No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

Jan 1973 · New Directions Publishing

About this ebook

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)

Ratings and reviews

it was an odd experience, I've never read a book like it before. throughout his life he was a understandable man although his problems were a bit extreme I understand. his life really was a hell and every page had me feeling more and more down. I love this book and would recommend if it's what your looking for it has a very specific type of writing

I think the book talks about what it is like 'being human'. The notebooks were written from the heart & spoke to our souls. The honesty of the writer is seen when talking about certain things that, we, as a 'society' termed inhumane.

The main character isn't very likeable but I think that's the point at the same time he is also relatable. He's done bad things but the story represents the human experience of falling into a depression and the lengths that "human nature" can take u to get what u want even if u have to commit deplorable acts. It might also be to show we're all capable of doing bad things when it comes to it and how we can get to that same level or it might be a look on the different ways ppl carry on and get through life whether that's through blind Innocence/ignorance or the complete opposite, if Innocence and ignorance are even comparable. Either way a few of the characters carry themselves with arrogance like him and in some ways they're no worse or better than him. The point is that it's not up to us to judge the human experience or rather it is? The important part is whatever take away from it and ur interpretation of it. Overall it's an interesting book if u enjoy the analysis of human nature.

About the author

Osamu Dazai was born in 1909 into a powerful landowning family of northern Japan. A brilliant student, he entered the French department of Tokyo University in 1930, but later boasted that in the five years before he left without a degree, he had never attended a lecture. Dazai was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan before he committed suicide by throwing himself into Tokyo’s Tamagawa Aqueduct. His body was found on what would have been his 39th birthday.

Donald Keene, the author of dozens of books in both English and Japanese as well as the famed translator of Dazai, Kawabata, and Mishima, was the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Prize for Literature.