understood completely the character's reasons for keeping his agonies locked in his chest, imbued with a persistent sense of mistrust. Nevertheless, I could never endorse his absolute insincerity towards everybody. It is impossible not to take this book to everyday life; how distressing it must be to interact with someone so irrationally fearful and indecisive, unwilling to respond when another person tries to reach out, incapable of seeing his ability to actually love. Yozo's feigned emotions, which culminated with the perfect role of the farcical eccentric, somehow shielded the people who cared about him from his recurrent fears, though the element he chose to protect himself (and them, who knows) was deception.
The second memorandum is mostly about the continuation of Yozo's self-destructive behavior, which by then included excessive drinking, smoking and many encounters with prostitutes (to whom he dedicates some degrading observations). Until he finds a woman who makes him feel, for the first time, as if he had freed himself from fear and uneasiness. He didn't feel the need to hide his gloomy disposition. Unfortunately, things rapidly started to go awry.
The weak fear happiness itself.
Even though he had many love affairs, one thing did not change: he was equally cruel to all women who cared about him . The seemingly cogent arguments and plausible excuses to justify his actions are infinite. In any case, the results were indelible wounds and irreparable consequences.
“You look like someone who's had an unhappy childhood. You're so sensitive–more's the pity for you.”
That same memorandum also reflects the conflicts that are present in human relationships in the context of an adverse socio-economic status. At one point, the humiliation of not being able to provide for a woman was insufferable; the last straw that culminated in another mistake.
The third memorandum chronicles the protagonist's late twenties.
Several ambivalent feelings arise from reading about a character such as Yozo. I was able to comprehend some of his fears and his genuine sense of alienation, though other times I saw him as an inconsiderate man who epitomized cruelty and selfishness.
After a life of lying to himself and to others, Yozo chooses to write about his miseries and atrocious acts without a shred of falseness. Without resorting to any sentimentality – in contrast to his entire existence, his notebooks do not try to please anyone – he tells his story without engaging in unavailing circumlocution, elegantly gliding to the brink of brutal honesty as he circumvents every rule of an ostensibly civilized world. Despite the stark writing style which predominated in the novel, Dazai endowed it with not only plentiful profound meditations which may resonate with many readers around the globe, but with an exquisite language reminiscent of wistful fragments of poetry written in some bleak hotel room. There is no rhapsody of praise to nature, no writer simply extolling the virtues of silence. This novel is a one-way ticket to a person's psyche. Indubitably, a memorable journey since Dazai's words might linger in the vicinity of one's mind for far too long.
Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in this world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarely, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody... Am I what they call and egoist? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit? I really don't know myself, but since I seem in either case to be a mass of vices, I drop steadily, inevitably, into unhappiness, and I have no specific plan to stave off my descent.
Selfishness or a weak spirit. I am not in the position to ascertain to which of those personalities Yozo belongs. Recently, I stumbled upon a quote by Jane Austen (which can be found in her novel Mansfield Park) that makes me ponder his situation, since it states the following: “Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.” In that context, Austen only refers to selfishness; she is not as bold as one M. de Norpois (I just met him so I still don't know what to think of him) who declared once that for every sin there is forgiveness.
We all carry within us some degree of egoism – in fact, it can be seen as another defense mechanism regarding the protection of one's heart; I should know. But of course, some humans are replete with it. So much so that sometimes they might seem incapable of feeling pain, as they might do everything in their power to avoid it, regardless of the pain they are inflicting on others. To me, Yozo's case is somewhat paradigmatic; he relied on his antics to deceive people – and thereby being able to deal with them – instead of turning to superficially veracious words he never meant to say or a perpetual pusillanimous silence. Either way, Yozo suffers; he is not a pretender who thinks that being unable to fit into society is something that makes him special. It makes him truly unhappy. However, fighting for our existence is certainly not impossible; as a matter of fact, it is a more reasonable plan than sitting comfortably, feeling miserable and just waiting for the world's gaping maw to tear us apart.
I thought, “As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
Unlike Austen, I can't say for sure that there is no hope of a cure. The idealistic within me, breathing optimism and naivety daily, will claim that there is. The cynical within me, a little bruised due to some unpleasant experiences in life, will guarantee that, in reality, there is no remedy for such unfortunate malady. Despite this state of uncertainty, I agree with the first part of Austen's statement; we should forgive. As Dickinson's poem continues to echo in my head, the thought that time alone doesn't heal all wounds resounds just as much; indeed, it is what we do with that time that may alleviate certain symptoms. Forgiveness is an active way to deal with anything that once caused a small cut or unfathomable pain. It is not only part of a process which is essential to avoid hardening one's heart, it is also a humane way to treat others, even those whose actions leave a bittersweet aftertaste. Even if I am not forgiven. Not that the world needs my foolish perspectives in the form of endless paragraphs of little merit, of course, but I for one choose to forgive, and that decision is made taking into consideration, among other things, the possibility that such cure, in fact, does not exist. I wouldn't want to magnify the weight of the cross that some people have to carry around, for the absence of said remedy might be already too harsh a punishment.
As I turn the last page, the once-luminous scenery transforms into a typical winter day. Storm clouds are already appearing on the horizon; they will soon cover the empty cherry trees and me. I walk back home, trying not to dwell on the intense azure of the sky, the park bench, the clear lake I never mentioned, the cherry blossoms, and the tragedy of being no longer human. Trying not to think. Indomitable thoughts.
Aug 28, 16
* Also on my blog.
May 22, 2024
when the dead bug in your house suddenly becomes a book
May 27, 2024
‘I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live a life of a human being,’ writes Yozo, the narrator of Osamu Dazai’s partly autobiographical novel No Longer Human. But what is it to be human in the first place and in a society that finds success at the expense of others, have we let the wolves in human clothing dictate the definition for us? Is being human simply the degradations and deceits self-justified by society, sidelining anyone that gets in the way of social climbers who manipulate this social compass as best befitting their hierarchical lusts? The novel, framed as a collection of journals gifted to an overarching narrator, follow the life of self-proclaimed social outcast Yozo from his childhood being a class clown to cover up for his fears and overwhelming imposter syndrome, to a wreckless adulthood of alcoholism and apathy as his world collapses around him. Yet for a novel of being a social outcast, we find this book to be almost unbearably human, and if it is painfully dark it is only because it tears apart the veil of fictions we delude ourselves with to not acknowledge the depths of depravity inherent in reality. Both empathetic yet cowardly and despicable, Yozo is an tormented artist who both stumbles and is pulled downward in a world to slake the thirsts of those who crave the downfalls of others to feel better about oneself. With dark franticness and insights that recall Hamsun's Hunger and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, Osamu Dazai has created a powerful look at humanity and society that will leave you trembling and agonizing over the sad fate of Yozo.
‘People talk of social outcasts. The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a "social outcast" from the moment I was born. If I ever met someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.’
In all of Yozo’s apprehensions, anxieties and absence of trust in others (‘I have always shook with fright before human beings.’) there is something very real and easily empathetic. In his youth, all those around him viewed him as a confident comedian, unshakable and affable but through his words we see just the opposite is true inside. ‘As long as I can make them laugh,’ Yozo writes, ‘I’ll be alright.’ It is a reminder that those who are smiling are not always happy, and that depression can lurk even in the most pleasant of people. The suicides or early deaths of despair within circles of comedians and entertainers, for instance, frequently came to mind while reading No Longer Human.
It also kept bringing a favorite song to mind: That’s Just The Way That I Feel by Purple Mountains (fronted by the amazing poet David Berman, rest in peace buddy). When this album first dropped I listened to this song every single day while walking to work. It was dark, yet darkly funny (c’mon, ‘I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion’ is a PERFECT line and could also very well be said of Yozo) and sort of soothed the bad vibes I was living through at the time. When Berman decided it was time to depart this world a few months later, relistening to this song it slapped me in the face how present this impending end was all over the lyrics. He said it out loud, but it was only in retrospect how blatant it was. Knowing that Osamu Dazai would throw himself into the ocean in a double suicide not long after completing this novel, there is a certain ominous shadow cast over all the talk and acts of suicide that take place within the book.
But like David Berman’s song, I found this book to be darkly funny and oddly comforting at the beginning, poking fun at those with their fake smuggery and feeling quite understood about many anxieties or distastes for society. It’s hard not to get a chuckle at scenes such as when he joins the student communist group and is annoyed at all their lectures because he insists just basic math is all you’d need to know that capitalism was bad. I also certainly identified with his ‘desire to please born from my desperate mania for service,’ which reminds me why I thrive in customer service jobs like libraries and bartending: what Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as bad faith in his example of being a waiter can sometimes be a fun playacting to assuage imposter syndrome and annul your anxieties in order to make it through the work day. Yet the idealized, playacted self can never truly replace the real self, and the dissonance between the two will slowly eat away at you, day by day, fake smile by fake smile.
‘For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.’
‘I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives��.purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit,’ he says, which sums up so much of his character. Yozo believes we are all self-deluding and that perhaps he is the only one honest enough with himself and society to truly grasp it. When questioning if he is capable of actual love he writes that he ‘should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings possess this faculty.’ Yozo is a rather passive person, and while he is able to live in character as his idealized self during his youth, the cracks between the real and the ideal begin to form in adulthood. This is only furthered through substance abuse and that his ‘last quest for love I was to direct at human beings,’ opens him up to pains that even drink and drugs cannot mask.
‘What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”?’
As Yozo more and more feels himself as an outcast, he begins to question exactly what it is that divides human society from those no longer human such as himself. Set in a post-war Japan, much of Dazai’s book critiques the modernization of Japanese society in the mid to late 1940s and what Yozo fears is becoming less an actual collective society for common good but one that is a society of the individual. ‘What is society but an individual?’ he asks, baffled by those who pretend it is anything but. Society, it seems, is only those who are productive and valuable for profits of others, but even here there is a hierarchy, much like Sayaka Murata’s modern critique on Japanese society in Convenience Store Woman examines how one can be an outcast even when being a high performer at their job simply because their job is not deemed valuable enough by society (the ironies of the pandemic lockdowns and the “essential workers” remaining at work were often low-wage grocery and other retail workers). Production and use-value are all that seem to be valued, and his idea of beautiful art for the sake of beauty is corrupted into making vulgar cartoons simply because they sell (and the profits can be used to consume more alcohol). Yozo views this shift in society as isolating people from one another, and even in his make-shift family with Shizuko and her daughter he cannot seem to believe they mesh as a ‘true’ family but merely he is an individual near them. In his failure to be a father figure, he has also failed to live up to the duties of a patriarchal society (and Yozo’s struggles with his own father may be Dazai’s criticisms of a patriarchal government as well).
‘Human beings...speak of duty to one’s country and suchlike things, but the object of their efforts is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual.’
This rather bleak portrait of the masks we wear in society does unfortunately also have a very gendered hierarchy that Yozo participates in. Much of the commentary on women is very problematic, and likely reflective of time and society. It is also here we start to see the weakness and cruelties in Yozo that he hides behind his affable nature and often ignores in his own scathing self-assessments. When his own wife is sexually assaulted, he criticizes her for becoming too timid and is more concerned that she might have been unfaithful to him elsewhere than actually worrying about her own emotional state and helping her. He leaves her, the asshole, and becomes the very thing he despises about a world that lets others collapse under the weight of a violent and selfish humanity. It becomes painful to watch his decline into the despicable, but perhaps Dazai is asking us should we not pity and aid even the most wretched? If not, are we any better than the evil people we criticize?
‘The “world,” after all, was still a place of bottomless horror.’
This is certainly not a book for the faint of heart and really probes into the depths of humanity to directly into the darkest corners. ‘The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes,’ Yozo says, and we watch as he falters and falls into being that very thing. Yet this remains more a criticism of the postmodern world, of a society of the individual, and of a world that values profit over people and creates the snares to make others fall. A bleak yet oddly beautiful book.
4.5/5
‘After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.’
‘People talk of social outcasts. The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a "social outcast" from the moment I was born. If I ever met someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.’
In all of Yozo’s apprehensions, anxieties and absence of trust in others (‘I have always shook with fright before human beings.’) there is something very real and easily empathetic. In his youth, all those around him viewed him as a confident comedian, unshakable and affable but through his words we see just the opposite is true inside. ‘As long as I can make them laugh,’ Yozo writes, ‘I’ll be alright.’ It is a reminder that those who are smiling are not always happy, and that depression can lurk even in the most pleasant of people. The suicides or early deaths of despair within circles of comedians and entertainers, for instance, frequently came to mind while reading No Longer Human.
It also kept bringing a favorite song to mind: That’s Just The Way That I Feel by Purple Mountains (fronted by the amazing poet David Berman, rest in peace buddy). When this album first dropped I listened to this song every single day while walking to work. It was dark, yet darkly funny (c’mon, ‘I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion’ is a PERFECT line and could also very well be said of Yozo) and sort of soothed the bad vibes I was living through at the time. When Berman decided it was time to depart this world a few months later, relistening to this song it slapped me in the face how present this impending end was all over the lyrics. He said it out loud, but it was only in retrospect how blatant it was. Knowing that Osamu Dazai would throw himself into the ocean in a double suicide not long after completing this novel, there is a certain ominous shadow cast over all the talk and acts of suicide that take place within the book.
But like David Berman’s song, I found this book to be darkly funny and oddly comforting at the beginning, poking fun at those with their fake smuggery and feeling quite understood about many anxieties or distastes for society. It’s hard not to get a chuckle at scenes such as when he joins the student communist group and is annoyed at all their lectures because he insists just basic math is all you’d need to know that capitalism was bad. I also certainly identified with his ‘desire to please born from my desperate mania for service,’ which reminds me why I thrive in customer service jobs like libraries and bartending: what Jean-Paul Sartre referred to as bad faith in his example of being a waiter can sometimes be a fun playacting to assuage imposter syndrome and annul your anxieties in order to make it through the work day. Yet the idealized, playacted self can never truly replace the real self, and the dissonance between the two will slowly eat away at you, day by day, fake smile by fake smile.
‘For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.’
‘I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives��.purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit,’ he says, which sums up so much of his character. Yozo believes we are all self-deluding and that perhaps he is the only one honest enough with himself and society to truly grasp it. When questioning if he is capable of actual love he writes that he ‘should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings possess this faculty.’ Yozo is a rather passive person, and while he is able to live in character as his idealized self during his youth, the cracks between the real and the ideal begin to form in adulthood. This is only furthered through substance abuse and that his ‘last quest for love I was to direct at human beings,’ opens him up to pains that even drink and drugs cannot mask.
‘What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”?’
As Yozo more and more feels himself as an outcast, he begins to question exactly what it is that divides human society from those no longer human such as himself. Set in a post-war Japan, much of Dazai’s book critiques the modernization of Japanese society in the mid to late 1940s and what Yozo fears is becoming less an actual collective society for common good but one that is a society of the individual. ‘What is society but an individual?’ he asks, baffled by those who pretend it is anything but. Society, it seems, is only those who are productive and valuable for profits of others, but even here there is a hierarchy, much like Sayaka Murata’s modern critique on Japanese society in Convenience Store Woman examines how one can be an outcast even when being a high performer at their job simply because their job is not deemed valuable enough by society (the ironies of the pandemic lockdowns and the “essential workers” remaining at work were often low-wage grocery and other retail workers). Production and use-value are all that seem to be valued, and his idea of beautiful art for the sake of beauty is corrupted into making vulgar cartoons simply because they sell (and the profits can be used to consume more alcohol). Yozo views this shift in society as isolating people from one another, and even in his make-shift family with Shizuko and her daughter he cannot seem to believe they mesh as a ‘true’ family but merely he is an individual near them. In his failure to be a father figure, he has also failed to live up to the duties of a patriarchal society (and Yozo’s struggles with his own father may be Dazai’s criticisms of a patriarchal government as well).
‘Human beings...speak of duty to one’s country and suchlike things, but the object of their efforts is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual.’
This rather bleak portrait of the masks we wear in society does unfortunately also have a very gendered hierarchy that Yozo participates in. Much of the commentary on women is very problematic, and likely reflective of time and society. It is also here we start to see the weakness and cruelties in Yozo that he hides behind his affable nature and often ignores in his own scathing self-assessments. When his own wife is sexually assaulted, he criticizes her for becoming too timid and is more concerned that she might have been unfaithful to him elsewhere than actually worrying about her own emotional state and helping her. He leaves her, the asshole, and becomes the very thing he despises about a world that lets others collapse under the weight of a violent and selfish humanity. It becomes painful to watch his decline into the despicable, but perhaps Dazai is asking us should we not pity and aid even the most wretched? If not, are we any better than the evil people we criticize?
‘The “world,” after all, was still a place of bottomless horror.’
This is certainly not a book for the faint of heart and really probes into the depths of humanity to directly into the darkest corners. ‘The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes,’ Yozo says, and we watch as he falters and falls into being that very thing. Yet this remains more a criticism of the postmodern world, of a society of the individual, and of a world that values profit over people and creates the snares to make others fall. A bleak yet oddly beautiful book.
4.5/5
‘After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.’
July 11, 2022
2.5*
I’ve been struggling how to rate this novel but the answer became clear to me when I started to write this review, one month after I finished it. I stared blankly in front of my computer, trying to remember what this book was about. I do not have a good book memory but it does not happen often to retain so few details about what I read so soon after I finished. As such, I cannot go higher than 2-2.5* since it left no lasting impression on me.
After some time, all I could remember about the story is that it recounts the life of a self-centered misfit who covers his misery by acting the clown with other people. He is extremely self-critical and does not consider himself human due to the way he deceives the people around him. Because of this duplicity, he succumbs to alcoholism and depression. It was a very bleak novel.
I am a bit tired of reading about these miserable, alienated men. It’s interesting once or twice but It’s getting old. Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, Camus, only to name a few that I’ve liked better.
I’ve been struggling how to rate this novel but the answer became clear to me when I started to write this review, one month after I finished it. I stared blankly in front of my computer, trying to remember what this book was about. I do not have a good book memory but it does not happen often to retain so few details about what I read so soon after I finished. As such, I cannot go higher than 2-2.5* since it left no lasting impression on me.
After some time, all I could remember about the story is that it recounts the life of a self-centered misfit who covers his misery by acting the clown with other people. He is extremely self-critical and does not consider himself human due to the way he deceives the people around him. Because of this duplicity, he succumbs to alcoholism and depression. It was a very bleak novel.
I am a bit tired of reading about these miserable, alienated men. It’s interesting once or twice but It’s getting old. Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, Camus, only to name a few that I’ve liked better.
May 28, 2023
“I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics.”
“I have never been able to get interested when women talk about themselves. It may be because women are so inept at telling a story (that is, because they place the emphasis in the wrong places), or for some other reason. In any case, I have always turned them a deaf ear.”
This man was a loser
“I have never been able to get interested when women talk about themselves. It may be because women are so inept at telling a story (that is, because they place the emphasis in the wrong places), or for some other reason. In any case, I have always turned them a deaf ear.”
This man was a loser
September 29, 2021
i want to study him in a laboratory
July 7, 2018
Fails to deliver and didn't captivate me or draw me in in any serious way at all. Time passes, and things happen, but I feel like there's no reason for me to care. I don't feel anything reading this, and that's odd considering the topics dealt with. 177 pages blow by and leave no mark or trace at all. There are beautiful passages here, to be sure, but the book is, in my opinion, largely forgettable. Perhaps an issue with the translation?
January 22, 2023
"Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being."
No Longer Human tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Someone who feels so detached from society and everyone around him that he feels he must pretend to be like them to avoid their wrath.
Oba Yozo, our protagonist, is a somewhat unlikable character. He is dark, he is miserable, he is monotone. He makes bad choices while blaming the world around him, and stands by and watches as people who trust him are abused. Yet his musings on what it means to be human and the alienation he feels have an uncanny authenticity. He lays bare all the ugliness and hypocrisy that define us. What does it mean to be human, to fit in? Does being human mean you're a good liar? Good at wearing the right mask at the right time?
Semi-autobiographical, this is the story of the author Osamu Dazai, one of the most significant narrators of Japanese literature and published shortly before his suicide.
The text is defined by the excruciating sadness that engulfed the author throughout his life. The action is fictitious, but the protagonist, Yozo, inherited many qualities from the creator.
This one goes to some very dark places but if you’re ok with that, I can't recommend it enough. There is so much to digest in this book. I know it won't leave my thoughts for a long while.
If you do decide to pick it up, don’t be surprised if you suffer an existential crisis while reading.
Highly Recommend
No Longer Human tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Someone who feels so detached from society and everyone around him that he feels he must pretend to be like them to avoid their wrath.
Oba Yozo, our protagonist, is a somewhat unlikable character. He is dark, he is miserable, he is monotone. He makes bad choices while blaming the world around him, and stands by and watches as people who trust him are abused. Yet his musings on what it means to be human and the alienation he feels have an uncanny authenticity. He lays bare all the ugliness and hypocrisy that define us. What does it mean to be human, to fit in? Does being human mean you're a good liar? Good at wearing the right mask at the right time?
Semi-autobiographical, this is the story of the author Osamu Dazai, one of the most significant narrators of Japanese literature and published shortly before his suicide.
The text is defined by the excruciating sadness that engulfed the author throughout his life. The action is fictitious, but the protagonist, Yozo, inherited many qualities from the creator.
This one goes to some very dark places but if you’re ok with that, I can't recommend it enough. There is so much to digest in this book. I know it won't leave my thoughts for a long while.
If you do decide to pick it up, don’t be surprised if you suffer an existential crisis while reading.
Highly Recommend
July 4, 2024
Man's life is like a flowing river. What is there to fret over?
-Osamu Dazai
What does it mean to be human? The question has been haunting humankind right from the onset of civilization, all factions of human society- namely religious leaders, philosophers, scientists, artists, sociologists- have been continuously seeking answers to the question but have they achieved success, perhaps not, probably in parts. And why do we behave the way we do? How far we have come in our journey to comprehend the humanity in fullest and what is our future, where would we go from here? What role do our culture and upbringing play in making us what we are? These are some of the questions which keep on tormenting our soul in our exploration of being human. Though we may have not been to forge answers to all these inquiries of humanity about humanity, but these probing scrutinies more or less gave birth to our art, culture and philosophy and how would humanity react to the upsurge of technology and artificial intelligence is still a fascinating causal enigma to be watched, either with zeal or horror but certainly with thrill.
When we say that faithful inquiries to the abovementioned questions help us to be what we really are, what do we exactly mean by it? And what does being human comprise of, does it have the sheer unadulterated, eternal joys of life, its fervent passions and zeal? What about the angst, anxiety, and loneliness of life, do they have anything to do with being human? The perpetual solitude of human existence which speaks and resonates so authentically with us, how can we ignore it, even if it means looking at our own shame. What role we have played in the development of our society to what it is today, and how society invariably and profoundly affects the blooming of a human. What does being of a human made up of then, perhaps it encompasses everything which is linked to humanity, be it passion, sorrow, happiness, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, shame, grief or horror; how can then anyone be disqualified to be a human, who is No Longer Human.
link: source
When does one no longer qualify to be a human? The question reverberates in your mind as soon as you pick the book, opening it up with excitement and hope that you may find key(s) to understand the enigma. Oba Yozo, the (anti)hero of the novel starts with a profound proclamation- Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be live the life of a human being. The opening lines set the tone of this poignant and evocative exploration of what does it take to be a human. Yozo takes you on a long sojourn from his childhood to adulthood by declaring his innate inability to reveal himself to others and thereby unable to adjust to society, right from his early days.
As a child, Yozo fails to understand what role dullness or mundanity plays in human life, it gives the readers a sense of relief since we all feel the same way in our childhood and a sense of belongingness provides us solace there as if Yozo belongs to our own world and no alien to it. It is only when we overcome the fantasies and dreams of early life to graduate towards the sensible and rational days of adulthood, we do really understand how mediocrity and mundanity help us to brave our existential ordeal. So, we see a glimmer of optimism and faith in Yozo’s case too. However, to our dismay, Yozo, whose first impulse is nothing, lacks the courage and strength to act in accordance with the truth and thus is disqualified from being human. There is an eternal distance which lies between Yozo and society, for he does not seem to understand human nature and thereby how to communicate and connect with people, something which becomes his destiny for entire lifetime. He develops a sort of veil to adjust to the norms of society as he lacks the audacity to act authentically and transforms himself into a ‘clown’- making people laugh so that they may not be able to see his incompetence and ineptitude, for the human beings around him have rigorously sealed him off from the world of trust or distrust.
Generally, we see that in such a situation the person responds by showing contempt and indictment towards people around him, towards society. However, Yozo decides to be a searing critic of himself and what follows is a serious and honest depiction of his struggle to understand what really a ‘human’ is. Though he appears like anyone else from his outward demeanor of normalcy as if he is well grounded in his understanding of world but inside him lies a profound abyss of alienation and sadness which is hard to bridge, how difficult it must be to find yourself unable to understand yourself and thereby others, the extreme loneliness and misery it might bring is hard to imagine. Nonetheless, Yozo reacts by metamorphosizing himself into a ‘clown’ and succeeded by now in completely concealing his true identity since his ‘talents’ have also matured now as he has been honing his skill in ‘clowning’ since childhood. The defense mechanism of Yozo sometimes feels the tremors of the probing eyes of others as they manage to see through him, the horror which may encapsulate the soul of Yozo is hard to imagine and comprehend. The entire existence of Yozo is shredded to nothingness on such an excruciating and soul wrenching encounter, the (in)authentic existence, he has carved out to escape from the searing gaze of ‘others’, takes plunge into the sea of nothingness on such an unexpected rendezvous and ‘death’ springs up to be the only solution.
link: source
Yozo, though becomes an accomplished ‘clown’ over the years but remains an eternal lonely soul which has been ruthlessly and disdainfully withdrawn from the society, longs for human relationships out of the basic human instinct to seek for validation and acceptance by others. He conjures up a series of relationships of the unamicable and hostile friendship, and various affairs of unconsummated love, but he does not find respite from the endless loneliness. Although he tries to find comfort and solace through several distractions, which humanity has concocted over the years to brave through existential uneasiness, such as art classes, liquor, Marxism, brothels, drugs etc. but, despite his obvious contempt and scorn for the society, his heart cries out for human acquaintances.
The nihilistic attitude of Yozo towards humanity stems from no sense of attachment to anything or anyone and no craving for any possessions or any relationships, he never feels the human emotions with positive overtones such as love, sympathy, empathy, attachment, affection and pity; the only human emotions which seem to resonate with him would be grief, shame, remorse, rejection, humiliation and sadness, as if they come naturally to him. Over the years, he develops a startling, unnerving portrait of himself as if he is a devilish ghost, a walking corpse who is already dead and forgotten by the world long ago but just waiting to be buried. The ghostly existence of Yozo declares him as a social outcast who is considered to be out of the world of normal human society as if his being is on lease of borrowed existence which does not have any authenticity, struggling on its way through sea of nothingness and watching with profound horror to be completely engulfed by and submersed in the sea. Gradually, Yozo has been robbed off everything he conjured up for his existence, which includes his will, desire, grief, even the right of suffering, and he gets transformed into a sort of monster of non-being who, one may think, becomes truly unfamiliar and unknown to our world and therefore without any chance of recovery, he is no longer human but then the narrator springs up from nothingness to do some damage control in the epilogue of the book.
What could be said about such an example of human existence since one may wonder that when human beings get that way, they may be of no use to themselves or society in general. But could we judge our existence on the parameter of utility alone, our hero- Yozo- could not face the world in its reality therefore made clowning his existential veil which helps him to brave through the existential malaise of his life, but we have other people (like Flatfish) who play ‘clown’ for no reason perhaps it is basic human tendency to deal with its existential ordeal through irrationality and selfishness. Nonetheless, the author has been able to pen down a harrowing and savage treatise on human nature, and it has been written with painful honesty, eventually to affirm that Yozo fails to notice the fleeting tenderness and love humanity is capable of, as if he has blinded by the overbearing exposure to viciousness of humanity. There are obvious traits of autobiographical elements in the novel as it is written in first-person narrative and supposed to be a great example of popular I-novel of Japan, and demands your constant attention due to the self-reflective prose forged by the author without sentimentality and deals with unpretentious ruthlessness of life and the transient, fragile, and divine movements of compassion of humanity.
link: source
As one may expect with Japanese literature, death remains central to theme of No Longer Human too since Yozo wishes innumerable times that violent death may be easy than killing someone as death may provide him an escape route from the adversaries of life while killing requires a profound effort which may even bring happiness to the one being killed. Though he could believe in hell, but heaven was not much for him, such is the condition of conscience of Yozo as if his consciousness is being plagued by some eternal cowardice and sadness, there is a feeble of voice of resistance which dies down inside himself without seeing the light of outside. The depressed and profoundly sad heart of his cries out on seeing no chance of recovery and often seeks refuge in suffering and many a times, longs for ‘suicide’ to find liberation from his existential malaise but he has been robbed off from any sort of comfort even suffering may provide. Could suffering provide solace to our tormented soul nevertheless, we crave for suffering more than happiness as if it is something dear and natural to our heart; of course, the psychologists would say that it is a sign of a depression but, we know that it is not so simple to understand human emotions and thereby human consciousness.
Though the impact of West on Japanese literature can't be ignored but we sense an angst among authors to carve out their own identity and voice amidst the influence of the West. The attitude of the West also needs to evolved to accept other cultures as conglomerates of the various impressions on them and that after breaking off from the West, modern Japanese literature (at least in case of Osamu Dazai) has developed a distinctive voice of its own without losing its own originality and denying the influences either. No Longer Human has been one of the most challenging books for me to review, for what is to be written about a book which itself is like a discourse on humanity, a creation which is so pure and fragile that any sort of superfluousness and adulation may disturb the fine balance of its prose and shred it to nothingness. The weak and feeble character of Yozo makes me ponder upon the vulnerability of our lives and as soon as I finished the book an eerie sense of profound emptiness wrapped my soul as if it opened up a deep wound in my heart but that wound became so dear to me that I longer cared for the heart. I started it again from beginning, kept on flipping through the pages perhaps to look for key(s) of human existence or probably to discharge my soul off the disquieting uneasiness that springs up from the shame and trepidation on realizing that it may be the treatise of entire humanity.
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
-Osamu Dazai
What does it mean to be human? The question has been haunting humankind right from the onset of civilization, all factions of human society- namely religious leaders, philosophers, scientists, artists, sociologists- have been continuously seeking answers to the question but have they achieved success, perhaps not, probably in parts. And why do we behave the way we do? How far we have come in our journey to comprehend the humanity in fullest and what is our future, where would we go from here? What role do our culture and upbringing play in making us what we are? These are some of the questions which keep on tormenting our soul in our exploration of being human. Though we may have not been to forge answers to all these inquiries of humanity about humanity, but these probing scrutinies more or less gave birth to our art, culture and philosophy and how would humanity react to the upsurge of technology and artificial intelligence is still a fascinating causal enigma to be watched, either with zeal or horror but certainly with thrill.
When we say that faithful inquiries to the abovementioned questions help us to be what we really are, what do we exactly mean by it? And what does being human comprise of, does it have the sheer unadulterated, eternal joys of life, its fervent passions and zeal? What about the angst, anxiety, and loneliness of life, do they have anything to do with being human? The perpetual solitude of human existence which speaks and resonates so authentically with us, how can we ignore it, even if it means looking at our own shame. What role we have played in the development of our society to what it is today, and how society invariably and profoundly affects the blooming of a human. What does being of a human made up of then, perhaps it encompasses everything which is linked to humanity, be it passion, sorrow, happiness, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, shame, grief or horror; how can then anyone be disqualified to be a human, who is No Longer Human.
link: source
When does one no longer qualify to be a human? The question reverberates in your mind as soon as you pick the book, opening it up with excitement and hope that you may find key(s) to understand the enigma. Oba Yozo, the (anti)hero of the novel starts with a profound proclamation- Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be live the life of a human being. The opening lines set the tone of this poignant and evocative exploration of what does it take to be a human. Yozo takes you on a long sojourn from his childhood to adulthood by declaring his innate inability to reveal himself to others and thereby unable to adjust to society, right from his early days.
As a child, Yozo fails to understand what role dullness or mundanity plays in human life, it gives the readers a sense of relief since we all feel the same way in our childhood and a sense of belongingness provides us solace there as if Yozo belongs to our own world and no alien to it. It is only when we overcome the fantasies and dreams of early life to graduate towards the sensible and rational days of adulthood, we do really understand how mediocrity and mundanity help us to brave our existential ordeal. So, we see a glimmer of optimism and faith in Yozo’s case too. However, to our dismay, Yozo, whose first impulse is nothing, lacks the courage and strength to act in accordance with the truth and thus is disqualified from being human. There is an eternal distance which lies between Yozo and society, for he does not seem to understand human nature and thereby how to communicate and connect with people, something which becomes his destiny for entire lifetime. He develops a sort of veil to adjust to the norms of society as he lacks the audacity to act authentically and transforms himself into a ‘clown’- making people laugh so that they may not be able to see his incompetence and ineptitude, for the human beings around him have rigorously sealed him off from the world of trust or distrust.
Generally, we see that in such a situation the person responds by showing contempt and indictment towards people around him, towards society. However, Yozo decides to be a searing critic of himself and what follows is a serious and honest depiction of his struggle to understand what really a ‘human’ is. Though he appears like anyone else from his outward demeanor of normalcy as if he is well grounded in his understanding of world but inside him lies a profound abyss of alienation and sadness which is hard to bridge, how difficult it must be to find yourself unable to understand yourself and thereby others, the extreme loneliness and misery it might bring is hard to imagine. Nonetheless, Yozo reacts by metamorphosizing himself into a ‘clown’ and succeeded by now in completely concealing his true identity since his ‘talents’ have also matured now as he has been honing his skill in ‘clowning’ since childhood. The defense mechanism of Yozo sometimes feels the tremors of the probing eyes of others as they manage to see through him, the horror which may encapsulate the soul of Yozo is hard to imagine and comprehend. The entire existence of Yozo is shredded to nothingness on such an excruciating and soul wrenching encounter, the (in)authentic existence, he has carved out to escape from the searing gaze of ‘others’, takes plunge into the sea of nothingness on such an unexpected rendezvous and ‘death’ springs up to be the only solution.
link: source
Yozo, though becomes an accomplished ‘clown’ over the years but remains an eternal lonely soul which has been ruthlessly and disdainfully withdrawn from the society, longs for human relationships out of the basic human instinct to seek for validation and acceptance by others. He conjures up a series of relationships of the unamicable and hostile friendship, and various affairs of unconsummated love, but he does not find respite from the endless loneliness. Although he tries to find comfort and solace through several distractions, which humanity has concocted over the years to brave through existential uneasiness, such as art classes, liquor, Marxism, brothels, drugs etc. but, despite his obvious contempt and scorn for the society, his heart cries out for human acquaintances.
The nihilistic attitude of Yozo towards humanity stems from no sense of attachment to anything or anyone and no craving for any possessions or any relationships, he never feels the human emotions with positive overtones such as love, sympathy, empathy, attachment, affection and pity; the only human emotions which seem to resonate with him would be grief, shame, remorse, rejection, humiliation and sadness, as if they come naturally to him. Over the years, he develops a startling, unnerving portrait of himself as if he is a devilish ghost, a walking corpse who is already dead and forgotten by the world long ago but just waiting to be buried. The ghostly existence of Yozo declares him as a social outcast who is considered to be out of the world of normal human society as if his being is on lease of borrowed existence which does not have any authenticity, struggling on its way through sea of nothingness and watching with profound horror to be completely engulfed by and submersed in the sea. Gradually, Yozo has been robbed off everything he conjured up for his existence, which includes his will, desire, grief, even the right of suffering, and he gets transformed into a sort of monster of non-being who, one may think, becomes truly unfamiliar and unknown to our world and therefore without any chance of recovery, he is no longer human but then the narrator springs up from nothingness to do some damage control in the epilogue of the book.
What could be said about such an example of human existence since one may wonder that when human beings get that way, they may be of no use to themselves or society in general. But could we judge our existence on the parameter of utility alone, our hero- Yozo- could not face the world in its reality therefore made clowning his existential veil which helps him to brave through the existential malaise of his life, but we have other people (like Flatfish) who play ‘clown’ for no reason perhaps it is basic human tendency to deal with its existential ordeal through irrationality and selfishness. Nonetheless, the author has been able to pen down a harrowing and savage treatise on human nature, and it has been written with painful honesty, eventually to affirm that Yozo fails to notice the fleeting tenderness and love humanity is capable of, as if he has blinded by the overbearing exposure to viciousness of humanity. There are obvious traits of autobiographical elements in the novel as it is written in first-person narrative and supposed to be a great example of popular I-novel of Japan, and demands your constant attention due to the self-reflective prose forged by the author without sentimentality and deals with unpretentious ruthlessness of life and the transient, fragile, and divine movements of compassion of humanity.
link: source
As one may expect with Japanese literature, death remains central to theme of No Longer Human too since Yozo wishes innumerable times that violent death may be easy than killing someone as death may provide him an escape route from the adversaries of life while killing requires a profound effort which may even bring happiness to the one being killed. Though he could believe in hell, but heaven was not much for him, such is the condition of conscience of Yozo as if his consciousness is being plagued by some eternal cowardice and sadness, there is a feeble of voice of resistance which dies down inside himself without seeing the light of outside. The depressed and profoundly sad heart of his cries out on seeing no chance of recovery and often seeks refuge in suffering and many a times, longs for ‘suicide’ to find liberation from his existential malaise but he has been robbed off from any sort of comfort even suffering may provide. Could suffering provide solace to our tormented soul nevertheless, we crave for suffering more than happiness as if it is something dear and natural to our heart; of course, the psychologists would say that it is a sign of a depression but, we know that it is not so simple to understand human emotions and thereby human consciousness.
Though the impact of West on Japanese literature can't be ignored but we sense an angst among authors to carve out their own identity and voice amidst the influence of the West. The attitude of the West also needs to evolved to accept other cultures as conglomerates of the various impressions on them and that after breaking off from the West, modern Japanese literature (at least in case of Osamu Dazai) has developed a distinctive voice of its own without losing its own originality and denying the influences either. No Longer Human has been one of the most challenging books for me to review, for what is to be written about a book which itself is like a discourse on humanity, a creation which is so pure and fragile that any sort of superfluousness and adulation may disturb the fine balance of its prose and shred it to nothingness. The weak and feeble character of Yozo makes me ponder upon the vulnerability of our lives and as soon as I finished the book an eerie sense of profound emptiness wrapped my soul as if it opened up a deep wound in my heart but that wound became so dear to me that I longer cared for the heart. I started it again from beginning, kept on flipping through the pages perhaps to look for key(s) of human existence or probably to discharge my soul off the disquieting uneasiness that springs up from the shame and trepidation on realizing that it may be the treatise of entire humanity.
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
July 4, 2020
Okay, I'll bite... we live in a society?
Not sure what can be said about this that hasn't already been said before. It is the last novel published by Osamu Dazai before he committed suicide in 1948. It is a "timeless" piece about the dangers of social conformity, but it utterly fails to deliver. 170 pages pass by in a breeze and none of it actually sticks with you, it's very contemporary and unimpactful--even if you know that this is basically the author's final goodbye.
The writing--particularly in the prologue--is utterly astounding, but it sadly is not enough to hold this plot-less book up. The prologue and first notebook show promise but by the first part of the third notebook you really don't even care for the speaker at all. He just feels sorry for himself and hates others for 170 pages; and for what? Because you got caught lying twice? is that why you're so insufferable, Yozo?
The way the speaker so flippantly expresses his hatred of women and sex-workers is rather grim, it's possibly the saddest part of this novel if I'm being honest. Not sure if my distaste for this book comes from the high expectations I had going into it when I had it recommended so much but, I don't know man, it's just not a great novel. It's rather flawed, misguided, and deceiving--much like the speaker is. 1.5 stars, but I can't in good conscience bump it up to 2 stars... Hopefully Junji Ito's adaptation has more substance to it...
Oh by the way, we live in a society.
Not sure what can be said about this that hasn't already been said before. It is the last novel published by Osamu Dazai before he committed suicide in 1948. It is a "timeless" piece about the dangers of social conformity, but it utterly fails to deliver. 170 pages pass by in a breeze and none of it actually sticks with you, it's very contemporary and unimpactful--even if you know that this is basically the author's final goodbye.
The writing--particularly in the prologue--is utterly astounding, but it sadly is not enough to hold this plot-less book up. The prologue and first notebook show promise but by the first part of the third notebook you really don't even care for the speaker at all. He just feels sorry for himself and hates others for 170 pages; and for what? Because you got caught lying twice? is that why you're so insufferable, Yozo?
The way the speaker so flippantly expresses his hatred of women and sex-workers is rather grim, it's possibly the saddest part of this novel if I'm being honest. Not sure if my distaste for this book comes from the high expectations I had going into it when I had it recommended so much but, I don't know man, it's just not a great novel. It's rather flawed, misguided, and deceiving--much like the speaker is. 1.5 stars, but I can't in good conscience bump it up to 2 stars... Hopefully Junji Ito's adaptation has more substance to it...
Oh by the way, we live in a society.
February 19, 2020
(Image taken from the Junji Ito manga adaptation of the novel... which I will also review later)
I do not like typing these words. This is something I hesitate to say during the best of situations, but I simply do not know how to review this book. This is... this book makes me feel like I got a glimpse of something I shouldn't have, and rather than putting it down and walking away, I continued reading someone's most private thoughts. Now obviously, Dazai intended these thoughts to be read, but one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the book is determining how much of it is actually autobiographical.
Dazai lived this book. He uses elements from his own childhood, covers his own depression and records some of his suicide attempts in the book.
Also, when he finished this public depression diary, he successfully committed suicide.
No Longer Human (which could also be translated as Disqualified From Humanity) is a book about depression. It follows a character named Ōba Yōzō from childhood and into adulthood, covering several events, and how he can't handle them from an emotional standpoint. To those looking at him from the outside, they see the classic jocular clown figure... for those of us seeing his inside thoughts, we see someone who is only a few steps away from killing himself at any given moment. Even when placed in a moment of something resembling happiness, it's always almost there.
Yes, this is an uncomfortable read to say the least. As someone who has fought with depression from a young age, this book is extraordinarily uncomfortable as Dazai catches so many of the feelings that go along with it. The self loathing, the sincere belief that other people's problems were probably caused by you, the self importance of your own pain, and viewing anyone else's problems only through your own. Those who have not experienced this may find our narrator a contemptible figure (as, indeed, he often is). Mostly I just viewed him with sympathy, even at his most loathsome, because no matter how much anyone else hates him, I assure you, he hates himself more.
Why is Yōzō so depressed?
Why is anyone? Sure he gives you hints about unpleasant things in his past (while he never outright says it, there is a strong implication that he was sexually abused as a child), but it really feels like even without past trauma, he would still be in the same place. The fact that he doesn't outright say it seems to be implying that as well. He makes no excuses. This is simply who and what he is.
This may also lead to one of the bleakest books I have ever read, though it is certainly does NOT go where I expected it to.
This book is considered a classic in Japan, yet it is not without its own controversy there. It's understandable why. This book captures a feeling not often expressed (and certainly not often expressed in 1948). It's a well written examination of depression, which makes it an extremely difficult read. It's the sort of book that I had to put down frequently, because I found myself overwhelmed, sliding into old unwanted thoughts. This is not a book to read if you're feeling even slightly down, as in a way it is dangerously insidious.
Do I like this book? Yes... and no. I think this is a book that is really damn hard to honestly "like." I think it's a book that could lead to some hell of negative thoughts depending on the reader's current state of mind... but I also think it is an important and powerful work because of that. Looking at this character, its easier to see where he's wrong in his thought processes, something harder to do when having similar thoughts of your own.
I give this book 4 extremely uncomfortable stars out of 5 and recommend only for those who feel prepared to witness this downward spiral.
July 9, 2021
I don't think there was one moment where I enjoyed reading this book. Maybe the end, when it finished. If you like depressed young men being sexist to women, this is the book for you. Not my cup of tea.
July 31, 2015
Behind ballads of an orphaned heart,
Lay poetic trance of a love’s facade.
Dreads the ghostly art within hazy shades,
Human shame in comic masquerades.
Inebriated words coughing in notebooks
Empty sake bottles in curls of smoke,
Vice or virtue, the gullible spirit brags
Diabolical tales of a death mask.
“Everything passes”, cried the blue cradle
Slept, the wings of a fallen angel.
A solitary word blissfully prances from the anxious mind, fears the disintegration of its syllables; the distorted enunciation of its vowels, as it cautiously reaches at the tip of the tongue. The blooming word panicked by the stuttering mouth, bit by bit retreats in to the gloomy interiors of the mind where it will forever be sheltered, far from being judged by bullies and societal predators. A soft smile then becomes the sole redeemer of communication; a polite garb of inner festering trepidation. Alienation juxtaposes human “normalcy” and societal chaos in a silent sanctuary of individuality. Confrontations between personal wraith and societal norms arise, begging to fit in the human world. Human beings are a daunting race walking on a tight rope of the “survival of fittest” cryptogram amalgamating the belligerence of existence in the ugliness of societal wasteland where basic human depravity tumbles in the depths of existential despair.
“My life has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live a life of a human being...”
To live a life of a human being; what is it may I ask? The vision to live through one’s eyes or the obligation to exist through borrowed dreams? Is it to ideally march along with hypocrisy, duplicity, deception and the staunch societal dogma veiled behind a multifaceted mask conceding to the guidelines of human race. ? Does life become a shameless ruffian when one questions the truth behind the worldly sentiments? The clueless boy in the pictures failed to grasp the intricacies of human life. Horror and alienation that ran from through his childhood into the complexities of adulthood peeked through his clowning masquerades. A smile he thought would wipe all his trepidation and give him a homely asylum in a world that was bizarre and hellish. The “ghost pictures” screamed through the tinted strokes, rebelled the obligatory academia of a civil servant; a premonition of its owner’s potential caricature. The prostitutes that serenaded him at night were a respite from the vulgarity of love. “To fall” or “to be fallen”, were farcical words in the sense of morality and loyalty for love and yet complacent as an appendage of detached relationships. The suicidal waves of the soundless ocean were a home away from home. “Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door” , he would proudly say as he sketched cartoons on a sheets of paper , unearthing moments of human warmth from alienation and despair ; the three lonely copper coins stiffening in his palm trying to apprehend the impoverished surroundings spiralling into tragic dissolution. “The dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves” floated in the alcoholic fortification and in the defiled remains of Yoshiko’s trustfulness. Yozo was searching for the beauty that had somehow nastily escaped from the compassion of human connection. The veracity of the ‘ghostly’ art that had once saved his adolescence, the flamboyant imagination of the very art had crippled his adulthood
“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born......”
“Social outcasts” is a preposterous terminology. Who decides its legitimacy? Who rewrites and deciphers the codes of classification? The word “outcast” is highly subjective in its entirety. If you ask ‘irrationality’ it would pinpoint ‘rationality’ as an outcast. To an illegitimate child, the legitimate one is a pariah; to insanity it is the realms of sanity; to the traces of dishonesty it is the advent of honesty; to trustfulness, betrayal is a sin; to imperfection it is perfection that is a recluse and to the morphine filled syringe, the glistening wine bottles are a social outcast. It is a game of endless antonyms. If one views the bigger picture, the world is full of social pariahs. In a superficial world crammed with recreational performers donning masks of assorted sizes and colours; Yozo’s acceptance of himself belonging to the socially recluse class struck a chord in my heart. I could finally comprehend the friendliness displayed by Yozo to the comparably designated populace. Each and every person that touched the core of Yozo’s life was a social pariah in their own struggling ways. Every one of them, be it Takeichi ,Horiki, Yoshiko, Tsuneko, the lady at the bar, the prostitutes or the peculiar Flatfish, all were battling various oddities and societal consciousness to be qualified as a noteworthy human being. After all, we all are outsiders to a few others in some or the other way. Even God is a social pariah to an atheist, isn't it?
“The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is the individual.”
In this melancholic metaphorical quest of ‘what it takes to be termed as disqualified human’; the elegant Shishōsetsu literary piece is a semi-biographical sketch painting the undertones of existentialism in a portrait of alienation and societal crippling in the pursuit to achieve the solidarity of human subsistence. The greyish brush stokes of Yozo’s “ghost pictures” highlights Dazai’s life predicament with the incomprehensibility of the Japanese society and his personal familial position. Japan at large, along with his populace was standing on the brink of old and new cultural transformations. The state of affairs was stuck in between two diverse worlds where the country’s populace was adjusting in the cultural and personage pandemonium of adhering to the societal standards, yet finding ways to defy an unsympathetic societal doctrine. The individual becomes a society where in order to survive; one must adhere to the means of trickery and amateur dramatics shuffling between the societal chaos and normalization of basic humanity. It is known that sometimes lunacy is the only path to redeeming honesty, but with lunacy came the crime of rejection and abnormality. The weak are dispersed through suicidal suffrage in an impenetrable societal wilderness where child-like simplicity becomes a vice and livelihood becomes a sin punishable by the boisterousness of survival. The numerous societal boffins may critique the confounded life of Yozo comparing the inadequacies to the disposal tendencies of lethargy of an addict immersed in drug laced alcoholic trenches dangling on suicidal optimism as the ultimate salvage. Nevertheless, Yozo to me was a lost angel who could not find a path to walk along with the superficiality and convoluted nuances of humankind. Through all literary embellishment of euphemistic idioms and the utilitarian rationalities used to conciliate Yozo’s conundrum, Oba Yozo was worthy of love even with all his shortcomings. Reading, Dazai’s sombre yet gratifying prose consumed my sensibilities into scrutinizing Yozo and the world around him. How and when does a human being reach a stage where not only does the essence of his individuality vanishes amongst the darkest terrains of societal dogmas, but is terrified of its very own species? The definitive truth of human race, eventually "everything passes”, and so do the societal ghosts extant in self-punishing madness.
Lay poetic trance of a love’s facade.
Dreads the ghostly art within hazy shades,
Human shame in comic masquerades.
Inebriated words coughing in notebooks
Empty sake bottles in curls of smoke,
Vice or virtue, the gullible spirit brags
Diabolical tales of a death mask.
“Everything passes”, cried the blue cradle
Slept, the wings of a fallen angel.
A solitary word blissfully prances from the anxious mind, fears the disintegration of its syllables; the distorted enunciation of its vowels, as it cautiously reaches at the tip of the tongue. The blooming word panicked by the stuttering mouth, bit by bit retreats in to the gloomy interiors of the mind where it will forever be sheltered, far from being judged by bullies and societal predators. A soft smile then becomes the sole redeemer of communication; a polite garb of inner festering trepidation. Alienation juxtaposes human “normalcy” and societal chaos in a silent sanctuary of individuality. Confrontations between personal wraith and societal norms arise, begging to fit in the human world. Human beings are a daunting race walking on a tight rope of the “survival of fittest” cryptogram amalgamating the belligerence of existence in the ugliness of societal wasteland where basic human depravity tumbles in the depths of existential despair.
“My life has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live a life of a human being...”
To live a life of a human being; what is it may I ask? The vision to live through one’s eyes or the obligation to exist through borrowed dreams? Is it to ideally march along with hypocrisy, duplicity, deception and the staunch societal dogma veiled behind a multifaceted mask conceding to the guidelines of human race. ? Does life become a shameless ruffian when one questions the truth behind the worldly sentiments? The clueless boy in the pictures failed to grasp the intricacies of human life. Horror and alienation that ran from through his childhood into the complexities of adulthood peeked through his clowning masquerades. A smile he thought would wipe all his trepidation and give him a homely asylum in a world that was bizarre and hellish. The “ghost pictures” screamed through the tinted strokes, rebelled the obligatory academia of a civil servant; a premonition of its owner’s potential caricature. The prostitutes that serenaded him at night were a respite from the vulgarity of love. “To fall” or “to be fallen”, were farcical words in the sense of morality and loyalty for love and yet complacent as an appendage of detached relationships. The suicidal waves of the soundless ocean were a home away from home. “Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door” , he would proudly say as he sketched cartoons on a sheets of paper , unearthing moments of human warmth from alienation and despair ; the three lonely copper coins stiffening in his palm trying to apprehend the impoverished surroundings spiralling into tragic dissolution. “The dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves” floated in the alcoholic fortification and in the defiled remains of Yoshiko’s trustfulness. Yozo was searching for the beauty that had somehow nastily escaped from the compassion of human connection. The veracity of the ‘ghostly’ art that had once saved his adolescence, the flamboyant imagination of the very art had crippled his adulthood
“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born......”
“Social outcasts” is a preposterous terminology. Who decides its legitimacy? Who rewrites and deciphers the codes of classification? The word “outcast” is highly subjective in its entirety. If you ask ‘irrationality’ it would pinpoint ‘rationality’ as an outcast. To an illegitimate child, the legitimate one is a pariah; to insanity it is the realms of sanity; to the traces of dishonesty it is the advent of honesty; to trustfulness, betrayal is a sin; to imperfection it is perfection that is a recluse and to the morphine filled syringe, the glistening wine bottles are a social outcast. It is a game of endless antonyms. If one views the bigger picture, the world is full of social pariahs. In a superficial world crammed with recreational performers donning masks of assorted sizes and colours; Yozo’s acceptance of himself belonging to the socially recluse class struck a chord in my heart. I could finally comprehend the friendliness displayed by Yozo to the comparably designated populace. Each and every person that touched the core of Yozo’s life was a social pariah in their own struggling ways. Every one of them, be it Takeichi ,Horiki, Yoshiko, Tsuneko, the lady at the bar, the prostitutes or the peculiar Flatfish, all were battling various oddities and societal consciousness to be qualified as a noteworthy human being. After all, we all are outsiders to a few others in some or the other way. Even God is a social pariah to an atheist, isn't it?
“The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is the individual.”
In this melancholic metaphorical quest of ‘what it takes to be termed as disqualified human’; the elegant Shishōsetsu literary piece is a semi-biographical sketch painting the undertones of existentialism in a portrait of alienation and societal crippling in the pursuit to achieve the solidarity of human subsistence. The greyish brush stokes of Yozo’s “ghost pictures” highlights Dazai’s life predicament with the incomprehensibility of the Japanese society and his personal familial position. Japan at large, along with his populace was standing on the brink of old and new cultural transformations. The state of affairs was stuck in between two diverse worlds where the country’s populace was adjusting in the cultural and personage pandemonium of adhering to the societal standards, yet finding ways to defy an unsympathetic societal doctrine. The individual becomes a society where in order to survive; one must adhere to the means of trickery and amateur dramatics shuffling between the societal chaos and normalization of basic humanity. It is known that sometimes lunacy is the only path to redeeming honesty, but with lunacy came the crime of rejection and abnormality. The weak are dispersed through suicidal suffrage in an impenetrable societal wilderness where child-like simplicity becomes a vice and livelihood becomes a sin punishable by the boisterousness of survival. The numerous societal boffins may critique the confounded life of Yozo comparing the inadequacies to the disposal tendencies of lethargy of an addict immersed in drug laced alcoholic trenches dangling on suicidal optimism as the ultimate salvage. Nevertheless, Yozo to me was a lost angel who could not find a path to walk along with the superficiality and convoluted nuances of humankind. Through all literary embellishment of euphemistic idioms and the utilitarian rationalities used to conciliate Yozo’s conundrum, Oba Yozo was worthy of love even with all his shortcomings. Reading, Dazai’s sombre yet gratifying prose consumed my sensibilities into scrutinizing Yozo and the world around him. How and when does a human being reach a stage where not only does the essence of his individuality vanishes amongst the darkest terrains of societal dogmas, but is terrified of its very own species? The definitive truth of human race, eventually "everything passes”, and so do the societal ghosts extant in self-punishing madness.
February 17, 2023
I noticed this book many years ago and I always wanted to read it. But I always had a reason to postpone reading it and I don't know why. Don't ask me.
One day, my nephew in London bought this book and show me that he read it. I told myself that I must read it soon without delay since I like to read a lot of Japanese literature novels.
Sometimes I felt forlorn when I got into his novel and immersed myself in his story, especially the feeling and thoughts of the protagonist, Yozo, a depressed Japanese young man.
I concur that "No Longer Human" is not a cheerful book yet we can experience and go through a lot of real incidents in human life.
I had the same feeling when reading "On Human Bondage" by Maugham W. Somerset.
I love these 2 books as well. Moving, saddening, touching, pathetic novels.
Is it true that "Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door"?
One day, my nephew in London bought this book and show me that he read it. I told myself that I must read it soon without delay since I like to read a lot of Japanese literature novels.
Sometimes I felt forlorn when I got into his novel and immersed myself in his story, especially the feeling and thoughts of the protagonist, Yozo, a depressed Japanese young man.
I concur that "No Longer Human" is not a cheerful book yet we can experience and go through a lot of real incidents in human life.
I had the same feeling when reading "On Human Bondage" by Maugham W. Somerset.
I love these 2 books as well. Moving, saddening, touching, pathetic novels.
Is it true that "Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door"?
August 31, 2022
Maybe I'm missing something major. This book is described as "a stark but powerful novel" by a deeply revered author and is still a massive bestseller today. It documents the life of an alienated, depressed, and self destructive man who presents himself as amiable and a "clown" so that he can fit in/appease a society that prioritizes conformity. Many people say it spoke to them and their experiences, and who am I to argue? Books are deeply personal and I don't doubt those readers. Additionally, I'm from a completely different culture and era.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stomach the main character and was unmoved by his plight. I'm going to just ignore the misogyny that permeates the book, different time/place etc., fine. What got under my skin was his complete disregard for the other people in his orbit and his fixation on self pity. Depression and alienation are not green lights to destroy and take advantage of others. The entire novel reads to me as a victimhood manifesto. Anonymous' Diary of an Oxygen Thief read to me the same way.
Yozo, the central character and a stand-in for the author, spends all his money on alcohol, binges with a man whom he does not like, and takes advantage of his father's financial resources. He frequently visits prostitutes (whom he refers to as idiots, despite his admission that they are some of the few people who understand him) and gets involved with a number of other women (he's a self-described "lady killer", something that disgusts him). When he does get started with a woman, he starts selling her clothes to pawn shops for money so he can buy more alcohol, then ultimately abandons her. The cycle repeats. Yes, the character does feel shame, but the shame does not influence his future decisions except to drive him deeper into self-pity and destruction.
Books with deeply flawed (see: abusive, cynical, depressed, alienated, murderous, victimized, etc.) protagonists can be fantastic and my lack of enthusiasm here doesn't come from a desire to see a happy-go-lucky character learning "Wow, I'm not sad anymore! All I had to do was turn my frown upside down!" My issue has to do with the lens through which we see Yozo which feels very unaware and casts him in the light of a hapless, tragic victim. Maybe it's radical honesty on the part of the author since it's supposed to be semi-autobiographical. I can respect that. However, to me the value I find in a novel comes down to the perspective of the author. Think of people who feel they have been victimized by society and in retaliation exact physical or emotional violence on others. Is their pain real? Yes, absolutely. Does that excuse or validate their violence? No, full stop. Do I want to read their manifesto? Not unless it offers something beyond "I'm in pain so I found other vulnerable people and made them suffer too."
I'd also like to point out I'm very aware that resolving mental health issues isn't a matter of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, looking on the bright side, and changing your mindset. Mental health issues are insidious and can be extremely difficult to manage. I'm bipolar and have had my own experiences. Regardless of where we've come from or what we've endured, we still do have personal responsibility, to ourselves and others. On my side, I'm not interested in reading a self-pitying novel without a measure of genuine self reflection. I'd rather read something like Sorrow and Bliss which also has a flawed central character wrestling with mental illness, or The Book of Mother, a portrait of a complicated, bipolar parent told from the perspective of her daughter. These books do a fantastic job of exploring mental health issues and the destructive behavior that can result, but with an insight and complexity that's missing from No Longer Human.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stomach the main character and was unmoved by his plight. I'm going to just ignore the misogyny that permeates the book, different time/place etc., fine. What got under my skin was his complete disregard for the other people in his orbit and his fixation on self pity. Depression and alienation are not green lights to destroy and take advantage of others. The entire novel reads to me as a victimhood manifesto. Anonymous' Diary of an Oxygen Thief read to me the same way.
Yozo, the central character and a stand-in for the author, spends all his money on alcohol, binges with a man whom he does not like, and takes advantage of his father's financial resources. He frequently visits prostitutes (whom he refers to as idiots, despite his admission that they are some of the few people who understand him) and gets involved with a number of other women (he's a self-described "lady killer", something that disgusts him). When he does get started with a woman, he starts selling her clothes to pawn shops for money so he can buy more alcohol, then ultimately abandons her. The cycle repeats. Yes, the character does feel shame, but the shame does not influence his future decisions except to drive him deeper into self-pity and destruction.
Books with deeply flawed (see: abusive, cynical, depressed, alienated, murderous, victimized, etc.) protagonists can be fantastic and my lack of enthusiasm here doesn't come from a desire to see a happy-go-lucky character learning "Wow, I'm not sad anymore! All I had to do was turn my frown upside down!" My issue has to do with the lens through which we see Yozo which feels very unaware and casts him in the light of a hapless, tragic victim. Maybe it's radical honesty on the part of the author since it's supposed to be semi-autobiographical. I can respect that. However, to me the value I find in a novel comes down to the perspective of the author. Think of people who feel they have been victimized by society and in retaliation exact physical or emotional violence on others. Is their pain real? Yes, absolutely. Does that excuse or validate their violence? No, full stop. Do I want to read their manifesto? Not unless it offers something beyond "I'm in pain so I found other vulnerable people and made them suffer too."
I'd also like to point out I'm very aware that resolving mental health issues isn't a matter of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, looking on the bright side, and changing your mindset. Mental health issues are insidious and can be extremely difficult to manage. I'm bipolar and have had my own experiences. Regardless of where we've come from or what we've endured, we still do have personal responsibility, to ourselves and others. On my side, I'm not interested in reading a self-pitying novel without a measure of genuine self reflection. I'd rather read something like Sorrow and Bliss which also has a flawed central character wrestling with mental illness, or The Book of Mother, a portrait of a complicated, bipolar parent told from the perspective of her daughter. These books do a fantastic job of exploring mental health issues and the destructive behavior that can result, but with an insight and complexity that's missing from No Longer Human.
August 4, 2024
ولأول مرة ميعجبنيش كتاب من الأدب الياباني!
ولم يعد رجلاً..رواية للكاتب الياباني اوسامو دازاي وهو يعتبر من أفضل روائي اليابان في القرن الحديث ..حاول الإنتحار مرات عديدة وإنتحر في النهاية مع صديقته بإغراق نفسهم وكان عمره ٣٨ عاماً..والكتاب هنا في جزء كبير في المقدمة بيتكلم عن حياته الشخصية بتفاصيلها ..
الرواية عبارة عن ٣ دفاتر أو نقدر نقول مذكرات بتتكلم عن حياة الشاب أوبا يوزو و تجربته مع الإدمان..المرض..علاقاته النسائية المتعددة ..ومحاولاته الفاشلة للإنتحار وأظن إن جزء كبير منها هو سيرة ذاتية للكاتب نفسه..
إسلوب الكاتب ممل و كئيب و الكتاب مليان طاقة سلبية وبؤس غير عادي...
مش من نوعية الكتب اللي بحبها ..جايز أكون قريته في وقت غير مناسب..بس لأ..مش حيعجبني في أي وقت الكتاب دة:)
ولم يعد رجلاً..رواية للكاتب الياباني اوسامو دازاي وهو يعتبر من أفضل روائي اليابان في القرن الحديث ..حاول الإنتحار مرات عديدة وإنتحر في النهاية مع صديقته بإغراق نفسهم وكان عمره ٣٨ عاماً..والكتاب هنا في جزء كبير في المقدمة بيتكلم عن حياته الشخصية بتفاصيلها ..
الرواية عبارة عن ٣ دفاتر أو نقدر نقول مذكرات بتتكلم عن حياة الشاب أوبا يوزو و تجربته مع الإدمان..المرض..علاقاته النسائية المتعددة ..ومحاولاته الفاشلة للإنتحار وأظن إن جزء كبير منها هو سيرة ذاتية للكاتب نفسه..
إسلوب الكاتب ممل و كئيب و الكتاب مليان طاقة سلبية وبؤس غير عادي...
مش من نوعية الكتب اللي بحبها ..جايز أكون قريته في وقت غير مناسب..بس لأ..مش حيعجبني في أي وقت الكتاب دة:)
Shelved as 'tbr-plans-2021-classics-must-reads'
January 30, 2022having watched bungo stray dogs, my need to read this is that much greater
~~~~~~~
fork, now i've gotta come up with a new username
~~~~~~~
October 27, 2020
this book, is just another motherfucker for me when i crusade in the holyland on one certain day
i can see why most of the japanese parents don't want their kids to read this book
here's some parts of my review (i don't know how i cud write this, maybe i was possessed by something at the time):
i am sorry for being a human
i need booze, i need drugs, i need vaginas, but i can quit them all at any time when i just need death
i don't need love, i don't need pride, i don't need duty, but it seems i am them all, cuz these are simply the evidence of living a life
however, what is a man, a humankind? it's merely a combination.
as for a single person, and all humanbeings, what are they for?
being a human is horrible because of its existence
they toil to make them stomaches filled up, to build subways to get things go quicker, to invent a pillow in order to have a nice sleep
...
cuz only the usefulness exists!
only a goal that creates powers to move forward!
only the things which have meanings that those can be understood
...
as to be consoled, console; to be loved, love
a man like me, who can't figure out the goal of finding the meaning of living or being a human. so am i qualified to live or to be a human?
...
when i cover my face to hide my wails, in laughs you say that i'm hypocritical
when i cough blood for having the consumption, you say that i'm pretentious and asking for it
so would you give me a mask to hide myself so that i can be as crude and brutal as you are?
or showing me with it to the world in means that i am a human who is just like you?
...
i'm not sure if you are a human or not and i really dont't give a cuss to that
I AM NO MORE HUMAN
…………………………………………………………
i read the taiwanese translation first and gave out this damn review in English
i can see why most of the japanese parents don't want their kids to read this book
here's some parts of my review (i don't know how i cud write this, maybe i was possessed by something at the time):
i am sorry for being a human
i need booze, i need drugs, i need vaginas, but i can quit them all at any time when i just need death
i don't need love, i don't need pride, i don't need duty, but it seems i am them all, cuz these are simply the evidence of living a life
however, what is a man, a humankind? it's merely a combination.
as for a single person, and all humanbeings, what are they for?
being a human is horrible because of its existence
they toil to make them stomaches filled up, to build subways to get things go quicker, to invent a pillow in order to have a nice sleep
...
cuz only the usefulness exists!
only a goal that creates powers to move forward!
only the things which have meanings that those can be understood
...
as to be consoled, console; to be loved, love
a man like me, who can't figure out the goal of finding the meaning of living or being a human. so am i qualified to live or to be a human?
...
when i cover my face to hide my wails, in laughs you say that i'm hypocritical
when i cough blood for having the consumption, you say that i'm pretentious and asking for it
so would you give me a mask to hide myself so that i can be as crude and brutal as you are?
or showing me with it to the world in means that i am a human who is just like you?
...
i'm not sure if you are a human or not and i really dont't give a cuss to that
I AM NO MORE HUMAN
…………………………………………………………
i read the taiwanese translation first and gave out this damn review in English
February 10, 2021
This book is permeated by an uncomfortable misogyny.
June 19, 2019
No es la primera vez que me refiero a este tipo de libros –el relato de un viaje a los infiernos de alguien malherido, resentido consigo mismo y con el mundo- como una de mis grandes debilidades literarias, y aun así nunca me he topado con un personaje tan negro por dentro y tan en carne viva por fuera, una especie de autista extrovertido si es que tal combinación es posible, si es que un personaje tan complejo y contradictorio como este Yozo que nos retrata Dazai en esta novela puede ser posible. Un personaje al que la preocupación de convertirse en adicto le hizo ir en pos de la droga.
Yozo es un joven procedente de las clases acomodadas japonesas, inteligente, guapo, con cierto talento para la pintura y con una sensibilidad tan desaforada que le convierte en alguien “condenado a ser cada vez más infeliz sin saber cómo evitarlo”. Negado para la amistad, negado para el amor, misógino, misántropo, “capaz hasta de olvidar el nombre de alguien con quien hice un pacto de suicidio”, capaz de asistir a la violación de su mujer sin hacer nada por evitarlo, el más mínimo roce lo daña, la más cotidiana e inocente interacción con el otro lo sumerge en el horror. Un ser que desde muy pequeño tuvo que interponer entre él y la temible cotidianidad, entre él y el infierno de un universo en el que impera la maldad, la doblez y la desconfianza, un disfraz autoimpuesto de payaso, de bufón que, curiosamente, le convierte en un ser encantador a ojos de todos y especialmente de las mujeres que en su presencia a cualquiera “le entran deseos irreprimibles de hacer algo por él”.
“Así mismo, la gente habla del «sentimiento de culpabilidad». En mi caso, me poseyó desde que era bebé y, con el tiempo, en lugar de curarse se hizo más profundo, penetrándome hasta los huesos. Pero, incluso si se podía decir que mi sufrimiento por las noches era el de un infierno de infinitas torturas, pronto se me hizo más querido que mi propia sangre y carne. Y me llegó a parecer la expresión de ese sentimiento de culpabilidad vivo o quizás su murmullo afectuoso.”No se puede negar que a priori reunía todos los ingredientes necesarios para que este relato, de una infinita tristeza y desesperanza, me encandilase y, no obstante, pocas han sido las veces en las que ha conseguido alterarme como otros libros en la misma línea lo han logrado de forma más global.
Y aunque me descolocó bastante un derrape casi al final del relato en forma de descarga de responsabilidad que rompe con el hilo narrativo seguido hasta el momento, la causa de mi parcial desafección se debe achacar a la música. Esa música de la que habla Dostoievski en una carta a Turguenev refiriéndose a la obra que en esos momentos tenía entre manos y que no es otra que Memorias del Subusuelo, esa música que emana del texto, que nos envuelve y nos lleva a ese espacio particular y privado en el que nos convertimos en estrechos cómplices del autor y nos hace sentir con una inmediatez y una intensidad que exceden con mucho a la compresión literal del texto. Sí, debe ser esa música la que no he conseguido oír la mayoría de las veces que me he acercado a la literatura oriental, que ciertamente no han sido muchas, y que tampoco he conseguido escuchar en esta ocasión y, sin embargo, no puedo decir que no me haya gustado… claro, que el tema tratado facilitaba mucho las cosas.
July 19, 2014
What is it with young men in so much Japanese literature? Whether it's Murakami, Mishima, Soseki, or Dezai they always come across as either lonely, shut-off or damaged (or some combination of the three). Yozo feels about as radically alienated from the world as any character could be. Even bitchy little Holden Caulfield never carried half as much angst as the main character in No Longer Human seems to have. And the loneliness he feels is all the more painful because of how deeply internalized it is, and how total his inability to communicate with others has become. Glum though it is, this book does do a really good job of showing how vast the chasm can be between what other people think about you, and what you think about yourself.
July 21, 2024
i was contemplating whether to write the review or not, because i honestly didn’t expect to relate so much which kinda scares me. but then my therapist blocked me and here i am with whatever nonsense i just wrote
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
every book we read once does not disappear into nowhere, does not dissolve into thin air, does not go into oblivion, it lives in us for the time being, conveniently appearing on occasion, building in our minds a fragile bridge—between books, between authors. that is how i think we differentiate books that we like from books that scream ‘i will never be the same’
and i could write an entire character analysis and MY attitude and whatever other bullshit i usually write but i feel like with some books you just cant. some books are too vulnerable
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
anyway, digging through the reviews, i noticed that some people refer to the original title of the work—人間失格—but don't really emphasize on it. well i looked it up—the second part 失格 translates as "disqualification", and 人間 means "human being", but in Buddhism it also means "human world", "human society". that is, it can refer to both the loss of humanity of the individual and the inferiority of society as a whole, which appears as the leitmotifs of the work. i found this ambivalence interesting, because the author does not make it clear to the end who is more responsible: the society, the product of which people like the protagonist become, or it is the people themselves, from whom such a society is formed... it’s like the chicken or the egg. though im leaning towards the idea that Dazai is equally tired of both the "I" and the "we" stuff
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
i think strictest judge for most people is themselves. Yozo doesn't even need to have strict moral principles, and it's not because of his strict upbringing. it’s just that there are some people who experience the slightest mistake so acutely that they can get to the point of self-punishment, self-inflicted pain, and more. funny mishaps—which anyone else would have laughed at and forgotten—these people will replay in their heads to the point of madness, almost crucifying themselves during the internal judgment. no reasonable arguments can prove to them that it is useless to suffer, that it is necessary to be kinder to yourself, that nobody cares about your mistakes, because people in principle do not care about anybody but themselves
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
the book has had a major impact on Japanese culture. (i wonder if it played an important role in Japan's reputation as a country where a person can save face by committing suicide.) in literature, i probably can't give examples without proper research, but in the world of manga and anime, the most obvious one is of Bungo Stray Dogs. well the majority of bsd fans have already read this but me, if anyone doesn’t know or care there is a character named Dazai Osamu with a supernatural ability called “No Longer Human”. i remember watching it years and years ago for the first time and my first thought was ‘does he like have to kill himself all the time to use the ability?’ but the truth was more prosaic, as he simply neutralized other abilities. you don’t care, by the way
no matter how the life of a real historical person turned out to be, in manga and anime Dazai Osamu is portrayed as terribly charming and funny, and his ‘hobby’ of trying to kill himself every chance he gets—as if it lowers the degree of tragedy and depression of all Japanese literature to the level of normal life with its joys and sorrows. and there is something clinging in such a view of the writer's figure and his last significant work. in a sense, the ability to see oneself unadorned, in all one's inferiority, is a supernatural power that can influence other people as well. that’s why Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human whether it hurts or shakes you to your very core—can leave few people indifferent
i dont know what yappery is this, i wanted to write something without sharing my personal feelings so there you go
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
some quotes i loved if anyone cares:
pre-read:
i was uncultured before but its about to change
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
every book we read once does not disappear into nowhere, does not dissolve into thin air, does not go into oblivion, it lives in us for the time being, conveniently appearing on occasion, building in our minds a fragile bridge—between books, between authors. that is how i think we differentiate books that we like from books that scream ‘i will never be the same’
and i could write an entire character analysis and MY attitude and whatever other bullshit i usually write but i feel like with some books you just cant. some books are too vulnerable
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
anyway, digging through the reviews, i noticed that some people refer to the original title of the work—人間失格—but don't really emphasize on it. well i looked it up—the second part 失格 translates as "disqualification", and 人間 means "human being", but in Buddhism it also means "human world", "human society". that is, it can refer to both the loss of humanity of the individual and the inferiority of society as a whole, which appears as the leitmotifs of the work. i found this ambivalence interesting, because the author does not make it clear to the end who is more responsible: the society, the product of which people like the protagonist become, or it is the people themselves, from whom such a society is formed... it’s like the chicken or the egg. though im leaning towards the idea that Dazai is equally tired of both the "I" and the "we" stuff
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
i think strictest judge for most people is themselves. Yozo doesn't even need to have strict moral principles, and it's not because of his strict upbringing. it’s just that there are some people who experience the slightest mistake so acutely that they can get to the point of self-punishment, self-inflicted pain, and more. funny mishaps—which anyone else would have laughed at and forgotten—these people will replay in their heads to the point of madness, almost crucifying themselves during the internal judgment. no reasonable arguments can prove to them that it is useless to suffer, that it is necessary to be kinder to yourself, that nobody cares about your mistakes, because people in principle do not care about anybody but themselves
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
the book has had a major impact on Japanese culture. (i wonder if it played an important role in Japan's reputation as a country where a person can save face by committing suicide.) in literature, i probably can't give examples without proper research, but in the world of manga and anime, the most obvious one is of Bungo Stray Dogs. well the majority of bsd fans have already read this but me, if anyone doesn’t know or care there is a character named Dazai Osamu with a supernatural ability called “No Longer Human”. i remember watching it years and years ago for the first time and my first thought was ‘does he like have to kill himself all the time to use the ability?’ but the truth was more prosaic, as he simply neutralized other abilities. you don’t care, by the way
no matter how the life of a real historical person turned out to be, in manga and anime Dazai Osamu is portrayed as terribly charming and funny, and his ‘hobby’ of trying to kill himself every chance he gets—as if it lowers the degree of tragedy and depression of all Japanese literature to the level of normal life with its joys and sorrows. and there is something clinging in such a view of the writer's figure and his last significant work. in a sense, the ability to see oneself unadorned, in all one's inferiority, is a supernatural power that can influence other people as well. that’s why Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human whether it hurts or shakes you to your very core—can leave few people indifferent
i dont know what yappery is this, i wanted to write something without sharing my personal feelings so there you go
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟
some quotes i loved if anyone cares:
‘Mine has been a life of much shame.I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.’
‘I wonder if I have actually been happy.’
‘As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn't matter how, I'll be all right. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won't mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.’
‘I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.’
‘I do not pretend to understand my father's thoughts any better than those of a stranger.’
‘I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles.’
‘I felt afraid no matter where I was.’
‘I was afraid to state them as they were one of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation—a quality which has made people call me at times a liar—but I have almost never embellished in order to bring myself any advantage.’
‘That is what I was—a toad.’
‘I felt pity and contempt for the self which until yesterday had accepted such hypothetical situations as eminently factual scientific truths and was terrified by them.’
‘My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.’
‘Disqualified as a human being. I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.’
‘I felt as though the vessel of my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer.’
pre-read:
i was uncultured before but its about to change
December 26, 2021
Caught between the past and the present a young man (Oba Yozo) finds that he is becoming more and more alienated from society and any sort of future. His decent into existential crisis is the reason why this book is so often compared to The Stranger by Albert Camus. Great book to read as an introduction to the modern Japanese novel.
November 16, 2023
IL SOLE SI SPEGNE
Le numerose versioni manga del romanzo.
Yozo, l’io-narrante, li definisce taccuini, ma forse diari rende meglio l’idea: divisi in parti che corrispondono a tre età della vita – grosso modo, infanzia, giovinezza, maturità- sono il racconto dei fatti della sua esistenza accanto a pensieri e riflessioni, sensazioni sentimenti emozioni.
Tutto passa. Questa è la sola e l’unica cosa che a parer mio s’avvicini alla verità, nella società degli esseri umani, dove ho dimorato sin oggi come in un inferno rovente. Ho compiuto ventisette anni. I miei capelli sono ancora più grigi. Molta gente direbbe che ho passato la quarantina.
Yozo non è adatto a questo mondo. E viceversa: il mondo non gli si confà.
Se non altro, questo mondo: niente esclude che nel multiverso ci sia il posto giusto per lui. Anche se la sua sembrerebbe proprio una difficoltà a esistere, a esserci. E, quindi, a prescindere da quale galassia e universo, Yozo non è felice, soffre, non si sente all’altezza, non si sente amato – anche se nel modo rigido della genitorialità di quell’epoca, lo era, amato intendo – e con epoca dobbiamo pensare al Giappone post bellico, dilaniato, devastato, bel oltre una semplice sconfitta, che è il periodo in cui il breve romanzo fu scritto (ma è invece ambientato prima del conflitto bellico) – non sa fare amicizia, sente di doversi camuffare, indossare una maschera – magari quella da capodanno che sua padre aveva tanto piacere a regalargli di ritorno da un viaggio di lavoro a Tokyo.
C’è qualcosa di quello che si usa definire decadentismo nel comportamento di Yozo e nel suo modo d’agire e reagire: uno spiccato senso estetico, spinto fin al punto da diventare castrante – attrazione e necessità di frequentare alcol, stupefacenti, localacci, posti sordidi, percepiti più veri di quelli familiari, e quindi più belli; difficoltà – leggi impossibilità – a fare amicizia. Compensata da una propensione verso il gentil sesso, a livello mentale percepito e considerato con profonda misoginia – che fa il paio con la sua generale misantropia – a livello emotivo e fisico invece percepito come l’isola del naufrago. Aggiungerei un generale senso di superiorità rispetto al resto dell’umana società, che maschera un generale senso di inferiorità.
Ma Yozo mi pare troppo impegnato a sopravvivere, a mascherarsi, a compiangersi per avvicinarlo al modello esistenzialista.
Per chi cerca il dato biografico dietro ogni pagina è un breve romanzo che sarà una festa: di analogie tra il vissuto di Yozo e quello del suo autore ce ne sono a iosa, cominciando dai tentativi di suicidio, anche in compagnia femminile (prima di quello definitivo, non ancora quarantenne, Dazai tentò di uccidersi cinque o sei volte, da solo e accompagnato).
Nonostante la prefazione che si adopera per sottolineare quanto Osamu Dazai sia legato alla cultura occidentale, forse più che a quella del suo paese, io ho ritrovato la mia annosa difficoltà con la letteratura di questa parte del mondo.
La traduzione è del 1962 e si sente, mostra tutto il tempo trascorso, varrebbe la pena svecchiarla, quello che credo abbia fatto la nuova edizione SE.
Le numerose versioni manga del romanzo.
Yozo, l’io-narrante, li definisce taccuini, ma forse diari rende meglio l’idea: divisi in parti che corrispondono a tre età della vita – grosso modo, infanzia, giovinezza, maturità- sono il racconto dei fatti della sua esistenza accanto a pensieri e riflessioni, sensazioni sentimenti emozioni.
Tutto passa. Questa è la sola e l’unica cosa che a parer mio s’avvicini alla verità, nella società degli esseri umani, dove ho dimorato sin oggi come in un inferno rovente. Ho compiuto ventisette anni. I miei capelli sono ancora più grigi. Molta gente direbbe che ho passato la quarantina.
Yozo non è adatto a questo mondo. E viceversa: il mondo non gli si confà.
Se non altro, questo mondo: niente esclude che nel multiverso ci sia il posto giusto per lui. Anche se la sua sembrerebbe proprio una difficoltà a esistere, a esserci. E, quindi, a prescindere da quale galassia e universo, Yozo non è felice, soffre, non si sente all’altezza, non si sente amato – anche se nel modo rigido della genitorialità di quell’epoca, lo era, amato intendo – e con epoca dobbiamo pensare al Giappone post bellico, dilaniato, devastato, bel oltre una semplice sconfitta, che è il periodo in cui il breve romanzo fu scritto (ma è invece ambientato prima del conflitto bellico) – non sa fare amicizia, sente di doversi camuffare, indossare una maschera – magari quella da capodanno che sua padre aveva tanto piacere a regalargli di ritorno da un viaggio di lavoro a Tokyo.
C’è qualcosa di quello che si usa definire decadentismo nel comportamento di Yozo e nel suo modo d’agire e reagire: uno spiccato senso estetico, spinto fin al punto da diventare castrante – attrazione e necessità di frequentare alcol, stupefacenti, localacci, posti sordidi, percepiti più veri di quelli familiari, e quindi più belli; difficoltà – leggi impossibilità – a fare amicizia. Compensata da una propensione verso il gentil sesso, a livello mentale percepito e considerato con profonda misoginia – che fa il paio con la sua generale misantropia – a livello emotivo e fisico invece percepito come l’isola del naufrago. Aggiungerei un generale senso di superiorità rispetto al resto dell’umana società, che maschera un generale senso di inferiorità.
Ma Yozo mi pare troppo impegnato a sopravvivere, a mascherarsi, a compiangersi per avvicinarlo al modello esistenzialista.
Per chi cerca il dato biografico dietro ogni pagina è un breve romanzo che sarà una festa: di analogie tra il vissuto di Yozo e quello del suo autore ce ne sono a iosa, cominciando dai tentativi di suicidio, anche in compagnia femminile (prima di quello definitivo, non ancora quarantenne, Dazai tentò di uccidersi cinque o sei volte, da solo e accompagnato).
Nonostante la prefazione che si adopera per sottolineare quanto Osamu Dazai sia legato alla cultura occidentale, forse più che a quella del suo paese, io ho ritrovato la mia annosa difficoltà con la letteratura di questa parte del mondo.
La traduzione è del 1962 e si sente, mostra tutto il tempo trascorso, varrebbe la pena svecchiarla, quello che credo abbia fatto la nuova edizione SE.
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