No Longer Human

After finishing this, I don't know how to feel. Empty, mostly. Devoid of feeling in a literal sense, with just a little depression seeping in, straight from the man himself: Osamu Dazai.

Knowing it was written as semi-autobiography scares me a little. Dazai died on June 13, 1948, in Tokyo. He and Tomie Yamazaki, the woman he was living with at the time, drowned themselves together in the Tamagawa Aqueduct. The book came out the month after, in July 1948. The themes around Yozo Oba mirror Dazai's own life closely. The whole way through, I sympathized with him and felt disgusted by him at the same time.

What disgusts me is the passivity. He never fights for what he wants or stands up for what he believes in. He just appeases everyone, endlessly. And the women: he uses them, trading on his looks and charm. That's exploitation, come on man. You are better than that

"Living itself is the source of sin."

It reminds me of what they say about programming: "Every line of code is a potential bug, so the only truly bug-free code is the code you never write."

That's one way to see life. A bleak, pessimistic one.

Yozo's answer to all of it was suicide. I won't pretend that doesn't get the job done. But there's more to life than that, I'm pretty sure of it. Focus on the good. Cherish the people around you. He was already good with women, so cherish them instead of using them. Don't take the easy way out and drown some passing pain in substance abuse for a few hours of escape. Endure it.

In the epilogue, the lady at the Kyobashi bar calls him an 'angel' and remembers him as a sweet boy. I wonder if that was just his usual charm and affection, the clowning that made women see him differently, or whether he was actually capable of being human. Deep down, I think he had a chance at it. If only he hadn't met Horiki. But who am I to say? Maybe he'd have met someone even worse.

From the start, Yozo Oba is afraid of people, his own family included. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered either way.

Landed on 4 stars, then kept second-guessing it. The book made me sit so uncomfortably that I don't know how to rate it properly. Maybe that's the point.