Description
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.
Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.
Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)
Reviews
"Dazai’s brand of egoistic pessimism dovetails organically with the emo chic of this cultural moment." — Andrew Martin, The New York Times
"Seventy-five years later, No Longer Human still reads with an apt urgency. As the musician Patti Smith once put it, Dazai 'wrote at the pace of a dying man, yearning for ... the solution to an unresolved equation.'" — Jane Yong Kim, The Atlantic
"No Longer Human is his masterpiece, though all his work is worthy. Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe. " — Patti Smith
"What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes precisely those things in myself that I most want to hide." — Yukio Mishima
"From the point of view of wholesome common sense, Dazai’s writings may be regarded as the soliloquies of a deviant." — Yasunari Kawabata
Also By: Osamu Dazai 
The Setting Sun
Paperback, 1968
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.
Self-Portraits: Stories
Paperback, 2024
Bringing together novelist Osamu Dazai's best autobiographical shorts in a single, slim volume, Self-Portraitsshows the legendary writer at his best—and his worst
The Flowers of Buffoonery
Paperback, 2023
For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel toNo Longer Human
The Setting Sun
Hardback, 2022
Now in a beautiful gift cloth edition, a masterpiece of postwar Japanese literature
Early Light
Hardback, 2022
Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human
Also By: Donald Keene
The Setting Sun
Paperback, 1968
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.The Setting Sun
Hardback, 2022
Now in a beautiful gift cloth edition, a masterpiece of postwar Japanese literatureEarly Light
Hardback, 2022
Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human
Early Light
E Book, 2022
Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human
The Setting Sun
E Book, 2014
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.
