NO LONGER HUMAN
Also by Osamu Dazai
THE SETTING SUN
No Longer Human
By Osamu Dazai
Translated by Donald Keene
A New Directions Book
Copyright © 1958 by New Directions Publishing Corporation
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-9509
(ISBN: 0-8112-0481-2)
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published clothbound by New Directions in 1958
First published as New Directions Paperbook 357 in 1973
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Penguin Books Canada Limited
Manufactured in the United Stales of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue. New York 10011
Twelfth printing
This translation is dedicated with affection
to Nancy and Edmundo Lassalle
Translator's Introduction
I think that Osamu Dazai would have been gratified 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 contemporary 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 writings emanating from remote parts of the world, and for once nobody thought to use the damning adjective "exquisite" about an unquestionably Japanese product. 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 inhabitants 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 sculpture 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 understanding 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 misappropriated our culture.
