No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Author	Osamu Dazai
Original title	人間失格
Translator	Donald Keene
Cover artist	Rodrigo Corral
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese, English
Genre	Short novel
Publisher	New Directions
Publication date	1948 (English translation 1958)
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	177
ISBN	978-0-8112-0481-1
Preceded by	A Cherry
Followed by	Goodbye

No Longer Human (人間失格, Ningen Shikkaku) is a Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. Published after Run Melos and The Setting Sun, No Longer Human is considered Dazai's masterpiece and ranks as the second-best selling novel in Japan, behind Natsume Sōseki's Kokoro.^[1]

The literal translation of the title, discussed by Donald Keene in his preface to the English translation, is "Disqualified from Being Human". (The Italian translation was titled Lo squalificato, The Disqualified.)

This novel, despite being serialized as a work of fiction in 1948, is narrated in the first person and contains several elements which betray an autobiographical basis, such as suicide—a recurring theme in the author's life. Many also believe the book to have been his will, as he took his own life shortly after the last part of the book was published, on June 13, 1948.

One modern analyst has proposed Dazai was suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder when he wrote the book.^[2]

Plot outline

No Longer Human is told in the form of notebooks left by one Ōba Yōzō (大庭葉蔵), a troubled man incapable of revealing his true self to others, and who is instead forced to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity.

The novel is composed of three chapters, or "memoranda", which chronicle the life of Ōba from early childhood to late twenties.

• First Memorandum: Overcome by an intense feeling of alienation and otherness and finding it nearly impossible to understand those who surround him who live in egoism and bad faith, Ōba can't help but resort to buffoonery in order to establish interpersonal relationships. He is abused by a female servant during his childhood, but decides reporting it would be useless.
• Second Memorandum: Ōba becomes increasingly concerned over the potential penetrability of his cheerful facade by his schoolmate Takeichi, who sees through his false buffoonery. Ōba befriends him to prevent Takeichi from revealing his secret. As he shows Takeichi the ghost-like paintings of Amedeo Modigliani, he realizes that certain artists express the inner truth of human cruelty through their own trauma. Ōba paints a self-portrait inspired by these artists, which is so dreadful that he dares not show it to anyone except Takeichi, who esteems the picture. He neglects his university studies, out of fear of collective life. Under the influence of a fellow artist he meets at a painting class, Horiki, he descends into a vicious cycle of drinking, smoking and harlotry, culminating in a one-night stand with a married woman with whom he attempts to commit double suicide via drowning. Though he survives, she dies, leaving him with nothing but an excruciating feeling of guilt.
• Third Memorandum, Part One: Ōba is expelled from university, and comes under the care of a friend of the family. He tries to have a normal relationship with a single mother, serving as a surrogate father to her little girl, but abandons them in favor of living with the madam of a bar he patronizes. Since then he tries to believe the meaning of society for an individual is to escape out of fear of humanity. He drinks heavily, inspired by Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Later, he falls into a relationship with a young and naive woman who wants him to stop drinking.
• Third Memorandum, Part Two: Thanks to this woman's grounding influence on his life, Ōba stops drinking and finds gainful work as a cartoonist. Then Horiki shows up, turning Ōba to self-destructive behavior again. Worse, at the moment of recalling Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky while he discusses the antonym of crime with Horiki, Ōba becomes estranged from his wife following an incident where she is sexually assaulted by a casual acquaintance. Over time Ōba becomes an alcoholic and a morphine addict. He is eventually confined to a mental institution and, upon release, moves to an isolated place, concluding the story with numb self-reflection after profound despair.

The story is bookended with two other, shorter, chapters from the point of view of a neutral observer, who sees three photos of Ōba and eventually tracks down one of the characters mentioned in the notebooks who knew him personally.

Ōba refers to himself throughout the book using the reflexive pronoun "Jibun" (自分), whereas the personal pronoun "Watashi" (私) is used both in the foreword and afterword to the book by the writer, whose name is unclear. The name "Ōba" is actually taken from one of Dazai's early works, "Petals of Buffoonery" (道化の華).

Adaptations

Reception

William Bradbury of The Japan Times called it a timeless novel, saying that "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing."^[8] Serdar Yegulalp of Genji Press noted the strength of Dazai in portraying the situation of the protagonist, describing the novel as "bleak in a way that is both extreme and yet also strangely unforced".^[9] Both critics have noted the autobiographical qualities of the novel, but claim that Dazai's style causes readers to connect to Ōba rather than focus on the author.

See also

• Anti-hero
• Existential crisis
• Meaning of life

References

External links

Japanese Wikisource has original text related to this article: 人間失格

• No Longer Human Movie Official Site (in Japanese)