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Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Osamu Dazai

Junji Ito’s No Longer Human

January 2, 2020 by Katherine Dacey

Of all the famous works of literature to get the Classics Illustrated treatment, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human is an odd choice. Its protagonist is Oba Yozo, a tortured soul who never figures out how to be his authentic self in a society that places tremendous emphasis on hierarchy, self-restraint, and civility. Over the course of the novel, he binges, gambles, seduces a string of women, joins a Communist cell, attempts suicide, and succumbs to heroin addiction, all while donning the mask of “the farcical eccentric” to conceal his “melancholy” and “agitation” from the very people whose lives he ruins.

Though the novel is filled with incident, its unreliable narrator and relentless interiority make it difficult to effectively retell in a comic format, as Junji Ito’s adaptation demonstrates. Ito’s No Longer Human is largely faithful to the events of Dazai’s novel, but takes Dazai’s spare, haunting narrative and transforms it into a phantasmagoria of sex, drugs, and death. In his efforts to show us how Yozo feels, Ito leans so hard into nightmarish imagery that the true horror of Yozo’s story is overshadowed by Ito’s artwork—a mistake, I think, as Ito’s drawings are too literal to convey the nuance of what it means to exist, in Peter Selgin’s words, in a state of “complete dissociation… yet still capable of feeling.”

In Ito’s defense, it’s not hard to see what attracted him to Dazai’s text; Yozo’s narration is peppered with the kind of vivid analogies that, at first glance, seem ideally suited for a visual medium like comics. But a closer examination of the text reveals the extent to which these analogies are part of the narrator’s efforts to beguile the reader; Yozo is, in effect, trying to convince the reader that his mind is filled with such monstrous ideas that he cannot be expected to function like a normal person. There’s a tension between how Yozo describes his own reactions to the ordinary unpleasantness of interacting with other people, and how Yozo describes the impact of his behavior on other people—a point that Ito overlooks in choosing to flesh out some key events in the novel.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Yozo’s brief affair with Tsuneko, a destitute waitress. After hitting rock bottom financially and emotionally, Yozo persuades her to join him in a double suicide pact. Dazai’s summary of what happens is shocking in its brevity and matter-of-factness:

As I stood there hesitating, she got up and looked inside my wallet. ‘‘Is that all you have?” Her voice was innocent, but it cut me to the quick. It was painful as only the voice of the first woman I had ever loved could be painful. “Is that all?” No, even that suggested more money than I had — three copper coins don’t count as money at all. This was a humiliation more strange than any I had tasted before, a humiliation I could not live with. I suppose I had still not managed to extricate myself from the part of the rich man’s son. It was then I myself determined, this time as a reality, to kill myself.

We threw ourselves into the sea at Kamakura that night. She untied her sash, saying she had borrowed it from a friend at the cafe, and left it folded neatly on a rock. I removed my coat and put it in the same spot. We entered the water together.

She died. I was saved.

As Ito recounts this event, however, Tsuneko’s death is caused by a poison so painful to ingest that she collapses in a writhing heap, eyes bulging and tongue wagging as if she were in the throes of becoming a monster herself. Yozo’s reaction to the poison, by contrast, is to plunge into a hallucinatory state in which a parade of ghostly women mock and berate him, an artistic choice that suggests Yozo feels shame and guilt for his actions—and a reading of Dazai’s text that makes Yozo seem more deserving of sympathy than he does in Dazai’s novel:

Throughout this vignette, Yozo’s contempt for Tsuneko creeps into the narrative, even as he assures the reader that she was the first woman he truly loved. Yozo’s disdain is palpable, as is evident in the way he off-handedly introduces her to the reader:

I was waiting at a sushi stall back of the Ginza for Tsuneko (that, as I recall, was her name, but the memory is too blurred for me to be sure: I am the sort of person who can forget even the name of the woman with whom he attempted suicide) to get off from work.

Only a few episodes capture the spirit of Dazai’s original novel, as when Yozo’s father gives an inept speech to a gathering of businessmen and community leaders. Ito skillfully cross-cuts between three separate conversations, allowing us to step into Yozo’s shoes as he eavesdrops on the attendees, servants, and family members, all of whom speak disparagingly about each other, and the speech. By pulling back the curtain on these conversations, Ito helps the reader appreciate the class and power differences among these groups, as well as revealing that this episode was a turning point for Yozo: the moment when he first realized that adults maintain certain masks in public that they discard in private. Though such a moment would undoubtedly trouble a more observant child—one need only think of Holden Caulfield’s obsession with adult “phoniness”—this discovery plunges Yozo into a state of despair, as he cannot imagine how anyone reconciles their public and private selves in a truthful way.

Ito also wisely restores material from Dazai’s novel that other adaptors—most notably Usamaru Furuya—trimmed from their versions. In particular, Ito does an excellent job of exploring the dynamic between Yozo and his classmate Takeichi, the first person who sees through Yozo’s carefully orchestrated buffoonery:

Just when I had begun to relax my guard a bit, fairly confident that I had succeeded by now in concealing completely my true identity, I was stabbed in the back, quite unexpectedly. The assailant, like most people who stab in the back, bordered on being a simpleton — the puniest boy in the class, whose scrofulous face and floppy jacket with sleeves too long  for him was complemented by a total lack of proficiency in his studies and by such clumsiness in military drill and physical training that he was perpetually designated as an ‘‘onlooker.” Not surprisingly, I failed to recognize the need to be on my guard against him.

As one might guess from this passage, Yozo’s terror at being discovered is another critical juncture in the novel. “I felt as if I had seen the world before me burst in an instant into the raging flames of hell,” he reports, before embarking on a campaign to win Takeichi’s trust by “cloth[ing his] face in the gentle beguiling smile of the false Christian.” Though Ito can’t resist the temptation to draw an image of Yozo engulfed in hell fire, most of Yozo’s fear is conveyed in subtler ways: a wary glance at Takeichi, an extreme close-up of Yozo’s face, an awkwardly placed arm around Takeichi’s shoulder:

What happens next in Ito’s version of No Longer Human, however, is indicative of another problem with his adaptation: his decision to add new material. In Dazai’s novel, Takeichi simply disappears from the narrative when Yozo moves to Tokyo for college, but in Ito’s version, Yozo cruelly manipulates Takeichi into thinking that Yozo’s cousin Setchan is in love with him—a manipulation that ultimately leads to Takeichi’s humiliation and suicide. That violent death is followed by a gruesome murder, this time prompted by a love triangle involving Yozo, his “auntie,” and Setchan, who becomes pregnant with Yozo’s child. Neither of these episodes deepen our understanding of who Yozo really is; they simply add more examples of how manipulative and callous he can be, thus blunting the impact of the real tragedy that unfolds in the late stages of his story.

Ito’s most problematic addition, however, is Osamu Dazai himself. Ito replaces the novel’s original framing device with the events leading up to Dazai’s 1948 suicide, encouraging us to view No Longer Human as pure autobiography through reinforcing the parallels between Dazai’s life and Yozo’s. And while those parallels are striking, the juxtaposition of the author and his fictional alter ego ultimately distorts the meaning of the novel by suggesting that the story documents Dazai’s own unravelling. That’s certainly one way to interpret No Longer Human, but such an autobiographical reading misses Dazai’s broader themes about the burden of consciousness, the nature of self, and the difficulty of being a full, authentic, feeling person in modern society.

VIZ Media provided a review copy. You can read a brief preview at the VIZ website by clicking here. For additional perspectives on Junji Ito’s adaptation, see Serdar Yegulalp‘s excellent, in-depth review at Ganriki.org, Reuben Barron‘s review at CBR.com, and MinovskyArticle’s review at the VIZ Media website.

JUNJI ITO’S NO LONGER HUMAN • ORIGINAL NOVEL BY OSAMU DAZAI • BASED ON THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY DONALD KEENE • TRANSLATED AND ADAPTED BY JOCELYNE ALLEN • VIZ MEDIA • RATED M, FOR MATURE AUDIENCES • 616 pp.

Filed Under: Manga, Manga Critic, REVIEWS Tagged With: Junji Ito, no longer human, Osamu Dazai, VIZ, VIZ Signature

My Week in Manga: October 10-October 16, 2016

October 17, 2016 by Ash Brown

My News and Reviews

I was a little preoccupied last week, dealing with some unexpected developments at work and home, so I wasn’t online much at all. However, I did still manage to post September’s Bookshelf Overload in which I reveal the manga, comics, books, and anime that I picked up last month. Also, a few weeks ago I mentioned the short story “The Mud God” which is tangentially related to a commission that Jenn Grunigen wrote for me. Well, it’s now freely available to read online!

Quick Takes

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Volume 2Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, Volumes 2-4 by Izumi Tsubaki. My introduction to Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun was through the anime series which I adored. Because I loved the anime, it only made sense for me to seek out the original manga as well. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed the first volume immensely. Despite that, it’s actually been quite a while since I’ve read any of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, which just means that I had the chance to fall in love with the series all over again. And I did, wholeheartedly. The series’ comedy is largely based on the characters and their personalities. The characters themselves are all a little odd but they are also incredibly endearing. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun plays around with expectations, so the personality quirks of the characters intentionally defy stereotypes and are deliberately unexpected. In part, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is also a romantic comedy. The cast is fairly large and there could be any number of couples among the members except for the fact that most of the characters are completely oblivious of or misinterpret their own feelings. No one is actually together in the sense that they are dating in Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun (at least not yet), but in many cases they might as well be. The various relationships in Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun are close ones and are yet another major source of the manga’s good-natured humor.

The Prince and the Swan, Volume 2The Prince and the Swan, Volumes 1-2 by April Pierce and Gareth C.J. Wee. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, itself based on Russian folklore, has been the inspiration and basis for countless other works. One of the more recent retellings that I’m aware of is the webcomic The Prince and the Swan which began in 2013. I discovered the comic while at the 2016 Toronto Comics Arts Festival where the second print volume was making its debut; I couldn’t pass up Swan Lake reimagined as a queer fairytale. Knowledge of the ballet’s story isn’t at all necessary to enjoy The Prince and the Swan although readers who are familiar with it will be in a better position to appreciate the changes made for the comic. The basic premise of the story remains the same, but in the case of The Prince and the Swan Odette is now Odet, a prince who suffers from a curse that transforms him into a swan during the day. The other lead character in the comic is Prince Siegfried who is reluctantly preparing for his coronation and marriage as king. A chance encounter between the two men will change the course of both of their lives. The pacing of The Prince and the Swan seems a little slow at first, but the artwork, characterization, and storytelling quickly improve and gain confidence as the comic progresses. I look forward to seeing how The Prince and the Swan continues to develop.

Say I Love You, Volume 15Say I Love You, Volume 15 by Kanae Hazuki. One would think that after fifteen volumes Say I Love You would no longer surprise me, but I continue to be impressed by its honesty and authenticity. I do wonder if the recently introduced Aoi twins will continue to play a role in the series as most of the main characters are graduating high school in pursuit of their individual futures. While I was initially a little unsure of the addition of prominent new characters so late in the series, I ended up really liking them and their story arcs–I’d now hate to see them discarded so soon. (Granted, Kai still has another year to go before he graduates, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the twins will continue to make appearances.) The fifteenth volume of Say I Love You would have been a natural ending point for the series. As many of the characters are preparing to go their separate ways, either by immediately entering the workforce or by continuing their education, a fair amount of time is devoted to introspection and reflection on the past. Mei in particular has changed significantly since the beginning of the series, but all of the characters have grown and matured as individuals. The characterization in Say I Love You has always been one of the series’ strong points. It will be interesting to see where the manga goes from here as both the story and characters move beyond high school.

Run, Melos! and Other StoriesRun, Melos! and Other Stories by Osamu Dazai. I forget exactly when it was that I first learned of Dazai’s short story “Run, Melos!” but it’s more or less a staple of the Japanese education system so references to the work are fairly common in Japanese popular culture. I’ve been wanting to read to story for quite some time but was under the mistaken impression that it wasn’t actually available in English. However, I recently discovered that it had indeed been translated as part of the Kodansha English Library series… which was only ever released in Japan. Thanks to the power of inter-library loan, I was finally able to read “Run, Melos!” along with six of Dazai’s other works of short fiction: “A Promise Fulfilled,” “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji,” “Schoolgirl,””Cherry Leaves and the Whistler,” “Eight Scenes of Tokyo,” and “One Snowy Night.” I had previously read another translation of Schoolgirl but the other stories were all new to me. Normally when I think about Dazai it’s his tragic novel No Longer Human that immediately comes to mind; I had actually forgotten how humorous some of his stories can be. Even though there is still a fair amount of melancholy to be found, this humor is much more apparent in Run, Melos! and Other Stories. Overall, the volumes a charming collection of stories mostly set in early twentieth-century Japan (the exception to that being “Run, Melos!” itself) with surprisingly relatable characters.

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Filed Under: FEATURES, My Week in Manga Tagged With: April Pierce, comics, Gareth C.J. Wee, Izumi Tsubaki, Kanae Hazuki, manga, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Osamu Dazai, Prince and the Swan, Say I Love You

No Longer Human, Vol. 3

January 25, 2014 by Ash Brown

No Longer Human, Volume 3Creator: Usamaru Furuya
Original story: Osamu Dazai

U.S. publisher: Vertical
ISBN: 9781935654377
Released: February 2012
Original release: 2011

Osamu Dazai’s semi-autobiographical novel No Longer Human, originally published in Japan in 1948, has had a least three manga adaptations. Of those, only one is currently available in English–a three-volume series by Usamaru Furuya. I have been interested in Furuya’s work ever since I read Lychee Light Club, and so I was very happy when Vertical licensed his No Longer Human manga series. No Longer Human, Volume 3 was first published in Japan in 2011 while the English-language edition was released in 2012. The original novel was a fairly dark work. While Furuya has taken some liberties with his version of the story–using himself as a framing character and updating the setting to contemporary Japan, among other changes–the No Longer Human manga is also quite dark. Furuya argues in the afterword that his ending is somewhat more uplifting than Dazai’s, but it is still severe. Vertical describes the third volume as “the devastating finale” which is incredibly apt.

Disowned by his family and the survivor of a double suicide, Yozo Oba’s life was falling apart. Getting by on his good looks, he lived for a time as a kept man until he ran away from that situation, too. But then he met and fell in love with Yoshino, a young woman working at the cigarette shop that he frequented. Yoshino and Yozo elope and have now been married for a year. For the first time in his life Yozo is genuinely happy. He has a wonderful trusting wife who loves and accepts him for who he is, the only person with whom he can be completely open and honest. He’s gainfully employed, his manga for children is popular and selling well and with the extra income from his side job drawing erotic illustrations, he and Yoshino are able to live quite comfortably. Yozo still carries some guilt over his past, something that his supposed friend Horiki never lets him forget, but he’s now starting to look forward to his future. And then it all comes crashing down. Yozo’s perfect fantasy life is destroyed and he is destroyed along with it.

Having previously read Dazai’s orignal novel (several times, actually), I was all too aware the direction that Furuya’s No Longer Human was heading. Actually, from the beginning of the manga series alone it is known that Yozo’s story is not a happy one. But knowing what’s in store does not necessarily make it any easier to witness it happen. There is nothing that the reader can do but to watch the events unfold. Yozo is doomed from the very start. Something happens to this young man, seemingly loved by all, to cause his life to completely shatter. He should be in the prime of his youth but becomes so broken that most assume him to be more than twice his age. The third volume of Furuya’s No Longer Human outlines his final and ultimate downfall, the one from which he is never to recover. It’s made even more tragic because he has finally experienced true happiness and contentment only to have it torn from his grasp.

Throughout the No Longer Human manga the tremendous disconnect between how Yozo views himself and how others perceive him has been shown. It’s one of the driving forces behind the story. Up until the very end people insist that Yozo is a good person, but to him it has all been an act. He holds a pessimistic view of the world and recoils from humanity. What many people would consider to be a source of hope and salvation only guarantees Yozo’s undoing. Eventually he becomes a drug addict which only amplifies his fears and anxieties and further damages his precarious state of mind. His increasingly twisted and tormented psyche is reflected quite clearly in Furuya’s artwork. No Longer Human is an unrelenting and even terrifying tale. Even at his worst I can still see a little bit of myself in Yozo. It’s perhaps because of this that I find the series to be so effectively gut-wrenching. Furuya’s adaptation of Dazai’s novel is excellent, bringing his own interpretation to the story while staying true to the dark heart of the original.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: manga, no longer human, Osamu Dazai, Usamaru Furuya, vertical

No Longer Human, Vol. 2

January 22, 2014 by Ash Brown

No Longer Human, Volume 2Creator: Usamaru Furuya
Original story: Osamu Dazai

U.S. publisher: Vertical
ISBN: 9781935654223
Released: December 2011
Original release: 2010

Usamaru Furuya’s manga series No Longer Human is an adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s 1948 semi-autobiographical novel No Longer Human. Furuya’s manga adaptation began serialization in Weekly Comic Bunch in 2009. The second volume of the series was published in Japan in 2010 while the English-language edition was released in 2011 by Vertical. No Longer Human was the second manga by Furuya that was published by Vertical, the first being the one-volume Lychee Light Club. Although Furuya’s No Longer Human is based on Dazai’s novel, he has taken a few liberties with his rendition, one of the most notable changes being that the story is now set in the 2000s instead of the 1920s and ’30s. Furuya has also inserted himself into the manga as a framing character. These changes, as well as others, are actually quite effective. It is not at all necessary to have read the original No Longer Human to appreciate Furuya’s interpretation of the story.

Yozo Oba attempted a double suicide with a club hostess named Ageha, but only she drowned while he survived. He’s come to the realization that although he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to live, either. Yozo has long since been disowned by his family and the one person for whom he held any sort of honest feelings is now gone. He spends his days directionless and in despair, slowly recovering from a torturous situation partly of his one making. He desperately wants some meaning to his life, but has failed to discover what that might be. At one point he thinks he’s found it, only to have it snatched away from him. Yozo was once adored by all and even in his current pitiful state people are drawn to him and dare to care about him. He uses this to his advantage, putting on airs to get what he wants and needs, recognizing all the while how distasteful it is. Yozo uses people and he knows it. To him, life is still an act.

No Longer Human is a dark and troubling manga series. Yozo doesn’t treat himself well and treats those around him even worse. He is extremely manipulative and frankly can be a terrible person. And yet at the same time Yozo is a tragic figure; No Longer Human is heart-wrenching. While I don’t find his portrayal in the manga to be as sympathetic as it is in the novel, there are still points with which I can empathize. Yozo has a fear of people and their expectations of him that prevents him from being authentic. He’s repeatedly told that he is a good, sweet, and kind person, but this is the last thing he wants to hear. Yozo’s extraordinarily anxiety-ridden and conflicted over it because he see the life he is living as one big lie. He is very aware of his dishonesty and how he misleads people, but continues to do so because he is so desperate to be liked and accepted. Occasionally he manages to express some feelings of legitimate remorse and genuine caring, but more often than that it is already too late to undo any of the damage done.

No Longer Human, Volume 2 follow Yozo from the depths of despair to the heights of happiness and back again. Those glimmers of hope that Yozo will be able to turn his life around make his failure to do so even more anguished as he lets chance after chance to slip through his fingers. Furuya’s artwork in No Longer Human suits the story well, capturing Yozo’s internal and emotional turmoil and dragging the readers along for the ride. Furuya provides disconcerting glimpses into Yozo’s psyche, visually expressing his suffering through imagery of suffocation (harkening back to his near-drowning) and showing the ugliness he sees in the world. No Longer Human isn’t necessarily an easy read and it can be emotionally exhausting, but I find it to be incredibly compelling and difficult to turn away from as well. Yozo may not often be particularly likeable, but as with so many of the other characters in the series I can’t help but wish the best for him no matter how doomed he seems.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: manga, no longer human, Osamu Dazai, Usamaru Furuya, vertical

No Longer Human, Vol. 1

November 24, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

First published in 1948, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human became one of the most widely read books in post-war Japan. The story, modeled on Dazai’s own life, chronicles a dissolute young man’s profound estrangement from his family and peers. The protagonist’s life follows a trajectory similar to Dazai’s: convinced that his life is an empty charade, Yozo drops out of school; joins the Communist Party; enters into a suicide pact with a virtual stranger; and woos lonely women, using them for shelter, emotional comfort, and financial support after his father, a prominent politician, disowns him.

The novel is divided into three sections, or “notebooks,” each corresponding to a period in the protagonist’s life. In the first, Yozo describes his childhood: his uneasy relationship with his father, his clownish behavior at school, and his abuse at the hands of a female servant. In the second and third sections, Yozo documents his troubled adulthood, as he abandons school for a life of drinking and illicit relationships, bouncing from one woman to the next with little regard for the harm he causes them — or himself. Framing Yozo’s story is a second narrative delivered by an unnamed author who has found three photographs of Yozo: as a child of ten, “a small boy surrounded by a great many women”; as a college student, handsome but “strangely unpleasant”; and as man in his later twenties, his hair “streaked with gray,” and his face “devoid of expression.”*

Given the novel’s enduring popularity, it’s no surprise that several manga artists have adapted Dazai’s text as a graphic novel. Their approaches have ranged from reverential — the East Press edition (2007) hews closely to the original novel — to provocative — Yasunori Ninose’s version (2010) uses tentacle-porn imagery to represent the character’s extreme emotional distress. Usamaru Furuya’s 2009 adaptation falls somewhere in between, taking liberties with the setting and structure of Dazai’s work, while preserving the original tone and events of the novel.

As these myriad approaches suggest, one of the biggest challenges of translating No Longer Human into a pictorial form is its interiority: though eventful, Yozo’s story is as much about his state of mind as his behavior. Early in the novel, for example, Yozo describes his inability to understand how other people feel and think. “I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor’s woes can be,” he tells the reader. “It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people.” In a desperate attempt to camouflage his bewilderment, Yozo constructs a jovial mask, winning approval from his family members and classmates with impish behavior and remarks. “I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed,” he explains. “I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”

Furuya makes a game effort to find visual analogues for Yozo’s interior states. Whenever Yozo feels emotionally disoriented, for example, Furuya obscures the other characters’ expressions, rendering their faces as blurs. Furuya extends this symbolic approach to Yozo’s social paralysis as well. “I was congenitally unable to refuse anything offered to me by another person, no matter how little it might suit my tastes,” Yozo confesses. “In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives.” In these passages, Furuya draws Yozo as a marionette, violently manipulated by an unseen puppeteer; as a drowning victim, disappearing under the water’s surface; and as a man engulfed in flames, so consumed by his fear of disappointing others that he surrenders his own agency.

Though Furuya follows the basic outline of Dazai’s novel, he makes two significant changes to the text. First, he moves the story from pre-war Japan to the present day, replacing the unnamed narrator with a character named Usamaru Furuya, a manga artist who discovers Yozo’s pictures on the internet. Second, Furuya streamlines the script, all but eliminating the first notebook; instead, he depicts Yozo’s childhood through a few brief, suggestive flashbacks.

The first decision makes good sense. By moving the setting from Taisho-era Japan to the present, Furuya sheds the novel’s period trappings in favor of a milieu that readers can intuitively appreciate — a world of blogs, cell-phones, high-rise apartment buildings, and other technologies that promote social isolation.

Less successful is Furuya’s decision to focus on Yozo’s adult life to the exclusion of his childhood. In the original novel, ten-year-old Yozo crosses paths with another outsider, a young boy who immediately detects the effort and strain behind Yozo’s clowning.  Fearful that Takeichi will expose his deceit to the other students, Yozo dons “the gentle beguiling smile of the false Christian,” befriending the odd, unlikeable Takeichi in an effort to buy his silence. The episode is among the most potent and revealing in the book, an early example of Yozo’s ability to manipulate others, and a rare example of him acknowledging his own agency — something he never does in the manga.

Furuya also trims another brief but important scene from the early pages of No Longer Human, in which Yozo implies that he was molested by his wealthy family’s servants. “Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the maids and menservants; I was being corrupted,” Yozo declares. “I now think that that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, cruelest crime a human being can commit.” Yozo’s indifference to others’ suffering, inability to experience romantic love, and passive-aggressive behavior, suggest a pathology rooted in this formative experience. Perhaps Furuya found this passage too neatly Freudian for his purposes, but in choosing to omit it, he makes Yozo seem like just another cad who beds and discards women, rather than a wounded soul incapable of sexual intimacy.

Yet for all its shortcomings — the omissions, the obvious symbolism — Furuya’s adaptation still captures the raw power of Dazai’s original novel. In its best passages, Furuya makes us feel as dazed and lonely as Yozo himself; we appreciate how helpless he feels, though we can see how seductive — and dangerous — he can be. Furuya also manages to document the full extent of Yozo’s debauchery without eroticizing it; we are keenly aware of the emotional distance between Yozo and his sexual conquests, making these scenes feel joyless and awkward, rather than titillating in their explicitness.

In short, Furuya has found a way to transform Dazai’s sharp critique of pre-war Japanese society into a more universal text, one that raises the question, What does it mean to be human right now?

* All quotations taken from Donald Keene’s translation (New York: Penguin Books, 1958).

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

NO LONGER HUMAN, VOL. 1 • NOVEL BY OSAMU DAZAI, ADAPTATION BY USAMARU FURUYA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Filed Under: Manga, Manga Critic, REVIEWS Tagged With: no longer human, Osamu Dazai, Usamaru Furuya, Vertical Comics

No Longer Human, Vol. 1

November 24, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 4 Comments

First published in 1948, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human became one of the most widely read books in post-war Japan. The story, modeled on Dazai’s own life, chronicles a dissolute young man’s profound estrangement from his family and peers. The protagonist’s life follows a trajectory similar to Dazai’s: convinced that his life is an empty charade, Yozo drops out of school; joins the Communist Party; enters into a suicide pact with a virtual stranger; and woos lonely women, using them for shelter, emotional comfort, and financial support after his father, a prominent politician, disowns him.

The novel is divided into three sections, or “notebooks,” each corresponding to a period in the protagonist’s life. In the first, Yozo describes his childhood: his uneasy relationship with his father, his clownish behavior at school, and his abuse at the hands of a female servant. In the second and third sections, Yozo documents his troubled adulthood, as he abandons school for a life of drinking and illicit relationships, bouncing from one woman to the next with little regard for the harm he causes them — or himself. Framing Yozo’s story is a second narrative delivered by an unnamed author who has found three photographs of Yozo: as a child of ten, “a small boy surrounded by a great many women”; as a college student, handsome but “strangely unpleasant”; and as man in his later twenties, his hair “streaked with gray,” and his face “devoid of expression.”*

Given the novel’s enduring popularity, it’s no surprise that several manga artists have adapted Dazai’s text as a graphic novel. Their approaches have ranged from reverential — the East Press edition (2007) hews closely to the original novel — to provocative — Yasunori Ninose’s version (2010) uses tentacle-porn imagery to represent the character’s extreme emotional distress. Usamaru Furuya’s 2009 adaptation falls somewhere in between, taking liberties with the setting and structure of Dazai’s work, while preserving the original tone and events of the novel.

As these myriad approaches suggest, one of the biggest challenges of translating No Longer Human into a pictorial form is its interiority: though eventful, Yozo’s story is as much about his state of mind as his behavior. Early in the novel, for example, Yozo describes his inability to understand how other people feel and think. “I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor’s woes can be,” he tells the reader. “It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people.” In a desperate attempt to camouflage his bewilderment, Yozo constructs a jovial mask, winning approval from his family members and classmates with impish behavior and remarks. “I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed,” he explains. “I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”

Furuya makes a game effort to find visual analogues for Yozo’s interior states. Whenever Yozo feels emotionally disoriented, for example, Furuya obscures the other characters’ expressions, rendering their faces as blurs. Furuya extends this symbolic approach to Yozo’s social paralysis as well. “I was congenitally unable to refuse anything offered to me by another person, no matter how little it might suit my tastes,” Yozo confesses. “In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives.” In these passages, Furuya draws Yozo as a marionette, violently manipulated by an unseen puppeteer; as a drowning victim, disappearing under the water’s surface; and as a man engulfed in flames, so consumed by his fear of disappointing others that he surrenders his own agency.

Though Furuya follows the basic outline of Dazai’s novel, he makes two significant changes to the text. First, he moves the story from pre-war Japan to the present day, replacing the unnamed narrator with a character named Usamaru Furuya, a manga artist who discovers Yozo’s pictures on the internet. Second, Furuya streamlines the script, all but eliminating the first notebook; instead, he depicts Yozo’s childhood through a few brief, suggestive flashbacks.

The first decision makes good sense. By moving the setting from Taisho-era Japan to the present, Furuya sheds the novel’s period trappings in favor of a milieu that readers can intuitively appreciate — a world of blogs, cell-phones, high-rise apartment buildings, and other technologies that promote social isolation.

Less successful is Furuya’s decision to focus on Yozo’s adult life to the exclusion of his childhood. In the original novel, ten-year-old Yozo crosses paths with another outsider, a young boy who immediately detects the effort and strain behind Yozo’s clowning.  Fearful that Takeichi will expose his deceit to the other students, Yozo dons “the gentle beguiling smile of the false Christian,” befriending the odd, unlikeable Takeichi in an effort to buy his silence. The episode is among the most potent and revealing in the book, an early example of Yozo’s ability to manipulate others, and a rare example of him acknowledging his own agency — something he never does in the manga.

Furuya also trims another brief but important scene from the early pages of No Longer Human, in which Yozo implies that he was molested by his wealthy family’s servants. “Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the maids and menservants; I was being corrupted,” Yozo declares. “I now think that that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, cruelest crime a human being can commit.” Yozo’s indifference to others’ suffering, inability to experience romantic love, and passive-aggressive behavior, suggest a pathology rooted in this formative experience. Perhaps Furuya found this passage too neatly Freudian for his purposes, but in choosing to omit it, he makes Yozo seem like just another cad who beds and discards women, rather than a wounded soul incapable of sexual intimacy.

Yet for all its shortcomings — the omissions, the obvious symbolism — Furuya’s adaptation still captures the raw power of Dazai’s original novel. In its best passages, Furuya makes us feel as dazed and lonely as Yozo himself; we appreciate how helpless he feels, though we can see how seductive — and dangerous — he can be. Furuya also manages to document the full extent of Yozo’s debauchery without eroticizing it; we are keenly aware of the emotional distance between Yozo and his sexual conquests, making these scenes feel joyless and awkward, rather than titillating in their explicitness.

In short, Furuya has found a way to transform Dazai’s sharp critique of pre-war Japanese society into a more universal text, one that raises the question, What does it mean to be human right now?

* All quotations taken from Donald Keene’s translation (New York: Penguin Books, 1958).

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

NO LONGER HUMAN, VOL. 1 • NOVEL BY OSAMU DAZAI, ADAPTATION BY USAMARU FURUYA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Osamu Dazai, Seinen, Usamaru Furuya, vertical

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