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{{Short description|1948 novel by Osamu Dazai}}
{{About|the 1948 novel|the manga adaptation by Junji Ito|No Longer Human (Ito manga){{!}}''No Longer Human'' (Ito manga)|the musical theatre adaptation|No Longer Human (musical){{!}}''No Longer Human'' (musical)}}
{{Infobox book
| name = No Longer Human
| title_orig = 人間失格
| orig_lang_code = ja
| translator = {{ubl|[[Donald Keene]]|Mark Gibeau|[[Juliet Winters Carpenter]]}}
| image = Ningen shikkaku (Dazai Osamu).png
| caption = Cover of first edition
| author = [[Osamu Dazai]]
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = Japan
| language = [[Japanese language|Japanese]]
| series =
| genre =
| publisher = [[Chikuma Shobō]]
| release_date = 1948
| english_pub_date = 1958
| media_type = Print
| pages =
| isbn =
| preceded_by = A Cherry
| followed_by = Goodbye
}}

{{Nihongo|'''''No Longer Human'''''|人間失格|Ningen Shikkaku|lead=yes}}, also translated as '''''A Shameful Life''''', is a 1948 novel by Japanese author [[Osamu Dazai]]. It tells the story of a troubled man incapable of revealing his true self to others, and who, instead, maintains a façade of hollow jocularity, later turning to a life of alcoholism and drug abuse before his final disappearance. The original title translates as "Disqualified as a human being"<ref name="keene">{{cite book|title=No Longer Human |last=Dazai |first=Osamu |year=1948 |translator-last=Keene |translator-first=Donald |publisher=New Directions Publishing |location=Norfolk, Connecticut}}</ref> or "A failed human".<ref name="gibeau">{{cite book|title=A Shameful Life |last=Dazai |first=Osamu |year=2023 |translator-last=Gibeau |translator-first=Mark |publisher=Stone Bridge Press |location=Berkeley, California}}</ref> The book was published one month after Dazai's suicide at the age of 38.<ref name="gibeau" /> ''No Longer Human'' is considered a classic of [[Post-war|postwar]] [[Japanese literature#Postwar literature (1945–onwards)|Japanese literature]]<ref>{{cite book|title=The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature |volume=1 |year=2005 |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York |page=660}}</ref> and Dazai's masterpiece.<ref name="comipress">{{cite web |url=https://comipress.com/news/2007/08/22/2529 |title=Takeshi Obata Illustrates Cover for Best-Selling Japanese Novel |date=August 22, 2007 |website=ComiPress |access-date=2009-07-27}}</ref> It enjoys considerable popularity among younger readers<ref name="yomiuri">{{cite web|title=没後７０年、作家・太宰治を生んだ「三つの空白期」 |url=https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/fukayomi/20180608-OYT8T50003/ |date=6 June 2018 |website=[[Yomiuri Shimbun]] |access-date=21 June 2023 |language=ja}}</ref> and ranks as the second-best-selling novel by publishing house [[Shinchōsha]], behind [[Natsume Sōseki|Sōseki Natsume]]'s ''[[Kokoro]]''.<ref name="yomiuri" />

==Plot==
''No Longer Human'' is told in the form of notebooks left behind by the principal character, {{nihongo|Ōba Yōzō|大庭葉蔵}}. There are three notebooks chronicling Ōba's life from his early childhood to his late twenties. The notebooks are bookended by a preface and an epilogue by a nameless narrator, who is given Ōba's notebooks by a mutual acquaintance ten years after they had been written.

===The First Notebook===
The first notebook focuses on Yozo Ōba's childhood, and extreme difficulty with understanding other people. Ōba is born into a decent and well-off family, but is abused and corrupted by the servants of the household as a child. He is too accustomed to hiding his feelings and doubting other people to confide in anyone regarding the [[child abuse|abuse]].

He struggles with the constant feelings of alienation and confusion with the behavior of other people, causing him to fear them. Ōba resorts to mimicking other to hide his sense of being utterly different, and developing a comic character in his early years to establish interpersonal relationships, defining it as the last resort to find love from others.

He also describes numerous times how his antics are a way to avoid provoking anger and to not be taken seriously to avoid reprimands. Ōba is obsessed with the fear that someone might realize he is acting and expose his character.

===The Second Notebook===
As time goes on, Ōba becomes increasingly concerned over the potential exposure of his imitative cheerful façade when his schoolmate Takeichi sees through one of his false buffooneries. Ōba befriends him to prevent Takeichi from revealing his secret. Inspired by a painting of [[Vincent van Gogh|Van Gogh]] that Takeichi shows him, he starts to paint to express his inner agony through art. Ōba paints a self-portrait which is so dreadful that he dares not show it to anyone except Takeichi, who predicts his future as a great artist.

After finishing high school, Ōba is sent to [[Tokyo]] to attend university. Influenced by a fellow artist, Horiki, whom he meets at a painting class, Ōba descends into a pattern of drinking, smoking, and [[harlot]]ry, and attends [[Communism|communist]] meetings without being a staunch follower. After spending the night with a married woman, he attempts to commit [[shinjū]] (double suicide) with her by drowning. He survives while she dies, leaving him with an excruciating feeling of guilt.

===The Third Notebook: Part One===
Ōba is expelled from university and comes under the care of a friend of the family. During this time, he meets a single mother who is an acquaintance of Horiki and tries to have a normal relationship with her, serving as a surrogate father to her little girl, but soon, he returns to his drinking habits and his fear of humanity; he eventually abandons them. He then lives with the madam of a bar before he meets Yoshiko, a young and inexperienced woman who wants him to stop drinking.

===The Third Notebook: Part Two===
Thanks to Yoshiko's grounding influence on his life, Ōba stops drinking and finds gainful work as a cartoonist. Then Horiki shows up, turning Ōba to self-destructive behavior again. Worse, at the moment of recalling ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' by [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoevsky]] while he discusses the [[opposite (semantics)|antonym]] of crime with Horiki, Yoshiko is sexually assaulted by a casual acquaintance. The terror and despair brought on by this incident estranges Ōba from his wife and leads him to another suicide attempt with [[Hypnotic|soporific drugs]].

Released from the hospital where he was taken after his suicide attempt, Ōba becomes a [[morphine]] addict. He is confined to a mental institution and, upon release, moves to an isolated place with his brother's help, concluding the story with the comment that he feels neither happy nor unhappy now.

==Themes==
The novel, narrated in [[First-person narrative|first person]], is categorized under the [[semi-autobiographical]] genre since the characters in the book are all fictional. The novel presents recurring themes in the author's life, including suicide, social alienation, addiction, and depression.<ref>[[Eugene Thacker]]. "[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/03/26/books/black-illumination-disqualified-life-osamu-dazai/ The Disqualified Life of Ozamu Dazai]." ''The Japan Times'' (26 March 2016).</ref> Much like the protagonist Yōzō, Dazai attempted suicide a total of five times in his lifetime, with consorts, until ultimately succeeding in taking his own life with his lover at the time, a woman named Tomie Yamazaki.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Osamu Dazai|url=https://authorscalendar.info/dazai.htm|access-date=2022-02-17|website=authorscalendar.info}}</ref>

===Alienation===
Identity closely correlates with social identity, i.e. the way individuals define themselves and others in relation to their social group, with the failure to achieve this leading to alienation from oneself, from others and from society at large.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=161, 165 |doi=10.33884/basisupb.v11i2.9266 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |url-access=subscription |doi-access=free |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Early in his life, Ōba discovered that people around him all shared a ''hidden nature'' which emerged ''when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror''. He believed this trait was a ''prerequisite for survival as a human being'', which shows that Ōba understood this trait was crucial for people to be categorized as members of the “human beings” social category. In his later childhood years, Ōba furthermore noted how “human beings” lived in ''mutual distrust'' and were ''deceiving one another''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=165–166 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

====Alienation from society====
Ōba himself lacked the strength to act in accordance with this truth and had no special interest in instances of mutual deception, which indicates that Ōba remained unwilling to behave similarly to the members of the “human beings” in-group. Individuals are most likely to behave like in-group members only if they feel that the in-group is important to them or if they desire the social identity derived from the group.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |page=166 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Despite his inability to belong to the in-group, Ōba recognized that ''favoritism must inevitably exist'' among human beings and they will show a form of negative bias towards members of the out-group. Therefore, since people around Ōba (the “human beings”) perceived such outcasts as negative, Ōba’s own social identity as a member of the out-group would likewise be negative.<ref name="Prasetya 167">{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |page=167 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

His apprehension and terror at interaction with others lead to avoidant behavior, a sign that he experienced alienation from others as well. Ōba felt very timid about meeting people and despite becoming acquainted with a number of people through his attempts to please people and to meet their expectations, he had not once actually experienced friendship. Since Ōba kept his interactions with people to a necessary minimum, he could not develop an understanding about others which caused his inability to connect emotionally with others. His avoidant behavior might have likewise been a sign of social anxiety he unknowingly had. His fear of interactions and difficulty in maintaining conversations would also cause him to decrease his engagement with others.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |page=169 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

====Alienation from self====
His refusal to change the state of his social identity is in contradiction to the theory that individuals will attempt to improve their self-confidence if threatened.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trepte |first1=Sabine |last2=Loy |first2=Laura S |title=International Encyclopedia of Media Effects |date=6 March 2017 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc |isbn=9781118784044 |pages=1–13}}</ref> Ōba’s own perspective was therefore so greatly influenced by the perspective of the people around himself that he thought there would be no benefit in attempting to change himself.<ref name="Prasetya 167"/> His fear of people finding out he was a member of the out-group living among them was so great that it induced an assault of apprehension and terror, i.e. his lack of confidence in interacting with other people and their possible negative opinion of him resulted in Ōba developing low self-esteem. As "human beings" perceived anything different as negative, Ōba developed a negative perception of himself as well.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Johan |first1=Winda Prastika |last2=Herdiansyah |first2=Haris |last3=Dimyati |first3=DIndin |title=The Correlation Between Inferiority Complex And Social Interactions In Adolescents |journal=MAKNA: Jurnal Kajian Komunikasi, Bahasa Dan Budaya |date=2022 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=42–56 |doi=10.33558/makna.v11i2.4435 |url=https://jurnal.unismabekasi.ac.id/index.php/makna/article/view/4435/2269 |access-date=30 November 2024|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Ōba believed using the clown persona would help mask his membership in the out-group, help him conform to societal expectations and connect to the world. This however resulted in alienation from himself as he often struggled to understand his own desires. An example of this is given on the occasion when his father traveled to Tokyo and asked his children what they wanted. Despite not knowing what he wanted himself, Ōba nonetheless pretended he would like a lion mask to meet the expectation of his father and family. His inability to recognize his own desires, as well as his masking them to act in accordance with people’s expectations are signs that he was alienated from himself.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Prasetya |first1=Alvionita Zyahwalian |last2=Thohiriyah |first2=Thohiriyah |title=Social Identity And Its Impacts On Yozo Oba's Alienation In "No Longer Human" |journal=Jurnal Basis UPB |date=2 October 2024 |volume=11 |issue=2 |page=168 |url=https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |access-date=30 November 2024 |archive-date=1 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241201212739/https://ejournal.upbatam.ac.id/index.php/basis/article/view/9266/3945 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The clown persona was in fact a mask which Ōba crafted in order to maintain harmony in his social environment and mask his fear of humans, despite the fact that such an act was tortuous to him, as it was not his true personality. He kept his feeling of anxiety and depression hidden within himself and acted happy and innocent, pretending at times to be naive. This caused further disconnect from others and alienation from himself, like a clown who appeared happy on the outside, but was unable to find peace inside himself anymore.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nurhayat |first1=Putri |last2=Febrianty |first2=Fenny |title=The Persona Of The Main Character In The Novel Ningen Shikkaku By Osamu Dazai |journal=Proceeding of the 7th International Conference on Business, Economics, Social Sciences, and Humanities (ICOBEST) |date=3 July 2024 |volume=7 |page=1087 |url=https://proceedings.unikom.ac.id/index.php/icobest/article/view/621/605 |access-date=30 November 2024}}</ref>

===Divine punishment===
Dazai first began to study the [[Bible]] between 13 October and 12 November 1936, after he was hospitalized at the Tokyo Musashino Hospital in order to cure his addiction to Pabinal. He was deeply influenced by [[Uchimura Kanzō]], whose teachings were grounded in the Calvinistic tradition and preached a puritanical worldview that centered on the image of a strict Christian God. The image of an unforgiving and irate God, the existence of hell and [[Theological determinism|predetermination]] were reinforced by Dazai’s sense of guilt at the death of Tanabe Shimeko, with whom he had attempted a double suicide, as well as by personal setbacks in his failure to secure an important position with a major newspaper and the fact that he had not been selected for the [[Akutagawa Prize]] at the time.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tomasi |first1=Massimiliano |title="What is the Antonym of Sin?": A Study of Dazai Osamu's Confrontation with God |journal=Japan Review |date=2021 |volume=36 |pages=118–119}}</ref>

Similarly, the protagonist of the novel believed in the existence of divine punishment, but was unable to believe in divine love. In the third notebook, when the five-year old Shigeko asked him whether God will truly grant you anything if you pray for it, Oba stated: ''I was frightened by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one’s head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tomasi |first1=Massimiliano |title="What is the Antonym of Sin?": A Study of Dazai Osamu's Confrontation with God |journal=Japan Review |date=2021 |volume=36 |page=117}}</ref>

Loyalty and betrayal are frequent motifs in Dazai’s novels which extend to God and can be traced back to the author’s betrayal of Tanabe Shimeko, his communist comrades, as well as his own family. This theme appeared towards the end of No Longer Human, in a dialectical diatribe between the protagonist and the Almighty, during which Oba asks whether trustfulness is a sin. The characters in the novel appear to have no agency in regards to their morals and are doomed as they are unable to alter the course of their destiny. The protagonist’s cry to God was his last futile resort - he is resigned to the inevitability of sin and acknowledges that not even God can be trusted.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tomasi |first1=Massimiliano |title="What is the Antonym of Sin?": A Study of Dazai Osamu's Confrontation with God |journal=Japan Review |date=2021 |volume=36 |pages=124, 134}}</ref>

==Legacy==
In his 2014 review of ''No Longer Human'', William Bradbury of ''[[The Japan Times]]'' called it a timeless novel, saying that the "struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." He also pointed out that the "blunt" style distanced the book from the tone of an actual autobiography, despite the similarities to Dazai's own personal life.<ref name="jt">{{cite web|last1=Bradbury|first1=William|title=No Longer Human|url=http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/10/25/books/book-reviews/longer-human|website=The Japan Times| date=25 October 2014 |access-date=14 March 2015}}</ref> Serdar Yegulalp of Genji Press noted (in 2007) the strength of Dazai in portraying the situation of the protagonist, describing the novel as "bleak in a way that is both extreme and yet also strangely unforced".<ref>{{cite web|last1=Yegulalp|first1=Serdar|title=Book Reviews: No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai)|url=https://www.genjipress.com/2007/04/no-longer-human-osamu-dazai.html|website=Genji Press|access-date=14 March 2015}}</ref>

The novel was introduced to a wider audience in the early 2020s by becoming a sensation on the social media platform [[TikTok]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/05/books/review/osamu-dazai-tiktok.html | title=Osamu Dazai, with Help from TikTok, Keeps Finding New Fans | work=The New York Times | date=5 March 2023 | last1=Martin | first1=Andrew }}</ref>

==English translations==
The novel was first translated into English by [[Donald Keene]] as ''No Longer Human'', published in 1958 by [[New Directions Publishing|New Directions]] in [[Norfolk, Connecticut]]. This translation was published in the UK by [[Peter Owen Publishers]] in 1959.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Classe |first1=Olive |title=Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English: A-L |date=2000 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781884964367 |page=346 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=myLDA0_brhcC&q=dazai&pg=PA346}}</ref>

The novel received another English translation in 2018 by Mark Gibeau as ''A Shameful Life'', published by [[Stone Bridge Press]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Flanagan |first1=Damian |title=A journey to hell with Osamu Dazai, Japan's ultimate bad boy novelist |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/11/10/books/journey-hell-japans-ultimate-bad-boy-novelist/ |website=The Japan Times |access-date=1 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181110192214/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/11/10/books/journey-hell-japans-ultimate-bad-boy-novelist/ |archive-date=November 10, 2018 |url-status=live |date=November 10, 2018|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

In March 2024, [[Tuttle Publishing]] published a new translation by [[Juliet Winters Carpenter]], returning to the title ''No Longer Human''.<ref>{{cite web |title=NO LONGER HUMAN (9784805317426) |url=https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/no-longer-human-9784805317426 |website=The Japan Times |access-date=26 November 2023}}</ref>

A fourth English translation, by David Boyd, is scheduled to be published by [[Penguin Random House]] as a part of their Penguin Classics line on May 4, 2027, again as ''No Longer Human''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=No Longer Human: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) |url=https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BF8N562Z |access-date=5 January 2025 |website=Amazon}}</ref>

==Notable adaptations==
===Film===
* 2010: ''The Fallen Angel'' (dir. [[Genjiro Arato|Genjirō Arato]])
* 2019: ''[[Human Lost]]'' (dir. Fuminori Kizaki)

===Anime series===
* 2009: ''[[Aoi Bungaku]]''

===Manga===
* 2009: ''No Longer Human'' by [[Usamaru Furuya]]<ref>{{cite web|title=No Longer Human|url=http://www.vertical-inc.com/books/nolongerhuman.html|publisher=Vertical, Inc.|access-date=10 December 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130615031324/http://www.vertical-inc.com/books/nolongerhuman.html|archive-date=15 June 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* 2017: ''[[No Longer Human (Ito manga)|No Longer Human]]'' by [[Junji Ito|Junji Itō]]

===Musical theatre===
* 2021: ''[[No Longer Human (musical)|No Longer Human]]'' stage musical adaptation with music by [[Frank Wildhorn]], with the world premiere first taking place in December 2021 at the [[Shanghai Grand Theatre]]. <ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Wildhorn-Miller-Greens-NO-LONGER-HUMAN-to-Make-World-Premiere-in-Shanghai-20211209|title=Wildhorn, Miller & Green's NO LONGER HUMAN to Make World Premiere in Shanghai|date=December 9, 2021|website=BroadwayWorld|access-date=November 30, 2023}}</ref>

=== Music ===

* 1990: ''Ningen Shikkaku'' by [[Ningen Isu]]

== See also ==
{{Portal|Japan|Novels|Literature
}}

* [[Dazai Osamu]]
* [[Postwar Japan]]
{{clear}}
==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Osamu Dazai}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1948 novels]]
[[Category:1940s Japanese novels]]
[[Category:Books with cover art by Rodrigo Corral]]
[[Category:Novels with unreliable narrators]]
[[Category:Novels about alcoholism]]
[[Category:Novels about heroin addiction]]
[[Category:Novels about mental health]]
[[Category:Novels about suicide]]
[[Category:Novels by Osamu Dazai]]
[[Category:Novels first published in serial form]]
[[Category:Novels published posthumously]]
[[Category:Novels set in Japan]]
[[Category:Existentialist books]]

No Longer Human - Revision history

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