5/26/2023 0 Comments No Longer Human by Osamu DazaiHis involvement with the then actively repressed Japanese Communist Party further alienated the author. Prone to alcoholism, drug abuse, and prostitution yet unable to sustain himself financially, Dazai maintained a tenuous relationship with his family. In 1927, a short while before Dazai’s first attempt at suicide, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Japan’s preeminent modernist writer whom Dazai admired greatly, committed suicide by overdose. It is longed for and sought after and is, to Yozo’s misery, elusive.ĭazai, born in 1909 to a wealthy rural landowning family, lived through turbulent periods of Japanese history that spanned World War I, a major national financial crisis, rise of militarism, and World War II. The title for a New York Times review of Osamu Dazai’s last novel, No Longer Human, reads ‘Yozo’s Appointment in Samarra.’ Death is a destination in this confessional novel, one that beckons with a magnetic and alluring force.
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