no longer human by osamu dazai | November bookclub
CW: Suicide, SA, and spoilers for the book
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.
So, my friends and I decided on reading No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai for this month's book club. I heard great things about this book from one of my favorite channels, Unsolicited Advice, so I was really excited to get into it.
I must first iterate that this book requires you to be in at least a relatively positive state of mind, as I feel reading someone going down a path of self-destruction and depressive episodes may be hard to stomach.
The book itself starts out with our protagonist Oba Yozo, who I will just refer to as Yozo, basically roasting himself in pictures at 3 different stages of his life. He mostly makes note of the uncanniness of himself in these photos. Where most people would see himself as this strapping young lad, he sees himself as something else, something more monstrous.
He details much of his young life and talks about some of the things that made him feel like he was something different. He articulates how he was largely disillusioned with the mechanisms of humans, one such example being that he never knew when he was hungry. He adopts this sort of people pleaser role, taking up being a "jester" or "clown". He tries desperately to keep this facade up out of fear of being exposed and ostracized from society. His fear comes true when a boy named Takeichi sees Yozo during their version of PE jump and miss grabbing a pullup bar. Takeichi approaches Yozo and says "you did that on purpose". Which sends Yozo into a anxiety-induced downward spiral.
He decides that, in order to keep his secret, he decides to befriend Takeichi in order to keep a close eye on him to not "expose him". He gets his chance during a downpour and he takes Takeichi to his house. Takeichi complains of discharge in his ear, and Yozo clears them out for him. Takeichi then says to Yozo "all the girls must fall for you", to which Yozo sees as a curse rather than a compliment.
Yozo himself doesn't understand the concept of being loved, but rather sees it as him simply being "looked after". This premonition from Takeichi will prove to become prophecy.
As Yozo gets older, the disillusionment grows. He meets a man named Horiki, and becomes friends with him. This would ultimately lead to Yozo's downfall. Horiki introduces Yozo to a life of pure hedonism; drinking, engagement with prostitutes (to which Yozo actually seeks comfort in), etc. Yozo doesn't actually like Horiki, but sees him as this sort of entertainment that he keeps around.
One day, Yozo stumbles into a bar and meets a woman named Tsuneko and she invites him to her place, this is where the book makes its most notable downward spike (in tone not quality). Tsuneko is a married woman, who's husband is currently in jail. She is miserable with life, and this brings Yozo comfort that someone else also suffers as he does. When the next time they spend a night together comes, Tsuneko confides in Yozo how she doesn't want to continue living anymore. They decide on a double suicide by throwing themselves into the sea. Yozo survives, Tsuneko doesn't.
When Yozo comes to, he is arrested for being an accomplice to a suicide, but the charges are ultimately dropped. He finds himself under the supervision of a man named Flatfish, an old family friend. Flatfish receives money from Yozo's brothers in exchange for his care. Flatfish tries to get Yozo to do something with his life, and when Yozo tells him he wants to be a painter, Flatfish bursts out laughing. Yozo decides to run away to Horiki as a sort of last resort.
Horiki heard about Yozo and Tsuneko's incident, and so when Yozo arrives Horiki doesn't want him there. He lets him in anyway though. A woman named Shizuko comes to Horiki's to collect some illustrations for a magazine, to which she becomes attracted to Yozo and brings him home with her. Gives "I can fix him" vibes.
Yozo begins living with Shizuko and her daughter Shigeko, and starts becoming a comic artist in order to buy alcohol and cigarettes. He falls into a deeper state of depression, so a meeting is organized between Shizuko, Yozo, Flatfish, and Horiki. An agreement is reached where Yozo marries Shizuko and cuts contact with his family. Things take a turn when young Shigeko makes an otherwise comment to Yozo about wanting her "real" father back, who died some years ago. On his way back home, he creaks open the door and sees Shizuko and Shigeko are going to surprise him with a rabbit. He sees how happy they are, but believes himself to be a potential hazard for them.
So, Oba Gagnam Style has the brilliant idea to really make himself irredeemable as a person and abandons this family out of fear of destroying them. Ironic, but it's also surprisingly human. I know many people who have left relationships out of a crippling fear of things going south, which basically becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We never know what happens to Shizuko and Shigeko, were they truly better off without him? Maybe, but I guess that question is one that will go unanswered.
Yozo finds himself at a bar that lets him drink for free and stay in an apartment on the 2nd floor (dude has 10 luck, how the fuck does he keep finding bars that let him drink for free). He eventually meets this 17-year old girl named Yoshiko. Yoshiko is the complete opposite to people like Yozo and Horiki. Where Yozo and Horiki are depressing and cynical, Yoshiko is a paragon for innocence and optimism. Yozo begins to wonder what it would be like to have sex with a virgin and wants to marry Yoshiko (I know it's the 1940s, but Jesus dude, 17? He's in his mid 20s mind you). Yoshiko makes Yozo promise to quit drinking if he wants to marry her, he agrees and immediately breaks it. He comes clean to Yoshiko, but being the naive girl she is just thinks he's being silly. They have sex and later marry.
This marks an actual positive note for Yozo. He quits drinking and begins to wonder if maybe he can actually experience happiness. However tragedy would strike once again.
One night, Yozo and Horiki hang out and get blasted drunk. Yozo comes up with these games, one of which is 'Is this noun a tragic noun or a comic one?'. They find words like 'needle' to be tragic, steamship is tragic, but car is comedic. They play another game in which they discuss what words are antonyms. I found this little section to be an interesting exercise in creativity, in the book the antonym for black is white, but the antonym for white is red, and the antonym for red is black. To me, the antonym for Yozo is Yoshiko.
However, the games get broken up when Horiki gets hungry, and he stumbles upon a scene that would lead Yozo down another spiral, perhaps his point of no return. Horiki calls Yozo over and is exposed to Yoshiko being sexually assaulted by some man. Neither of them do anything to intervene. Yoshiko tells Yozo that the man promised her nothing would happen, and Yozo speaks on how she is too trusting.
Yozo's drinking becomes worse than ever. He finds a box of sleeping pills one night, and attempts to kill himself again. He awakens a few days later in a hospital and is met with Flatfish, who gives him some money to try and recover. Yoshiko blames herself, believing Yozo wants to die because he couldn't protect her. She is very much traumatized, the sort of innocent light she once had is dim. He leaves and spends the whole time drinking.
Eventually Yozo stumbles into a pharmacy, at this point he is trying to get treatment because he starts to cough up blood. He finds a connection to this pharmacist, feeling as though she is another miserable soul like himself, and she sees the same in him. The pharmacist tells him to quit drinking and instead gets him on morphine... which admitted by Yozo himself is even worse than drinking. He becomes a full on addict and has an affair with her in order to keep a supply of the drug. He lies to Yoshiko about the morphine saying that it helps him with his comic drawing.
He once again decides to kill himself, but before he can he is taken to a psych ward. This is basically Yozo's final nail in the coffin for his alienation. At this point, he sees himself as being a reject, disqualified from being a human. When he is released, his brothers take him out to the countryside with an older maid to watch over him. A quiet exile. Yozo notes that he is 27, basically the same age as me at the time of writing this, but despite this, he looks like a much older man now.
The novel finishes with some other narrator who got the notebooks from one of the bartenders Yozo frequented, saying that he mailed them to her some 10 years ago. The bartender says he could turn them into a novel, but the narrator decided to present the notebooks with no changes.
Closing
I absolutely loved this book. It made me feel for the characters in a way most other books don't. It was tragic, absolutely, but it was enthrallingly so. It's rare when an author can speak in such a way that really nails into the psychology of people. Dostoevsky is probably the king of this way of writing.
In Yozo, I see some parallels to Dostoevsky's "Underground Man", which shouldn't be any surprise as Notes from the Underground also explore themes of alienation and self-loathing. Dazai himself also had great inspiration from Dostoevsky. There is even a reference to Crime and Punishment in which, during a segment in which Yozo and Horiki discuss antonyms of various words, Yozo sees "crime" and "punishment" to be antonyms.
I think Yozo is autistic. I don't mean that as an insult, there are a lot of parallels between him and ASD. The hypo-sensitivity to his hunger, the inability to understand peoples intentions, the perplexity when people speak in roundabout ways (most notably with his interaction with Flatfish about going back to his studies), etc. all lend credence to someone who struggles with ASD and crippling social anxiety. I've seen a lot of people make this sort of parallels, I and many other people on the spectrum found a lot of similarities.
The tragic aspect of Yozo for me, is that he absolutely displays many genuine human characteristics, but he himself does not see them. He doesn't get the help he needs, perhaps in a different life and time, these events could have been avoided. Yozo is an incredibly human character that speaks to how anxiety and social alienation become crippling. The mask he puts up only harms him further.
Yozo is a tragic noun.
Pirate is wearing Bluey PJ pants and a Bluey shirt
Pirate is feeling relaxed.
Pirate is listening to Bleach by Nirvana
Pirate is playing Oblivion Remastered
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