Books: “No Longer Human” by Osamu Dazai

I am struggling to describe the book’s essence. And although I read it a few months back from writing this entry, time seems an irrelevant excuse: I am not sure I ever got it. The book is somehow reminiscent of Celine’s “Journey to the end of the night,” in which the protagonist finds living a tedious duty. In “No Longer Human,” the protagonist lives as a ‘clown’, making others laugh with feigned silliness and antics, yet not able to find humour for himself. Within Japanese literature, the book is described as the embodiment of post-war sentiment. Perhaps it is why I liken it to Celine’s post war traumas on the human heart.

“Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable. Or rather, I felt at ease with it. What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.”

“And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die
Lift not your hands to It for help – for It
As impotently rolls as you or I.” *

*A verse from the Rubaiyat (Persian poems of four verses, translated into Japanese, its most famous version translated by Ryosaku Ogawa in 1949.)