Customer Reviews

No Longer Human

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3 star:		(1)
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Dazai's 'no longer human' is about on individual alienation and what it means to be normal in Japanese society. Since it is written in the 1940s, Dazai's fortitude of this nascent problem makes the book all the more worthwhile.

Yozo, our narrator, is a young man from northeast Japan. His father is in politics and is able to provide whatever Yozo wants in terms of material. Yozo, however wants to find out who is really is and wants to live as that person. Through his self-centeredness and exploitation of women, we learn that Yozo's journey will never end, that he would never recognize his true self, because there isn't such a thing in his world.

This novel covers the life of Yozo, a young man who feels alienated from human society. He finds it impossible to connect with his fellow humans, and in fact, fears them. He is afraid of what they think of him. He puts on the face of a clown, but he is totally crushed when he is found out to be a phoney. As he enters University, he comes to battle with alchohol and drugs. The center of his misery is his inability to have a normal relationship with women. However, the fault lies completely within himself and his terribly pessimistic attitude.

This was an interesting book, but I found it difficult to get into the head of the dark hero. In this book, he finds no hope, and there are no ways to escape from his depression and his fear of society. He can only escape. It was difficult to fathom his point of view, but I think it helped me to understand the feelings of people who shut themselves away from society.

Dazai is an excellent author, he "creates" (I think a lot of it is autobiographical just in knowing that he died as a result of suicide, double suicide with his lover nonetheless!!) this very dark, very depressing character who you'll ultimately try your hardest not to despise because he at the same time has these very junvenile qualities that redeems him somehow.

No Longer Human is regarded as a work of autobiographical fiction that reflects the struggle for the Japanese people to adjust to post World War II realities. Well, I'm not so sure about that. As Donald Keene states in the introduction, it is probably a mistake to do so. The events are clearly based upon his life experiences, but the story is too well crafted to be a mere recounting of the years when his life was surrendered to drugs and alcohol. And what relation does the book have to the post-war years, aside from the fact that this is when it was published? Whatever the case, No Longer Human is a fabulous book, a true work of World Literature. For all of us who appreciate literature, we are all very unfortunate that Dazai took his life at a relatively young age and before his best works were created. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness.

This is one of the most powerful book I have ever read.

This novel (inspired by Dazai's autobiography and written in the first person) tells the story of one person who feels since childhood utterly alien from his fellow human beings but learn to put a face to hide his deep sense of alienation and his despise for the hypocrisy of society. He feels incapable to belong to a human society (hence the title). Follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, suicide as the main character enters into aldulthood.

The story did remind me a little of Camus' The stranger (l'etranger) in so far as both are a tale of a person alienated from the society at large. But Dazai also explore the sense of self-loathing and self-destruction and is therefore much darker (Camus sounds cheerful in comparison).

Dazai is known as a dark post-war writer and indeed this is a dark novel.

I have read the book in Japanese and, in my opinion, Keene didan excellent job, even if his foreward comments are tainted byall-too-often used theories and opinions concerning Japan and "the West". This book is simply marvelous and a must read for anyone interested in modern Japanese literature. It is Dazai's "masterpiece" and it delves into the heart of something truly deep, dark, and beautiful....and, ultimately, the great man himself. Reading pleasure.....guarranteed.

I tutor a Japanese woman once and week and I recently asked her for advice on selecting Japanese authors (partly for the reason mentioned recently in The Atlantic Monthly's book review section: American literature normally finds itself caught in a breeze of cultural shallowness). "Osamu Dazai is good," she responded, "but I think he maybe too depressing."

My student, understandably, reads the book in a very different context than I do. She follows Yozo, the main character, through his trials and tribulations with a sense of impending dread - one that is brought to fruition with a storyline meant to explore the emotional and personal impact of the post-war period. While the American reader can glean the same reading, "No Longer Human" is also appealing in its quality of universality as applied to the common man. Yozo stumbles around his life bemoaning the world around him and his inability to operate in it, and the effect is often humorous and insightful. True, he is a tragic character, but one imbued with a sharp eye and a sharper wit. "No Longer Human" is filled with observations that I laughed at because of their appropriateness in my life, which upon casual comparison, shouldn't be similar at all.

"You thought it was funny? How? It's so sad!" my student all but yelled at me.
"Well, it's funny because it's so...correct. It's a great book because it deals with something so simple, and it deals with it well."

This book, while some may call it playful, is demonically articulate and divinely laid out. As the blurb on the back will tell you, this book was written in an extremely "cynical" voice. I would like to warn it is not for the easily affected or weak to negativity.

It is, however, for the vibrantly interested. Many have claimed that Chuck Palahniuk has re-awakened my generation to reading, and Dazai may well be the gateway from Palahniuk to historical fiction. Heavily steeped in the culture of post WW2 Japan, the alternately misanthropic and anthrophobic Yozo narrates his life as a journey from one tragic choice to the next from his birth to... the end. The unwavering darkness of this book, and Dazai's subtly mortifying sense of humor, will appeal to fans of Palahniuk's work.

More importantly, the book in and of itself is a well-known part of the Japanese literary canon. To literary scholars like myself, it is a gateway to a tragically under-translated literary culture.

Please find the following five step plan for reading this book to experience the full effect of its power.

1) Obtain a dark sense of humor.
2) Obtain a general (or even vague) knowledge of post-WW2 Japanese history.
3) Read this book.
4) Research the life of Dazai Osamu.

5) Decide to what extent you will allow yourself to view this book as a semi-autobiography.