Genre:
Japanese Literature
Classic Literary Fiction
Asian Literature
Publish Date:
January 17, 1973
Publisher:
(8th Edition)
Translated by:
Synopsis:
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.
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. His 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.
Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)
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**About the Author**
Osamu DAZAI (native name: 太宰治, real name Shūji Tsushima) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.
With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
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***My Thoughts***
Note: This Review contains NO spoilers
For a book titled “No Longer Human” it is a very human experience. Its entertainment value is worth three stars. Its self-awareness value is worth five stars. The title itself made me want to read it as something that would transport me back to my emo teenage phase, where I held nothing but contempt and looked at everything with pessimism. For a few chapters, it did. But further into “No Longer Human,” you realize as a reader you’re reading a semi-autobiography of an alcoholic and narcotic grandfather. Every action written in this book is done by a fictional person but can easily be relatable to the reader or someone the reader knows.
With that being said, it is a useful learning tool for teachers because of its story that’s very real despite being placed in the fiction section at your closest Barnes. The reader will see the main character, Ōba Yōzō, as a child raised by housekeepers but absent parents, and how he plays the class clown to fit in with his peers. The reader will see a university student Ōba Yōzō traversing social interactions with Communist classmates and trying to understand women as if they were an alien race; a man attempting to get a career in manga. And finally, a man driven to multiple suicide attempts. He tries to find himself in a world where he doesn’t feel like he belongs.
In the end, I felt indifferent after finishing “No Longer Human.” It is a very human story, that maps out the life of someone, anyone who falls into depression, addiction, and despair. It shows that trauma can have long lasting influence into one’s adult life; that not everyone can heal from it. And that is a human experience, burdensome, but very much human.
My rating:
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