Thoughts on No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Why... this is a remarkably dark and depressing story of a man who is literally horrified of a human being, who dreads the very notion of society. He is Oba Yozo. He is a man who feels like he doesn't belong - he feels disconnected to other people.

“All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know.” 

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.” 

“I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.” 

“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn’t matter how, I’ll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.” 

It strikes me a great deal how familiar and understandable his thoughts and perceptions are - despite the fact that later on in the story he is claimed as a madman. The complexity of the details depicted from his very narration is not even foreign, his acquired concept of life is explicable and perceivable. Why he does certain things - hiding, escaping, running away, pretending, losing hopes all too early, torturing his own soul, committing a suicide, to convincing himself again and again that he doesn't deserve happiness - he makes one atrocious choice after another yet the rationale behind his godawful choices that condemns his life to a living hell - heck it does make sense. Yes, the most horrible thing of all, it does make sense, and I could unsurprisingly relate to his thoughts.

“I myself spent the whole day long deceiving human beings with my clowning. I have not been able to work much up much concern over the morality prescribed in textbooks of ethics under the name as “righteousness.” I find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit. Human beings never did teach me that abstruse secret. If I had only known that one thing I should never have had to dread human beings so, nor should I have opposed myself to human life, nor tasted such torments of hell every night.” 

“Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarely, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.” 

The saddest thing of all, is even until the end of the story, he still doesn't know - let alone experience - the slightest bit of what happiness is. Or perhaps, fail to notice it. He has fallen too deep in his own mind-made chasm and the society doesn't even help him, or cushion his fall.

“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 thought, 'I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin.” 

“The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision.” 

This is a brilliantly thought-provoking book. Deep, oppressively daunting, but interesting all the same.

I just really want to hug Yozo.

5 of 5 stars.

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