Donald Keene

Osamu Dazai

No Longer Human ... Translated ... by Donald Keene

人間失格

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.

No Longer Human

Is immaculate trustfulness after all a source of sin?

Before long a student at the art class was to initiate me into the mysteries of drink, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops and left-wing thought. 

The masters through their subjective perceptions created beauty out of trivialities.They did not hide their interest even in things which were nauseatingly ugly, but soaked themselves in the pleasure of depicting them.

Long personal experience had taught me that when a woman suddenly bursts into hysterics, the way to restore her spirits is to give her something sweet.

“To fall for,” “to be fallen for” - I feel these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. 

I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

This is how I happened to invent my cloning.

It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I.

太宰治

“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.”

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of one of Japan's most important writers, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948). The novel has come to "echo the sentiments of youth" (Hiroshi Ando, The Mainichi Daily News) from post-war Japan to the postmodern society of technology. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual's alienation from society.

if only he hadn't drunk —no, even though he did drink— he was a good boy, an angel.

“No. I didn't cry ...I just kept thinking that when human beings get that way, they're no good for anything."

And now I had become a madman. Even if released, I would be forever branded on the forehead with the word “madman," or perhaps, “reject." 

I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.

God, I ask you, is non-resistance a sin? 

My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no.

wheew that was a strong one 😅 (quite a stab in the gut i must admit)

I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.

I had intended to take one shot a day, but it became two, then three; when it reached four I could no longer work unless I had my shots.

Am I what they call an egoist? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit?

I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people.

I came to feel that everything was my fault. Far from becoming enraged, I could not utter a word of complaint; it was on account of that rare virtue she possessed that my wife was vio-lated, a virtue I long had prized, the unbearably pitiful one called immaculate trustfulness.

It was less the fact of Yoshiko's defilement than the defilement of her trust in people which became so persistent a source of grief as almost to render my life insupportable.

You didn’t know enough to distrust others

Crime and punishment —absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water.

Celine

No Longer Human is a haunting exploration of alienation, despair, and the human condition. The book’s tone is intensely introspective and melancholic, offering a raw and unflinching look at the fragility of identity and the search for meaning in a world that feels hostile and indifferent. Dazai’s prose is stark and poetic, capturing the psychological turmoil of a man who feels utterly "disqualified as a human being."

this mf is misogynistic as hell. can i have my time back because i got nothing out of reading this

Kiran Aftab

I was kind of bored through the first half but it turns out Its one of the Best books i've ever read. Of course the mysoginy really annoyed me except from that He was really relatable and I feel Seen for the first time

Gwenifer

Maureen

“Just when I was beginning to forget, that bird of ill-omen came flapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory”

***

The title had always fascinated me, and I was curious to find the reason behind it. Overall, the interior monologue is done really well, because everything flows smoothly. We witness the gradual decline of Yozo's physical and mental state—he's in a dark place, and I don't think I have the right to comment against his struggles. I will say though, that in the end, Dazai makes it absolutely clear why Yozo believes he is disqualified as a human being.

Now I understand why this book is so popular.

quizá no era para mí o no le entendí a la narración, pero tarde muchísimo en terminarlo y disfrute nada

andrea valentina 

Klaudette

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.
Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of one of Japan's most important writers, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948). The novel has come to "echo the sentiments of youth" (Hiroshi Ando, The Mainichi Daily News) from post-war Japan to the postmodern society of technology. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual's alienation from society.

do NOT read this if you’re in recovery vro

Cate

Andrea Morales

adriftzoey

soot

3.5 ★

i don’t think i really understood the book, which isn’t bad just means it’ll need a reread in the future. so much happened yet somehow it feels like nothing happened but it’s reflective that i didn’t see it as a negative. i’m just confused. maybe that’s what the author intended,, i will never know though.. bc i’m confused.

Vince Hilahan

Cori

This book literally made me wanna k*ll myself

Charlize

yozo’s psyche is fascinating to say the least. was he a victim of circumstance? i believe so. but does that absolve him from the awful things he had done? not at all. the theme of alienation is well-captured that it leaves you contemplating.

sani

“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 hate to say this but this book absolutely did not do it for me! i love Osamu Dazai’s writings but this one was just too tedious? i swear i could have dozed off reading it. and this is coming from someone who utterly utterly loves his other work. 

i agree that No Longer Human is completely my kind of book. but it didn't just reach my expectations. the misogyny was too much for me to handle as well. i unequivocally loathed the way the narrator talked about women. 

the prologue and the first and the second notebook built up a really hooked story idea but it went really downhill by the third notebook. i like depressed men but i despise depressed misogynistic men to the hilt. 

considering how this was his last work before suicide, i should be a little nicer and that's why i am giving it two stars.

yuck…but also relatable…but also yuck.

iris 

abby

how to say it...
in so many words, I can relate to No Longer Human. but I felt so upset reading this, it made me uncomfortable in a way I never imagined.

☆☆☆,5.

Omar 

** spoiler alert **
           Protagonist was loathsome but definitely not in the way I expected. I walked in expecting him to be some sort of freak but turns out he’s decently adjusted and attractive and so on, and it really threw me off

On some level his fundamental flaw (and the crux of this books thought pattern) is that the inability to connect with and understand people can skew a person into being excluded from humanity.

There’s a lot to dissect in terms of the books central thesis. I’m quite rusty, so I don’t think the texts central theme jumps out as quickly to me as it used to. Nevertheless, it deserves much more thought.

geri chan 

dian

man this was pretty absurd AND concerning

amari

No Longer Human is not so much a miserable story as it is frustrating. So much of what the protagonist does, thinks and feels are marked by a deep self-pity and what I can only describe as an inertia. 

I didn't quite pick up on the themes of post-war depression and formless anxiety that reviews ascribe to this book, at least not at first. The scenery around Yōzō reflects a placid Japan; the tension of war is faint undercurrent to Yōzō's insipid love trials. The later chapters fail to energise this background, and instead simply prop up the screen as we watch Yōzō tumble like a ragdoll down a barren slope. 

After finishing the book and ruminating on it somewhat, the sense behind the imagery has become clearer to me under this interpretation: that Yōzō's disqualification from the security of belonging is a metaphor for Japan's completed descent into total social anomie; though my reading of this is vague. 

Before reading this book I had already read up a little on Dazai's life and was prepared to read it whilst looking for the autobiographical fragments. It is here, I think, that my reading of Ningen Shikkaku has been unwittingly biased and my distate for Yōzō prompted. Luckily there is a manga by Junji Itō I can read.

Junji Ito

Nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche. 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. Plagued by a maddening anxiety, the terrible disconnect between his own concept of happiness and the joy of the rest of the world, Yozo Oba plays the clown in his dissolute life, holding up a mask for those around him as he spirals ever downward, locked arm-in-arm with death. Osamu Dazai’s immortal—and supposedly autobiographical—work of Japanese literature, is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Ito. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo’s mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Ito, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche.

RUNE

This was something that goes beyond the original novel. Junji Ito explored No Longer Human into its deepest, darkest form. Consequently, in the most divine way possible, this book terrified me as a human being.

Claudia Beneyto

i wanted to write something funny and light-hearted but i suppose it doesn’t really go with the themes treated in the book. This was incredible, really. It made me remember those somber days of depression, how comfortable it feels. It’s hard to get out, extremely hard and scary. But, well, everything passes.

No Longer Human ... Translated ... by Donald Keene

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