No Longer Human Free PDF, Epub, Mobi By Osamu Dazai Book

I think that Osama Dazai would have been grati-

fied by the reviews his novel The Setting Sun received

when the English translation was published in the

United States. Even though some of the critics were

distressed by the picture the book drew of contem-

porary Japan, they one and all discussed it in the

terms reserved for works of importance. There was

no trace of the condescension often bestowed on writ-

ings emanating from remote parts of the world, and

for once nobody thought to use the damning adjective

"exquisite" about an unquestionably Japanese prod-

uct. It was judged among its peers, the moving and

beautiful books of the present generation.

One aspect of The Setting Sun puzzled many

readers, however, and may puzzle others in Dazai's

second novel No Longer Human:1

the role of Western

culture in Japanese life today. Like Yozo, the chief

figure of No Longer Human, Dazai grew up in a small

town in the remote north of Japan, and we might have

expected his novels to be marked by the simplicity,

love of nature and purity of sentiments of the inhab-

itants of such a place. However, Dazai's family was

rich and educated, and from his childhood days he

was familiar with European literature, American

movies, reproductions of modern paintings and sculp-

ture and much else of our civilization. These became

such important parts of his own experience that he

could not help being influenced by them, and he

mentioned them quite as freely as might any author

in Europe or America. In reading his works, however,

we are sometimes made aware that Dazai's under-

standing or use of these elements of the West is not

always the same as ours. It is easy to conclude from

this that Dazai had only half digested them, or even

that the Japanese as a whole have somehow misap-

propriated our culture.

I confess that I find this parochialism curious

in the United States. Here where our suburbs are

1T he literal translation of the original title Ningen Shik-

kaktt is "Disqualified as a Human Being." I have elsewhere

referred to this same novel as "The Disqualified."

jammed with a variety of architecture which bears

no relation to the antecedents of either the builders

or the dwellers; where white people sing Negro

spirituals and a Negro soprano sings Lucia di Lam-

mermoor at the Metropolitan Opera; where our cele-

brated national dishes, the frankfurter, the hamburger

and chow mein betray by their very names non-

American origins: can we with honesty rebuke the

Japanese for a lack of purity in their modern culture?

And can we criticize them for borrowing from us,

when we are almost as conspicuously in their debt?

We find it normal that we drink tea, their beverage,

but curious that they should drink whiskey, ours. Our

professional decorators, without thinking to impart

to us an adequate background in Japanese aesthetics,

decree that we should brighten our rooms with Bud-

dhist statuary or with lamps in the shapes of paper-

lanterns. Yet we are apt to find it incongruous if a

Japanese ornaments his room with examples of Chris-

tian religious art or a lamp of Venetian glass. Why

does it seem so strange that another country should

have a culture as conglomerate as our own?