In the particular edition I read, translator Donald Keene manages to balance content and mood well, but in return he sacrifices the form of the original. Ever since my class read the poetry of ancient cultures in ninth grade, I have found that there is a distinct loveliness to translated works. There is also something to be said about the beauty of translation.
The constant struggle to find something that pins a person to life, or in Yozo’s words, to being human, is something I had never seen, even when I read self-help and modern books about mental illness.Įven though it was written almost 75 years ago, Dazai’s semi-autobiographical account of his mental illness easily reminds me of modern depictions of depression and anxiety.”
I especially related to how Yozo finds things that help him for a little while, fleeting moments where he thinks everything will turn out alright, only to be brought back into the throes of depression. Interspersed with examinations of society and work culture, I found the book increasingly interesting and moving. I found that I related a lot to the visceral feelings of “otherness” that Yozo describes, and in the time and culture it was published-post-World War II Japan-the descriptions are especially poignant.ĭazai threads the needle of writing about mental illness without seeming melodramatic, even with Yozo’s descriptions of feeling inhuman scattered throughout the book. The book holds a particular focus on the alienation of childhood depression, describing the way Yozo moves through life in a time before the language of mental illness was ever discussed out loud. Dazai shows a scarily realistic look into the mind of a man that struggles through depression, alienation, and addiction as he searches for a way to be human. As a semi-autobiographical work, it depicts much of Dazai’s own life through the eyes of the main character, Oba Yozo, from his failures with love to his participation in the Communist Party to the momentary bits of tenderness in his life. No Longer Human was the Japanese author’s last complete work before he committed suicide in 1948. When I first read No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai in an attempt to expand my focus beyond American literature, I did not expect the book to impact me as much as it did. Trigger warning: This review contains discussion of depression, mental illness, and suicide.
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