Ningen Shikkaku [No longer Human].

DAZAI'S SECOND (AND LAST) NOVEL

First edition. 8vo. Original decorated wrappers with obi, light browning to edges, but overall still a very good copy. 271pp. Tokyo, Chikuma Shobo, dated: Showa 22 [i.e. 

The first edition of Osamu Dazai's second (and last) novel. It ranks amongst the best-selling Japanese novels of all time. The book was printed only a month after Dazai tragically committed suicide with his partner Tomie Yamazaki by drowning in their local canal. Therefore, there are no signed copies of this book.

 

No Longer Human chronicles the life of Oba Yozo, as told through the protagonist's notebooks. Oba lives a troubled existence, grappling with childhood trauma and a constant feeling of alienation. It is a remarkably personal novel that alludes to Dazai's own depressive tendencies. The translator Donald Keene wrote in his preface to the first English edition, "No Longer Human is not a cheerful book, yet its effect is far from that of a painful wound gratuitously inflicted on the reader" (1958). Keene also noted the presence of conflict in the novel; the protagonist's profound inner turmoil and the wider social context of Japanese traditions in conflict with Western influence in the twentieth century.

 

Rare.

Stock Code: 248366