No Longer Human

Second Read

I read Osamu Dazai's "No Longer Human" about two years ago, I say about because a heavy fog poisons my memory (I've never been good with recalling temporal things), perhaps it is a testament to the way I've chosen to spend the past few years. Nevertheless, I was (probably) fifteen at the time and this book resonated with me deeply. Actually, "resonated" probably isn't the right word for it... "Intrigued" is probably a better way of putting it (Though it's safe to say that it was intriguing because it also resonated with me). Since I haven't logged my first experience with this book, I might as well do it now. I have to say, however, that rereading it was a surprise, like reopening a present only to find it very different from show more what you'd found before.

As a fifteen year old, there were two main factors which drove me to purchase and read this novel. One, I had a mad obsession (which began a year prior) with all things Japanese; and two, I'd done prior research on Dazai himself (by research I mean skimming through Wikipedia) and found out about his numerous suicide attempts (not to mention lovers, alcoholism, and drug abuse), which ultimately ended in the taking of his own life. Naturally, the mystical suicide was what drew me towards the book. I guess the context put an air of heaviness and even importance to the book, and that I was, being a middle-class boy at a private school, drawn to the misery that Dazai's life entailed. I still remember reading through the introduction, comprehending about half of what was written, and constantly thinking about suicide. The prologue caught me off-guard, the strange way that the narrator described the boy aroused an image in my head that was at-once disturbing and seductive, the final image evoked a keen sense of desolation. I don't think I've ever really felt such things before. I vaguely remember going through each of the notebooks, becoming more and more obsessed with Yozo's life, feeling what he was feeling (which was, for the most part, a big pile of nothingness). I remember being somewhat disappointed with the ending and that was all. More than anything, it was an entertaining read that gave way to new senses and for that I called it my favourite book.

My experience this time around was extremely different. I understood the introduction and what it was trying to say about globalisation's effects on Japanese literature and culture, though my lack of experience with classic Japanese literature meant I couldn't comprehend the context. The prologue felt more meandering than before, the language strange and almost assumptive. The effect wasn't as strong, but the imagery of the final picture never fails to shock. I found the first notebook to be uninteresting, but was able to make it through without too much trouble. The second notebook, which describes Yozo's student years, caught my attention. I could feel myself becoming more and more obsessed with Yozo's experiences and thoughts, and I'm guessing this is what I felt on the first read-through. The names of the women who he encounters are immediately familiar, and so they must have left an impact on me. Perhaps it was the connotations of kindness and hope that I had associated with them the first time through that they had left such an impact, but there is also a keen melancholy about their names. I found myself less able to understand Yozo's thought process this time around, and questioned myself several times as to whether or not I'd become more "normalised". Nevertheless, I felt sympathy for Yozo and the people who got caught up around him, and felt tears well up in my eyes several times during the novel, even though it is told with little sentimentality. The rape scene was more horrible than I'd remembered. Two years ago I'd reminisced on how it had been described, how it was so effective yet so simple. Only now do I realise the real power of the scene, and how it had broken Yozo completely. The asylum period was strangely tranquil, even though Yozo himself believed he was finally a reject of human society. The tranquility is a consequence of his acceptance of what has happened, and a sign of surrender to the battles of society. He concludes the notebooks as a nihilist more than anything else.

What ultimately "got" me, however, was the epilogue and the self-awareness that it brings to the entire novel. The madam calling Yozo an "angel" and the juxtaposition it forms between the notebooks and "reality" brings a entire new aspect to the novel that is at once heart-rending and lifting. show less

What if Patrick Bateman was less psychopathic coke fiend, and more westaboo japanese alcoholic? The narrative dissonance between what the protagonist thinks is happening, and what a critical eye to what's presented is saying is similar to what creates the humorous satire in American Psycho. Though this is further removed in time and culture, I find it hard not to read a similar over-the-top take on the depressed outsider verging on comedic, though clearly most readers are taking the story 'straight' as it were. It's certainly played much closer to the chest, but the incongruence of his love affairs in the face of his self loathing, and the mirror image friend he normalizes sure suggest a satirical read.

"Despising ourselves as we did, we were always together."

Yozo searches for human connection, to cross the line between shameful disaster to acceptable member of society. He cannot control his impulses, both his impulse towards self-destruction and his impulse to push himself away from other humans.

"Is trustfulness a sin?" Yozo asks, and it seems a fatal flaw. Yozo can't trust, can't believe, can't connect. As the darkness of this little novel spirals further down Yozo embodies his entire country, as he vomits the rising sun in blood into the snow.

Stupidly absorbing. A 20th-century Notes from the Underground and everything Diary of an Oxygen Thief wanted to be but couldn't muster. An intimate portrayal of the heaviness of depression, isolation, and addiction. Amazing narrative framing, adroit prose, and meaningful structural irony. I can't wait to read more of Dazai's work.

I was surprised to read that this remains one of the best selling novels in Japan. I guess it’s hard to know what will resonate with something from a different culture, especially when reading that work in translation. About a year ago I guess, i read George
Scialabba’s How To Be Depressed and William Styron’s Darkness Visible in succession - this book here would make a fitting triumvirate of depression literature. I might have mentioned this in one of the reviews I wrote for those books, but it seems to me that depression is a horribly narcissistic disease - the depressive episode makes all the world bend inward towards the black void swirling inside you. Everything seems designed to stab and poke at you in particular, and every show more perceived slight on the part of others is taken to be a sweeping criticism of your who existence. Perhaps this book’s greatest contribution is it’s title, whose English translation doesn’t seem to capture the feeling it has in the Chinese characters that constitute its original Japanese title 人間失格, approximately disqualified from humanity. It’s a great way, if a bit untranslatable, to describe the truly depressed person’s way of interfacing with the world. The fact that this act of disqualification is carried out and enforced by the depressive himself is an irony not lost on Osamu Dazai. The final lines of the book, where the narrator Yozo is described by one of the many women he was involved in over the course of the story as “a good boy, an angel,” far from the depiction Yozo himself gives as an alcoholic, alienated, good for nothing loser. It can often be bewildering for those around the depressed person, who they might see as a fine (qualified?) person, spiral into self destruction. If they could only just be happy like a normal person, they might say. Despite the criticism this kind of statement would get in the current climate of “accepting” mental illness, it’s actually true, and I think most depressed people would agree. I also think most depressed people are fighting every second of every day to be happy, and it’s only when they become too exhausted to fight anymore that depression wins.

All that being said, Yozo has really serious case of Main Character Syndrome. You may say, well sure, he’s the fucking main character of the book. What I mean is, we are presented with the unbroken ramblings of someone who is clearly self obsessed, with his good points (we hear a lot about his spectacular good looks and sense of humor) and his bad points. He only has to walk into a room for women to be falling all over him, and his emotion instability seems to spread like fire to anyone who draws near him. While this is a very accurate depiction of the depressed mindset, it can also be frustrating to spend a book’s length listening to someone like that ramble on. It makes you want to reach out and shake the bitch, saying shut up! You are so up your own ass that you can realize the great gift it is to be alive! You are small and insignificant in a way you can hardly imagine, and that is actually the most liberating realization you can have in life! Of course, Yozo can’t hear you; he’s a character in a book by an author who died long ago. But if you are depressed sometimes too (and I would venture most people who come to this book are) the things you might say to Yozo could equally be said to yourself. Don’t expect to come away from this with some transcendent knowledge about how to continue living in the face of the yawning void of melancholy - if anything, this is more a paean to desolation, a manifesto of someone too tired to keep fighting. But maybe you can think of this book as mirror for all the bad habits and cycles of thinking that keep you trapped, and next time you feel the black void opening again, do everything in your power not to be like Yozo. show less

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai ⭐⭐⭐⭐¼

"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."

A dark, unsentimental, and unflinching portrayal of alienation. Yozo masks his pain by clowning around, never forming genuine connections, always struggling to relate to society. Relatable in a way I never expected—watching him spiral, you might argue he could "just think otherwise," but how easy is it to heave yourself out of a rabbit hole once you're trapped?

He might be pathetic, yes, but he's also, ironically, deeply human in a way he never thought himself to be. There must be childhood trauma lurking in the background, never explicitly told, only implied. All we see is his show more current debased form, spiraling ever downward.

I watched the anime adaptation (Aoi Bungaku) before reading the novel. While the anime leans toward surrealism, the novel is more grounded and realistic. Some minor changes, but the anime enhanced my reading experience, giving me visual metaphors for Yozo's internal nightmare.

Sad. Loved it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐¼ show less

I find it difficult to empathize with self-destructiveness and to bear description of the special heartless and apathetic social destructiveness that seems reserved for addicts, alcoholics, and other marginalized people of the world. I'm sure that's all part of the point of this novel, as our humanity is chipped or dissolved away from the inside until what's left is institutionalized and stashed away, out of sight in prisons or hospitals or other real and allegorical ghettos. I'm convinced that because those perspectives are hidden that is why it is important to engage with them, but it's challenging. We won't always like what we find.