In this blog post, we explore how Osamu Dazai’s sense of deprivation, frustration, addiction, and suicide attempts influenced his literary world—particularly the creation of ‘No Longer Human’.
The Life of Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai (太宰治) was born on June 19, 1909, in Kanagi Village, Kitatsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture, in northern Honshu, Japan, as the tenth of eleven children in the Tsushima family, a prominent landowning clan. His real name was Shuji Tsushima (津島修治); Osamu Dazai was his pen name. His father, Tsushima Gen’emon, was a member of the House of Representatives and a powerful local figure, and the family was financially well-off. However, his father was always busy with politics and business, and his mother was frail, so he spent most of his childhood with his aunt or nanny.
Although he grew up in a wealthy environment, Dazai was actually tormented by his family’s wealth and the injustices it created. Although he lived in a luxurious mansion with many servants and rode in carriages bearing the family crest, he was tormented by a guilty conscience upon learning that his family had accumulated its wealth through rent collection and usury. After encountering Marxist ideology, he bore the guilt of being the son of a large landowner, and as the tenth child and sixth son in the family, he felt psychologically alienated due to a lack of attention. Deprived of his parents’ love and growing close to the servants, he viewed himself as a burden to the family and developed a sense of being a social outsider. Eventually, around the age of twenty, he attempted suicide by taking a large dose of the sleeping pill Calmotin.
After graduating from Hirosaki High School, he enrolled in the French Literature Department at Tokyo Imperial University, but neglected his studies due to frequent absences and a life of revelry. Around that time, he became immersed in Marxism and participated in left-wing activities, but soon became disillusioned after feeling uneasy about the attitude of using any means necessary for the sake of revolution. In November 1930, at the age of 21, he attempted a double suicide with a café waitress named Shimeko Tanabe in Kamakura by ingesting Calmotin; however, only Shimeko died, and he was arrested on charges of aiding suicide but released on a suspended indictment.
After this incident, he was plagued by guilt, but not long after, he brought Hatsuyo Oyama, a geisha he had met in high school, to Tokyo and began living with her. When this fact became known in his hometown, financial support from his family was cut off, plunging him into economic hardship and further eroding his self-esteem. His living conditions deteriorated, and he remained in a state of emotional instability.
Even during those dark times, the only light guiding Dazai was writing. He demonstrated his literary talent by founding the high school fanzine ‘Seibo Bungei’ and publishing works such as the novel ‘Mugen Naraku’ (Infinite Abyss), which exposed his father’s debauchery and hypocrisy, and ‘Chiju Ichidai’ (The Landlord’s Generation), which criticized landlords. Later, he met the novelist Masuji Ibuse and became his disciple, devoting himself fully to creative writing.
“Memories,” which he began writing in 1932, is a coming-of-age novel reflecting on his childhood; it was published a year later. In 1933, he published the short story “The Train” and used the pen name “Osamu Dazai” for the first time. In 1935, he published “Against the Current” in a literary magazine, drawing attention from the literary world. However, after failing in his attempts to find employment due to financial hardship, he attempted suicide by hanging himself in Kamakura but survived.
Ironically, even amidst his despair, he continued to produce works steadily. When he published the short story collection ‘Man-nen’ in 1936, young literary enthusiasts hailed him as a genius. In August of the same year, ‘Reversal’ was nominated for the first Akutagawa Prize, raising expectations; however, when it finished as a runner-up, he turned to drugs out of disappointment and began down a path of self-destruction due to addiction. Concerned acquaintances had him admitted to a psychiatric hospital for addiction treatment, and Dazai felt betrayed and despairing. This experience became the basis for his later work ‘Human Lost’, and its obscure, prose-poem-like form later served as the prototype for ‘No Longer Human’.
He was discharged after about a month, but while he remained unable to break free from his drug dependence, he fell into despair once again due to Hatsuyo Oyama’s affair. The two attempted suicide together at Minakami Onsen in Gunma Prefecture, but failed. Afterward, he lost the energy to write and spent his days in desolation, relying on alcohol and drugs. At the urging of Masuji Ibuse, Dazai, hoping to lead a “life as a family man,” became engaged to Michiko Ishihara in 1938. After holding their wedding ceremony at Ibuse’s home in 1939, they began their married life in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture.
After his marriage, Dazai continued his prolific creative work and showed a shift in his writing style. Moving beyond his early experimental and somewhat flawed works, he published artistically and substantively rich novels such as ‘The Schoolgirl’ (1939), ‘Judas’s Confession’ (1940), ‘Run, Meros!’ (1940), ‘Winter Fireworks’ (1942), ‘Eighty Views of Mount Fuji’ (1943), ‘Tsugaru’ (1944), “Tales of the Past” (1945), and “Spring Leaves” (1946), establishing himself as a prominent writer.
In 1947, he published ‘Sayonara’, which reflected the chaos of postwar Japanese society, and received great acclaim. Alongside Sakaguchi Ango, Ishikawa Jun, and Oda Sakunosuke, he led the avant-garde “Rōha” literary movement and established himself as a writer representing decadent tendencies.
However, even after gaining fame with ‘Decline’, Dazai’s despairing worldview, self-denial, and sense of ruin only deepened. Traces of his dark life—marked by frequent setbacks and suicide attempts—were ultimately projected directly into his work, culminating in ‘No Longer Human’. Dazai devoted himself to writing this work from March to May 1948, and on the night of June 13, leaving behind the manuscript “Goodbye,” he committed suicide by jumping into the Tama River reservoir in Mitaka, Tokyo, alongside his lover, Tomie Yamazaki. He was 38 years old, just one week before his 39th birthday.
About ‘No Longer Human’
Although he died young, Dazai’s stature as a writer was further solidified through ‘No Longer Human’, a novel with strong autobiographical elements. The work gained a wide readership, selling over 10 million copies posthumously, and has been frequently adapted into plays, TV dramas, and films, remaining beloved to this day.
‘No Longer Human’ is structured around a first-person narrator, consisting of a preface, an epilogue, and three diary entries. The opening sentence of the preface, “I have seen three photographs of that man,” evokes a sensory and poetic atmosphere, as if hinting at Yozō’s life through photographic imagery.
Yozō’s appearance in the photographs gives off an eerie and unsettling impression from childhood onward. The first photograph, which seems to convey a sense of revulsion rather than the expression of an innocent child; the second, showing him as an adult, who despite his good looks exudes a somewhat eerie aura; and the third and final photograph, which conveys a sinister atmosphere as if he had died with his hands still warming over the hearth fire—all of these simultaneously instill a sense of futility and a foreboding premonition in the reader. This atmosphere in the preface builds anticipation for the entire work while foreshadowing the protagonist’s downfall.
First Memoir: Clowning Around and Isolation
As evident from “First Memoir,” which begins with Yojo’s confession, “I have lived a life of utter shame,” this work depicts the process by which Yojo, having lived a life filled with shameful acts, gradually loses his humanity.
Born into a wealthy family in the countryside, Yōjō is so pure that he struggles to adapt to the world. Living in a closed-off world, he cannot trust people. Far from trusting them, he feels terror toward human beings—creatures who can deceive others and yet live on, smiling as if nothing were wrong. To him, the world is a den of demons filled with such terrifying people, a place overflowing with lies, hypocrisy, absurdity, and distrust. Ultimately, to survive in such a world, Yojo decides to don the mask of a clown.
So, what I came up with was the act of a clown.
The clown act was my final attempt to court humanity. It seems I was unable to give up on people easily, even though I feared them to the extreme. I was barely able to connect with humanity through that single thread of the clown act. In other words, it was a service to others—one in which I smiled incessantly on the surface while, deep down, I clung desperately to a sense of crisis so acute that success was a long shot, perhaps once in a thousand tries, my brow beaded with cold sweat.
Thus, Yojo strives to blend into the human world by putting on a forced smile, hiding her true feelings, and playing the clown. But a life of lies and hypocrisy—deceiving not only others but even herself—could never be comfortable.
The days of anxiety and fear continued after that.
Outwardly, she continued to play the pitiful clown, making people laugh, but every now and then, without even realizing it, she would let out a heavy sigh. The thought that whatever I did, Takeichi would see right through me, and that before long he would surely blab it to everyone, made cold sweat break out on my forehead. And I would look around pointlessly with a strange, frantic gaze, like a madman. If I could, I desperately wanted to stay by Takeichi’s side all day long—whether it was morning, noon, or night—to keep watch and make sure he didn’t let my secret slip. I wanted to stick close to him, doing everything I could to make him believe that my clowning around wasn’t “on purpose” but genuine, and if possible, I wanted to become his best friend.
Second Diary: The Threat of Exposure and a Catastrophic Event
In “Second Diary,” Yōzō is anxious that his classmate Takeichi might expose his true identity, so he tries desperately to keep him close. At the same time, he treats Takeichi very affectionately—even going so far as to let him rest his head on his lap and clean his ears—to make him trust him. To such a Yozo, Takeichi says, “Many women will be charmed by you.” However, these words serve as a prophecy for Yozo’s future, in which he forms tragic relationships with numerous women.
Encouraged by Takeichi’s words, “You’ll become a great painter,” Yōjo begins attending an art studio, where she meets an art student named Horiki. Through him, she is introduced to alcohol, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops, and leftist ideology.
Horiki shows Yozo a new world. Because he is always wary of people, Yozo does not confide his true feelings to Horiki either, but for some reason, he feels at ease when he is with him. One day, Yozo meets Tsuneo, a married woman working at a café, and spends a night with her. Shortly after, he goes to that café with Horiki, where Horiki tries to kiss Tsuneko but stops himself, saying, “No matter how starved for women I am, I don’t want to be with such a pathetic woman.”
Feeling humiliated and sad as if he himself had been insulted, Yozo drinks until he passes out. That night, she throws herself into the sea at Kamakura with Tsuneo. However, only Tsuneo dies; Yōzō survives and is imprisoned for aiding suicide, only to be released on a suspended sentence. The final sentence of the “Second Diary,” which describes this scene, leaves a peculiar aftertaste.
I received a suspended sentence. But I wasn’t happy at all. Far from being happy, I was overcome by a sense of despair as I sat on a bench in the prosecutor’s office waiting room, waiting for Mr. Nappuchi, the officer in charge of processing my release, to arrive.
The Third Diary: The Destruction of Relationships and Morphine Addiction
“The Third Diary” depicts the process by which Yōjō honestly reveals himself and expects affection and trust from others, only to ultimately be buried and defeated by the human world. Yōjō is expelled from high school due to the incident where he jumped into the sea with Tsuneko. He lives at the home of his father’s acquaintance, Mr. Nepchi, but when he feels out of place there, he goes to Horiki’s house.
There, she meets Shizuko, a magazine reporter who has come to pick up illustrations from Horiki. Yozō takes a liking to Shizuko and begins living off her—a “parasitic, kept man’s life”—despite the fact that she has a five-year-old daughter. He plays with her and treats Shizuko’s daughter, Shigeko, affectionately. Then, when Shigeko calls him “Daddy” and says she wishes she had a real father, he is horrified—and the description of this scene is also striking.
I was startled. I even felt dizzy and lightheaded.
I wasn’t sure if I was Shigeko’s enemy, or if Shigeko was mine. At that moment, I realized there was a terrifying adult here who was plunging me into a pit of fear. A stranger—an incomprehensible stranger, a stranger shrouded in secrets. Suddenly, Shigeko’s face began to look like that stranger to me.
I thought Shigeko would be different, but even this child had that “ox’s tail that suddenly swats a gadfly to death.” From then on, I was so frightened that I even found myself watching Shigeko’s every move.
In the end, Yōzō decides that far from making Shizuko and Shigeko happy, he would only ruin their lives, so he moves out of Shizuko’s apartment. Shortly after, he meets Yoshiko, a young woman who works at a tobacco shop, and, charmed by her pure and kind heart, marries her.
However, while playing a word-guessing game with Horiki, who had come to visit, an incident occurred in which Yoshiko was molested by a salesman. Yōzō caught a faint glimpse of the scene Horiki witnessed and expressed his feelings at that moment as follows.
The emotion that overwhelmed me then was not anger, nor disgust, nor sadness, but a terrifying fear. Nor was it the fear one feels upon encountering a ghost in a graveyard, but rather a primal terror so violent it defies description—the kind one might feel upon encountering a spirit-like being dressed in white in the cedar grove of a shrine.
From that night on, Yōjō begins to grow white hair and loses all confidence in everything. Moreover, he began to distrust people without reason and eventually gave up on all expectations, joys, and empathy for the world. He merely watched as Yoshiko was violated and came to hate and resent Horiki for informing him of it. He was also deeply hurt not by the fact that Yoshiko had been violated, but by the betrayal of her unconditional trust in people and her pure heart.
Eventually, Yōzō, having lost all will to live and with his disillusionment with humanity reaching its peak, takes sleeping pills and attempts suicide. However, he fails and, coughing up blood, asks the pharmacy owner for help. The pharmacy owner reluctantly prescribes Yōzō a morphine injection, telling him to use it only when he can no longer bear it. The morphine acts as a gateway to a new world for Yōko. When she receives a morphine injection, all anxiety, restlessness, and shame vanish completely, and her creative urge surges. Moreover, she becomes surprisingly cheerful—even to her own surprise—and speaks fluently. As a result, Yōko becomes addicted to morphine, reaching a point where she cannot endure life without the injections.
Horiki, Mr. Nopchi, and Yoshiko cannot simply leave Yōjo, who is addicted not only to alcohol but also to morphine, so they lie to him, claiming he is being treated for tuberculosis, and have him admitted to a mental hospital. Yōjo is overcome with despair, feeling betrayed by everyone and defeated by the realization that he has become a madman and is now completely unfit to be a human being. To make matters worse, upon his discharge three months later, he is overcome with despair upon hearing that his father has passed away from a stomach ulcer.
His older brother, moved by the grief of losing their father and concerned for Yōjō’s mental and physical decline, arranges for him to recuperate in a seaside hot spring town. There, Yozo lives with an elderly housekeeper named Tetsu, and the final sentence of the “Third Diary” concludes with the following soliloquy:
I have neither happiness nor unhappiness now.
Everything passes.
In the so-called “human” world where I have lived a hellish life until now, this is the only thing I have regarded as a truth.
Everything passes.
I am twenty-seven this year. Perhaps because my gray hair has become noticeably more prominent, most people think I am over forty.
The Epilogue and the Author’s Life
In the “Epilogue” that concludes this work, the narrator “I” is the author, not Yōzō. As the author, I stop by a tea house in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, on my way to visit a college classmate who lives there. Coincidentally, the tea house proprietress and I are old acquaintances. After making a fuss with me, she suddenly asks if I know Yozō. When I reply that I don’t, she goes into a room and comes out with three notebooks and three photographs, handing them to me and saying they might serve as material for a novel. These are the three diaries and the three photographs mentioned in the “Preface.”
The next day, I visit the tea house to ask to borrow the notebooks. When I ask about Yōzō, the proprietress replies in a matter-of-fact tone:
“The Yōzō we knew was very pure and considerate of others. As long as he didn’t drink—or even if he did… he was an angelically good boy.”
Osamu Dazai uses the madam’s voice to offer this positive assessment of Yōko. Although Yōko lived her entire life tormented by guilt and shame, Dazai may have felt compassion for her, believing that she was, above all others, warm-hearted, pure, and kind.
Like Yōko in the novel, Osamu Dazai also attempted suicide on several occasions. He ultimately took his own life at the young age of thirty-nine. For this reason, readers of this book will identify Yōko with Dazai, deeply empathizing with the author’s anguish and tragic choice.
Osamu Dazai’s ‘No Longer Human’ continues to be beloved to this day. However, there are also those who view the work negatively, claiming that reading it makes one feel depressed and listless. Some even criticize it as being tainted with self-destruction and negativity, calling it decadent, weak, and nihilistic.
Even so, it would be difficult to find a soul as pure as Yozō’s in the novel, and it would be hard to find a work that depicts a fragile, introverted human being in such profound solitude as “No Longer Human” does.
