No Longer Human

by Osamu Dazai

puckering of ugly wrinkles. The photograph reproduces an expression so freakish, and at the same time so unclean

puckering of ugly wrinkles. The photograph reproduces an expression so freakish, and at the same time so unclean

first train. I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross

first train. I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross

provided to lend an exotic touch and to make the station premises a place of pleasant diversity, like some foreign playground. I remained under this delusion for quite a long time, and

family—I have no such banal intent. I mean that I have had not the remotest idea of the nature of the sensation of “hunger.” It sounds peculiar to say it, but I have never

me, and when I go to the house of somebody else I eat almost everything put before me, even if it takes some effort.

end. The dining room was dark, and the sight of the ten or more members of the household eating their lunch, or whatever

extraordinarily solemn faces they all make as they eat! It seems to be some kind of ritual. Three times every day at the regulated

even members of my own family, might be suffering or what they were thinking. I was aware only of my own unspeakable fears and embarrassments. Before anyone realized it, I had become an accomplished clown, a child who never spoke a single

that time together with my family, the others all have serious faces; only mine is invariably contorted into a peculiar smile. This was one more variety of my childish, pathetic antics.

People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. Seeing this happen has always induced

make my hair stand on end, and at the thought that this nature might be one of the prerequisites for survival as a human

have come close to despairing of myself. I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feign...

mind that it didn’t make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy. At the same time I was congenitally

person, no matter how little it might suit my tastes. When I hated something, I could not pronounce the words, “I don’t like it.” When I liked something I tasted it hesitantly, furtively, as though it were extremely bitter. In either case I was torn by unspeakable fear. In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives. In this fact, I believe, lay one of the characteristics which in later years was to develop into a major cause of my “life of shame.”

returned to my bed. I had not the faintest wish for a lion mask. In fact, I would actually have preferred a book. But it was obvious that Father wanted to buy me a mask, and my frantic desire to cater to his wishes and restore his good humor had emboldened me to sneak into the parlor in the dead

raising thought. I acquired my reputation at school less because I was the son of a rich family than because, in the vulgar parlance, I had “brains.”

that the teacher would laugh that I stealthily followed him to the staff room. As soon as he left the classroom the teacher pulled out my composition from the stack written by my classmates. He began to read as he walked down the hall, and was soon snickering. He went into the staff room and a minute

tones almost of anger about how inept my father’s opening remarks had been, and how difficult it was to make head or tail out

asked by my mother about the meeting, answered as if it were their spontaneous thought, that it had been really interesting. These were the selfsame servants who had been bitterly complaining on the way home that political meetings are the most boring thing in the world. This,

that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind—of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that

find it difficult to understand the kind of human being who lives, or who is sure he can live, purely, happily, serenely while engaged in deceit. Human beings never did teach me that abstruse

trembled all over. I might have guessed that someone

the blue. I felt as if I had seen the world before me burst in an instant into the raging flames of hell. It was all I could do to suppress a wild shriek of terror.

sure that he did not divulge the secret. I brooded over what I should do: I would devote the hours spent with him to persuading him that my antics were not “on purpose” but the genuine article; if things went well I would like to become his inseparable friend; but if this proved utterly impossible, I had

that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness.

But instead of an answer he always gave me only blank stares in return.

Even Takeichi seemed not to be aware of the hypocrisy, the scheming, behind my actions. Far from it—his comment as he lay there with his head pillowed in my lap was, “I’ll bet lots of women will fall for you!”—It was his illiterate approximation of a compliment.

melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is

perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was “looked after.”

book. I would launch into some silly story, miles removed from what I was thinking. “Today at school the geography teacher, the one we call the Walrus . . .”

felt instead a certain boredom at their banality and emptiness. I slipped out of bed, went to my desk and picked up a persimmon. I peeled it and offered Sister a section. She ate

Long personal experience had taught me that when a woman suddenly bursts into hysterics, the way to restore her spirits

is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes.

me into college, intending eventually to make a civil servant out of me. This was the sentence passed on me and I, who have never been able to answer back, dumbly obeyed.

Tokyo I immediately began life in a dormitory, but the squalor

but he might be a good person for me to go out with.” For the first time in my life I had met a genuine city good-for-nothing. No less than myself, though in a different way, he was entirely removed

practical education: thus, if we stopped in the morning at a certain restaurant on our way home from a prostitute’s and had a bath with our meal, it was a cheap way of experiencing the sensation

never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. It was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. And perhaps because they felt for me something like an affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a

People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him,

rate, the house was sold before long and I moved to a gloomy room in an old lodging house in Hongo where I was immediately

those lodgings where I didn’t know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might

be set upon or struck by someone at any moment. I would rush outside either to help in the activities of the movement or to make the round of the bars with Horiki, drinking cheap

married woman older than myself. This changed everything. I had stopped attending classes and no longer devoted a minute of study to my courses; amazingly enough I seemed nevertheless to be able to give sensible answers in the examinations, and I managed somehow to keep my family under the delusion that all was well. But my poor attendance

the spirit of fun. I had been chosen leader of all the Marxist student action groups in the schools of central Tokyo. I raced about here and there “maintaining liaison.” In my raincoat

there and pretended not to be aware of her, but the girl’s looks betrayed only too plainly that she wanted me to talk, and though I had not the least desire to utter a word, I would display my usual spirit of passive service: I would turn over

on my belly with a grunt and, puffing on a cigarette, begin,

offends a woman to be asked to do an errand; they are delighted if some man deigns to ask them a favor.

assurance had driven me willy-nilly into desperate attempts to ingratiate