In this blog post, we’ll summarize Osamu Dazai’s life, as well as the background and significance of his masterpiece, ‘No Longer Human’.
The Life of Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai (太宰治, birth name Shuji Tsushima) was born on June 19, 1909, in Tsugaru, Aomori Prefecture, as the tenth of eleven children and the sixth son. His father, Tsushima Kengeemon, served as a member of the House of Representatives, and his eldest brother, Bunchi, served as governor of Aomori Prefecture; the family was part of the local elite. After the Meiji Restoration, the Tsushima family amassed land through moneylending and grew into major landowners; at one point, as many as 30 people—including family members and servants—lived together under one roof.
Dazai grew up feeling ashamed of his family’s background as newly wealthy upstarts, which led him to develop a sense of guilt. Raised by a wet nurse and his aunt in place of his frail mother, he suffered from a lack of maternal love; this deprivation, along with the hierarchical atmosphere within his family, is consistently reflected throughout his works. His feelings of inferiority and guilt toward his family, along with the lack of maternal love, had a profound impact on Dazai’s self-destructive tendencies and his life.
An outstanding student who consistently ranked at the very top from elementary school through high school, Dazai nurtured his dream of becoming a writer when he first published a work in his school’s student magazine while attending Aomori Junior High School; he also published novels and essays in fan magazines. In 1927, the year he entered Hirosaki High School, the news of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s suicide came as a great shock to him. Subsequently, he began frequenting the red-light district and becoming close to geishas, leading to both a decadent lifestyle and a growing interest in Marxism.
On the evening of December 1929, the day his final high school semester exams began, Dazai took the sleeping pill Calmotin and attempted suicide for the first time in his life. It appears that a combination of factors contributed to this, including his deep immersion in leftist ideology, a sense of guilt about his background, fear of disappointing his family by neglecting his studies, and the death of his younger brother, Reiji.
In 1930, Dazai enrolled in the Department of French Literature at Tokyo Imperial University, where he met Masuji Ibuse, who became his lifelong mentor, and actively participated in left-wing activities. Around the same time, the incident involving the geisha Hatsuyo Oyama, who had come to Tokyo, occurred; his eldest brother, Bunchi, intervened to arrange a marriage between Hatsuyo and Dazai, sparking a conflict with the family. Tormented by anxiety over being disowned by his family and by feelings of self-loathing, Dazai attempted a double suicide with Atsumi Tanabe, a café employee from Ginza, on the beach in Kamakura on November 29; however, Atsumi died while Dazai survived. This incident left him with a deep sense of guilt for the rest of his life and was reflected in his later works on numerous occasions.
In 1931, after moving in with Hatsuyo, Dazai actively participated in the socialist movement, including joining the Anti-Imperialist Student Alliance and raising funds for the Communist Party. However, shocked by Hatsuyo’s infidelity and at the urging of his eldest brother, he turned himself in and renounced his left-wing activities.
In 1933, Dazai published his first work under the pen name “Osamu Dazai.” In 1935, as it became unlikely he would graduate from university and after failing a job interview at a newspaper company, he attempted suicide by hanging himself on a mountain in Kamakura—his third suicide attempt. That same year, after undergoing surgery for appendicitis, he fell into a critical condition due to peritonitis. His use of the painkiller Fabinal led to drug addiction and pulmonary tuberculosis, which would have a profound impact on his life and work thereafter.
In 1935, ‘Reversal’ was nominated for the first Akutagawa Prize, but when it finished as a runner-up, Dazai became obsessed with winning the award. He clashed with Yasunari Kawabata during the judging process and publicly criticized him after losing the prize. His pride was deeply wounded when he was repeatedly passed over for the award in 1936 as well. Changes to the judging criteria implemented during this period led to the establishment of a practice whereby works by the same author would not be re-nominated.
In 1936, Dazai was hospitalized due to worsening phylin poisoning. He felt that his wife, Hatsuyo, and his mentor, Masuji Ibuse, had deceived him and had him committed to a psychiatric hospital, and he was tormented by a sense of betrayal by humanity. His experience in the psychiatric ward, which lasted about a month, had a profound influence on his later works, particularly ‘No Longer Human’.
In 1937, Dazai attempted suicide for the fourth time. Upon learning that Hatsuyo had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a relative who was a painter while he was hospitalized, he took sleeping pills at Minakami Hot Springs in an attempt to commit suicide alongside her, but the attempt failed, and he eventually separated from Hatsuyo. That same year, he published short stories such as “A Fictional Spring” and “The 20th-Century Jockey.”
In 1939, Dazai married high school teacher Michiko Ishihara through an introduction by his mentor. In April, he garnered attention in literary circles with “Golden Landscape” and led a relatively stable life, steadily publishing short story collections and various other works. In the early 1940s, he published a series of famous short stories, including “Run, Meros,” and continued his prolific creative work, completing the novel “New Hamlet” in 1941.
Toward the end of the war, he visited his hometown because his mother was critically ill; when his home was damaged by a U.S. air raid in 1945, he evacuated to his hometown with his family before returning to Tokyo the following year. After the war, as the Tsushima family’s decline accelerated due to land reform, Dazai gained immense popularity as a leading writer of the Decadent and Rogue schools, which rebelled against established literature and morality, while garnering the support of young people who embodied the postwar chaos and disillusionment.
His novella ‘Sayonara’, published in 1947, depicted the futility and decadence of a fallen aristocratic family and became a bestseller. That same year, his personal life remained complicated, marked by the successive births of his second daughter and a daughter born out of wedlock. Then, in May 1948, after completing the manuscript for ‘No Longer Human’, Dazai committed suicide on June 13 alongside his lover, Tomie Yamazaki. He left behind a suicide note and poems before throwing himself into the Tama River; his body was discovered in the early morning of June 19, which would have been his 39th birthday.
“No Longer Human” — Structure and Meaning
“No Longer Human” is a work Dazai completed one month before ending his life after five suicide attempts over the course of his 39-year life; it reads much like a suicide note. The events in the novel—including an authoritarian family upbringing, multiple suicide attempts, drug addiction, hospitalization in a mental institution, and betrayal by his wife and mentor—largely reflect the author’s own experiences, leading many to interpret it as an autobiographical novel.
Structurally, the novel adopts a unique format in which the protagonist, Yōjō Oba, chronicles his 27-year life through three personal diaries. With the exception of the preface and afterword, the narrative is told in the first person, and Dazai’s characteristic autobiographical elements and nihilistic prose permeate the entire work.
The first memoir depicts the background of Oba Yōjō, a boy of innate purity who, from childhood, was unable to adapt to secular society and grew increasingly anxious as he observed the vulgar and hypocritical adults around him. Raised as the youngest son in a family of provincial landowners, Yōzō lives a stifled life under an authoritarian father and strict family traditions. Through the duplicitous behavior of his family and those around him, as well as the suffering he endures at the hands of servants, he comes to realize the terrifying nature hidden behind people’s facades, gradually accumulating distrust and fear.
The second memoir details Yōjo’s journey as she leaves her hometown to live in Tokyo and gradually becomes immersed in the secular world. Having secretly attended art classes behind her father’s back during high school, where she met Masao Horiki and was drawn into a new world, Yōjo begins to rely on pleasures such as alcohol, cigarettes, and prostitutes to soothe her fears—fears that made even visiting theaters, restaurants, or riding trams terrifying. After becoming immersed in a decadent lifestyle, she abandons her studies and painting. She attempts a double suicide by jumping into the sea with Tsuneko, a café waitress, but Tsuneko dies while Yōzō survives.
The third diary entry depicts Yōzō’s descent into ruin as a social outcast after being disowned by his family and drifting from place to place. Expelled from school due to the suicide attempt, Yōzō sought refuge with various people but eventually felt betrayed once again by those who treated him with contempt. Having fallen to the status of a third-rate manga artist, Yōjō drifts between a female magazine reporter and various cafés, relying on alcohol. Then the innocent Yoshiko appears, inspiring him to dream of living a decent life for the first time. However, unable to bear witnessing her humiliation, he attempts suicide by taking sleeping pills. The attempt fails, and his situation worsens as he becomes addicted to morphine.
Eventually, Yōzō turns to his family back home for help but is rejected; he is then confined to a mental hospital by his wife and acquaintances. Three months later, upon hearing of his father’s death, Yōzō feels a sense of utter desolation and lives out his days as a complete wreck in the dilapidated house his eldest brother has arranged for him. In this way, the work convincingly depicts how a pure-hearted individual, having experienced the hypocrisy of the world, proceeds toward self-destruction.
‘No Longer Human’ is imbued with a deep sense of nihilism in every sentence, resonating strongly with the emotions of postwar Japanese society, which was mired in chaos and despair. Even today, it remains a work that deeply resonates with those who suffer in a reality surrounded by lies and hypocrisy.
The process by which the pure and sensitive protagonist develops distrust and fear of people after experiencing the hypocrisy and corruption of adults, then turns to hedonism to forget it all, only to ultimately destroy himself, brilliantly reveals the fragility of human existence and a distaste for the mundane world. Through this work, Dazai used the protagonist’s life as a lens to sharply reflect on human nature and social pretense.
