The Deconstruction of the Self

The contribution of Japanese literature to world literature is incomparable. It has centuries of history under its fold, basically consolidating its status as one of the world’s most recognized literatures. It produced one of the earliest novels published, Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s Tales of Genji. It would only get better from this point on. Shikibu’s legacy was preceded by top-caliber writers whose works have captivated the world over. Globalization at the onset of the 20th century elevated Japanese literature to global recognition. Natsume Sōseki, Shiga Naoya, and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa have become household names. Their works, such as Soseki’s I Am A Cat, Naoya’s A Dark Night’s Passing, and Akutagawa’s Rashōmon have become hallmarks of Japanese literature; they are modern classics.

Not to be outdone, Japanese literature has produced three Nobel Laureates in Literature: Yasunari Kawabata (1968), Kenzaburō Ōe (1994), and Kazuo Ishiguro (2017). Each has left a stamp on the world of literature. They are also flanked by equally talented peers who have swept the world over. Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima, Sawako Ariyoshi, and Shūsaku Endō are among them. This long tradition of producing excellence is carried over in contemporary writers such as Haruki Murakami, Yōko Ogawa, Yōko Tawada, Kiego Higashino, and Banana Yoshimoto. It is even more fascinating that the range of their works covers a vast of literary genres, including mystery and suspense (Higashino), magical realism (Murakami), science, bildungsroman, and historical. Japanese literature is akin to an umbrella under which these various genres thrive.

Throughout history, Japanese literature has perpetually pushed the bounds of literature. Haiku, one of the most popular forms of poetry, emerged in Japan. Another literary genre popularized by Japanese writers is the I-novel (私小説, Shishōsetsu, Watakushi Shōsetsu). The I-novel is a semi-autobiographical work that dominated Japanese literature in the early decades of the 20th century. While it has been prevalently a confessional form of literature, it has also evolved into an expose of society at large or of the author’s life. This literary school has produced top-caliber writers, among them Naoya Shiga. Kenzaburō Ōe is also known for incorporating elements of the I-novel in his works. Another prominent I-novelist is Osamu Dazai. Born Shūji Tsushima, Dazai’s interest in writing was cultivated at a young age.

“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.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

The exemplification of Dazai’s mastery of the genre is his novel 人間失格 (Ningen Shikkaku) which was published in 1948. Considered a classic of postwar Japanese literature, the novel was made available to the anglophone-speaking world in 1958 carrying the title No Longer Human; the book was also published as A Shameful Life. The novel opens with an unnamed narrator who introduces the framework of the novel. An author in post-war Japan, he received three notebooks from an acquaintance. The notebooks were written ten years ago by someone described as a “madman;” the madman would eventually be revealed as Ōba Yōzō (大庭葉蔵). Along with his notebooks were three of his photographs in various stages of his life: one as a child, one when he was a young adult, and one as an adult.

While an ordinary eye would find him good-looking, the unnamed narrator found his pictures distorted. Something was unsettling about the pictures, particularly the last picture of him standing in a run-down room while staring blankly at the camera. Yōzō does not look entirely human in his photographs. The story then pivots to the three notebooks; each notebook representing a major chapter of Ōba’s life. The first notebook detailed his childhood, particularly his struggles to connect with the people around him. He developed a clownish personality to obscure his true self – he was reluctant to show his true nature. He used humor to endear himself with other people albeit he remained reluctant to establish interpersonal connections. He resorted to buffoonery not only to avoid angering those around him but also not to be taken seriously. For instance, he got low grades at school for things he wrote and yet he didn’t change his ways because he knew his teacher enjoyed writing his funny pieces.

The clownish personality also serves as a safety net when navigating social situations. This allows him to interact with his peers while also obscuring his deeper feelings of foreboding and disconnection. Ōba’s case of alienation was exacerbated by his strained relationship with his parents. At a young age, Ōba struggled with finding a sense of purpose and meaning. However, some were able to see through Ōba’s façade. His classmate Takeichi saw through his antics; Ōba always thought of Takeichi as unintelligent. To avoid getting exposed and to keep an eye on him, Ōba befriended Takeichi. Despite Ōba’s ulterior motive, his friendship with Takeichi made him experience an epiphany. While it opened new avenues, Ōba’s concerns went unresolved. Their friendship was captured in the second notebook.

Ōba’s struggles for identity and purpose were carried over into young adulthood. His life started to unravel when he attended university; this was captured in the second notebook. Ōba wanted to attend art school but his desire was met with vehement opposition by his father who wanted Ōba to receive training to become a government servant; receive training to become a government servant’s father was a politician. From the Japanese countryside, he moved to Tokyo. With great reluctance, he pursued the path designed by his father. However, he occasionally skipped classes to read, paint, or attend an art class in Hongo. It was during an art class that he met Horiki Masao. A sensualist, Horiki introduced Ōba to what he perceived was the life a young artist should lead. Horiki opened Ōba to more worldly interests.

“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.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

What ensued charted Ōba’s descent into the darker quarters of life. The lower he descended, the further he distorted himself. As Dazai places Ōba’s life under the literary microscope, he probed into the factors that led Ōba to become less than human. One of the most palpable factors was the alienation he experienced. While Ōba was born into an affluent family, Ōba never felt any connection with his family. This feeling of alienation and a sense of disconnection went beyond the household. Within the context of society as a whole, Ōba found every facet of humanity perplexing. Everything was shrouded in a veil of artifice. Everything was unnatural. Ōba’s reflex action was to mimic those around him to satisfy them. He conforms to basic conduct he deems socially acceptable.

However, Ōba’s means of coping with society only backfired. In creating different personas to conform to those around him, he was further deconstructing himself. He was becoming a performer and his act was burying his true self. Rather than establishing meaningful human connections, he effectively created a chasm between himself and the people around him. His comedic antic is a double-bladed sword. One side reflected a naturally joyful man whose comedic façade elicited a laugh here and there. Ōba’s bravado reassured everyone around him of his sanity and positive spirits. The other side of the blade showed the portrait of a young man who was slowly becoming socially isolated. Both were weighing heavily on Ōba, further pushing him down his descent into the distortion of the self.

Straying from the norm inevitably leads one to a life of deviancy. The novel depicted a young artist’s life as one that brimmed with alcohol and cigarettes. Prostitutes are also prevalent. It was self-indulgent and also self-destructive. It, however, provided Ōba a reprieve, an escape from his social isolation. Also weighing heavily on Ōba was his overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame which were constant presences in his life. They loomed above him even in adulthood, dictating how he reacted to situations. This sense of guilt and shame, one can surmise, can be traced to his childhood when he was sexually abused by his family’s servants. Ōba, however, did not report the abuses because he believed that exposing these abuses would not change anything. Instead, he resorted to masking his true identity, hiding behind a clownish nature.

Despite the disconnection he felt with his surroundings, Ōba was able to establish meaningful connections. However, these connections are often born out of shared suffering. Through Horiki, Ōba met Tsuneko, a hostess at a Ginza café. Ōba and Tsuneko immediately hit it off because of their shared sense of despair. Ōba, after listening to Tsuneko relate her sadness, felt a sense of “comradeship” with a “fellow sufferer.” It was a moment of epiphany that dismantled what Ōba used to believe; he could share a bond with another human being. In the same manner, Ōba felt a sense of connection with an elderly pharmacist who he sensed was unhappy. As Ōba captured it, “Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.” They found company and acceptance in each other and in their shared sorrow.

“It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon. People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

At the outset, these new connections reverberated with a hopeful message because they disproved Ōba’s initial thoughts. However, rather than improving Ōba’s outlook, his new connections further underlined his sense of sorrow. Depression and stigmatization of mental health both featured prominently in the story of Ōba. Ōba’s story underscored our tendency to resort to different forms of self-expression when we feel unheard or disconnected from the rest of the world. In Ōba’s case, he found solace in painting. At a young age, he drew cartoons. However, painting and art in general gained a new meaning after Takeichi showed him a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. Takeichi referred to it as a portrait of a ghost, astounding Ōba who recognized it as a self-portrait.

Takeichi’s offhanded comment prompted Ōba to reevaluate the way he understands art and artists. He has always seen art as a means to convey beauty, or at least entertain. He began to understand that art can also be a means to capture the uglier side of life, and that art can also be gloomy, mysterious, or even perplexing. In Ōba’s story, art also took a form of reprieve. It was his outlet. Through honest expression of art, he was able to convey deep emotions he could not verbally express. In painting, he found a way to paint his “true self,” showing the darker shades of human beings. In a way, the novel itself – comprised of Ōba’s three journals – was also a means of self-expression. Not only did it paint a portrait of him but it also sent the message that somehow he was willing to open up.

For all its exploration of the intricacies of the human spirit and the darker aspects of the human experience, No Longer Human beacons with hope. As the story approaches its inevitable close, Ōba starts to establish a genuine connection with himself and even acknowledges the despair that reverberates throughout his existence. In doing so, he started to embrace his true self. He slowly took off the mask of clownery that he had been wearing all his life. He decided to embrace his imperfections. No Longer Human was Dazai’s final published work. Interestingly, a couple of months after its publication, Dazai took his own life. As such, one can surmise the parallels between Dazai and Ōba’s life. Both were born into affluent families, they both neglected their studies and took an interest in communism and other vices.

The novel is a poignant portrait of a man at odds with himself and those around him. He struggled with identity, mental health, and the pressures placed on him by his family and society as a whole. Ōba’s epiphany apropos Van Gogh’s painting captured how the novel probed into the darker aspects of life and the human experience. Dazai is coaxing us to tackle our own demons and the ways we deceive the world. Essential to our existence, especially in a world where artifice has become ubiquitous, is the establishment of meaningful human connections. No Longer Human is a deceptively slender volume that probes into seminal subjects. It is no wonder that it is considered a classic of the Japanese canon.

“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 that they are deceiving one another. But I have no special interest in instances of mutual deception. 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.”

~ Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
Book Specs

Author: Osamu Dazai
Translator (from Japanese): Donald Keene
Publisher: New Directs
Publishing Date: 1973 (1948)
No. of Pages: 177
Genre: Literary, Coming-of-age

Synopsis

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. Oba Yozo’s 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.

Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of one of Japan’s most important writers, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948). The novel has come to “echo the sentiments of youth” (Hiroshi Ando, The Mainichi Daily News) from post-war Japan to the postmodern society of technology. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual’s alienation from society.

About the Author

Dazai Osamu (太宰 治) was born Tsushima Shūji (津島 修治) on June 19, 1909, in Kanagi, Aomori, Empire of Japan. He was the eighth surviving child of an affluent landowner and politician. Gen’emon, his father, was a politician which made him absent most of Dazai’s childhood. His mother, Tane, on the other hand, was often ill. Dazai was brought up by the family’s servant and his aunt Kiye. He received his education at =Kanagi Elementary and attended Aomori Junior High School.

He entered Hirosaki University’s literature department in 1927. Dazai edited a series of student publications at the university while contributing his own works. He also published a magazine called Saibō bungei (Cell Literature) with his friends and subsequently became a staff member of the college’s newspaper. However, his literary success was stymied by the news of his idol Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s suicide in 1927. He fell into a spell of self-indulgence and swept into vices. In 1930, Dazai enrolled in the French Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University but he dropped from his studies. He then got involved with the leftist movement but eventually pledged at the Aomori Prosecutor’s Office to completely withdraw from leftist activities after he was tracked down.

Under the assistance of established writer Masuji Ibuse, Dazai managed to have some of his literary works published. In 1933, he used his penname Osamu Dazai for the first time in a short story called 列車 (Ressha, Train). The short story was also his initial foray into the I-novel which would be the trademark of his succeeding works. In 1935, he published his first book, Bannen (晩年, The Final Years), a collection of short stories. In the years before the Second World War, Dazai had a prolific writing career. He wrote short stories including Dōke no hana (道化の花, Flowers of Buffoonery, 1935), Gyakkō (逆行, Losing Ground, 1935), and Kyōgen no kami (狂言の神, The God of Farce, 1936). Dazai’s literary career still flourished during wartime. He wrote works with real literary merits such as Udaijin Sanetomo (右大臣実朝, Minister of the Right Sanetomo, 1943), Tsugaru (1944), Pandora no Hako (パンドラの匣, Pandora’s Box, 1945–46), and Otogizōshi (お伽草紙, Fairy Tales, 1945).

Dazai’s most renowned works, however, are Shayō (斜陽, The Setting Sun, 1947), and Ningen Shikkaku (人間失格, No Longer Human, 1948). Several of his works are in the process of being translated into English. In a way, Dazai is a tormented artist. He had a tumultuous life and has continuously struggled with mental health. He committed suicide several times, including the infamous attempted drowning at Kamakura with 19-year-old bar hostess Shimeko Tanabe. A couple of months after the publication of Ningen Shikkaku, Dazai and his last lover, Tomie Yamazaki, drowned themselves in the rain-swollen Tamagawa Canal, near his house on June 13, 1948.