At some point, when I was in high school, I was suggested to read books from other cultures. I’d been a touch pretentious and working my way through much of the western classical canon at the time, so the thought of there being other “classic” books that were entirely unfamiliar to me was incredibly exciting. I decided that I’d give Japanese literature my full attention, as my English teacher at the time had specialized in it and given me a huge recommended reading list that I still have saved in my phone to this day. I wound up choosing to start with one of the shorter books on the list, just to give myself a taste. That book ended up being No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, which remains one of my favorite books of all time.
No Longer Human is about the sad life of a man named Oba Yozo. The premise of it is rather simple. Oba feels distant and alienated from other people, and this distance causes a great fear of human beings within him. The only method he has for dealing with his condition is faking his personality around others to pretend to be human. However, his deep and unending emptiness inside him leads him to repeatedly fail in his life, succumbing to addiction, dropping out of school, and gaining and losing romantic partnerships. Along the way, he hurts others just as much as he hurts himself. In the beginning, he was alone and uncertain and scared, and this is precisely how the book ends.
The first time I read this book was during my lunch break when I worked at a restaurant during my senior year of high school. The most recent time I read this book was over spring break, when I brought it as reading material for my boyfriend, who had never flown before and hadn’t realized his phone wouldn’t work on the plane. Suffice to say, I finished my book and then read the one I brought for him while he took a little nap. Reading it now, compared to back then, I feel as though I better understand the feelings of isolation that Oba experienced. The novel is believed to be semi-autobiographical, and the intensity and precision of how feelings are conveyed in the text make me believe that this is indeed the case.
Being a young adult is a deeply lonely experience in this day and age. It’s not just the fact that it feels more difficult to make friends or that online friendships are, by nature, flimsier bonds. I think most people feel as though they are in their own bubble, where it is impossible to understand another person, and that this circumstance is what causes fear. Beyond that, however, being a young adult means being in a transitive state. You’re growing in a way that makes you feel more alone because you have to leave behind a more childish past. It’s important that we don’t succumb to despair about this feeling, but it was incredibly cathartic to read about someone who did. I love No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai and highly recommend it as a nice short read for anyone interested in a sad, cathartic story.
