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“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.”
I came to know about Osamu Dazai after watching the anime ' Bungou Stray Dogs'. The character named 'Dazai' in the anime is suicidal & comical, I fell in love with his character. Digging deeper I realized that most of the characters in that anime are based on real people, to be exact authors, real authors. The obsession of mine with particularly this character led me to explore more and got me into reading Osamu Dazai's books. Fast forward I finished three books of his, one by one, one after the other, because I couldn't seem to shake off the melancholic feeling that kept tugging me at my heart. No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, Schoolgirl, these all felt so close to my being especially schoolgirl that I just couldn't put the books down.
Trigger Warning: This book explores themes such as Depression, Sexual Assault, Child Abuse, Suicide and quite a few misogynistic statements throughout the book.
After reading this book, I was browsing the net for other people opinion and some more information about the author. I got to know that the author suicided after writing this book, so much of the book is an autobiography rather than a pure fiction. The emptiness I felt after reading this piece of information was overwhelming, like a quiet- ache spreading through my chest. There's something tragically beautiful about this novel and that is the clarity with which an unbearable pain can be put into words.
The novel written in first person follows life of oba Yozo, and his story is presented through his three notebooks. He was born in a wealthy family with the pressure to excel and eventually pursue a career as a civil servant ended up in the mire of alienation, isolation, drug abuse and self-destruction. His relation with his family members is distant and formal particularly with his father, to whom he constantly tries to appease. Struggling to put himself out there to his family and friends, he wears mask, a clownish mask is what he says.
“As long as I can make them laugh, it doesn't matter how, I'll be alright. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won't mind it too much if I remain outside their lives. The one thing I must avoid is becoming offensive in their eyes: I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”
Thinking that he is an outcast and incapable of holding a proper conversation with any human being, he further alienates himself from the society. Suffering from fear of people myself and fear of being attached with anybody, there were a lot of times where I found him relatable, and thought in my head how can a person write about my pain with such precision and relatability. I felt seen and I felt comforted, I felt understood, more like self-assessment, I understood myself in a much better way. The words in this book gave shape to the emotions I was for a long time unable to articulate.
Engulfed by his own bleak thoughts, he succumbed to his vices. Succumbing to your own vices is quite a good idea and an easy way out especially when the weight of existence becomes unbearable. But as I read further, I realized, I don't think so, succumbing to his vices never brought Oba Yozo peace, instead it deepened the void that was there. He drowned himself in Alcohol and women to drown his mind but instead he made it more chaotic and we could see from the way the book ended or the way he constantly struggled with his own thoughts.
The more I read, the more I thought, there were a lot of times when I had to put the book down, take a deep breath just so I could let whatever I read sink in. However, what remains constant in the book is the illusory thought that self-destruction can silence the pain. Yozo's dissent wasn't sudden, it was slow, inviting and almost graceful. And that’s what makes it so devastating. It made me realize that sometimes the scariest kind of destruction is the one that looks like endurance; the smiling, functioning facade that hides a dying soul underneath.
I highly recommend this book but please consider the trigger warning before reading. This book was my official introduction to Japanese literature as well and I have decided to explore further into it. I am also excited to read Murakami.
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