No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world . . . suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, . . . but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Set in

• ★
  Tokyo · Japan

  Yozo's dissolution Tokyo bars
  ★ primary
• ★
  Kyobashi, Tokyo · Japan

  Bar where Yozo lives with Yoshiko; frame narrator meets the madam
  ★ primary
• ★
  Ginza, Tokyo · Japan

  Cafe where Yozo meets Tsuneko, his double-suicide partner
  ★ primary
• ★
  Kamakura · Japan

  Site of Yozo and Tsuneko's double-suicide attempt by drowning
  ★ primary
• ★
  Tsugaru, Aomori Prefecture · Japan

  Wealthy family estate of Yozo's childhood, in the north-country Tsugaru region
  ★ primary