During a pivotal scene in horror manga artist Junji Ito ’ s latest koran, No Longer Human, the protagonist/antihero Ōba Yōzō is invited to a Marxist group touch in 1950s-era Tokyo. Yōzō international relations and security network ’ thyroxine very a joiner type, and he contemptuously imagines the activists morphing into a bunch of colossus cockroaches with twitching antenna and black glistening eyes. If this was a distinctive Ito narrative, this scene might end with the narrator slowly backing away from the bugs, his mouth agape in madness and panic. But in Yōzō ’ second twisted worldview, human society is the nightmare ; the insects, alternatively, are a assuasive balm. “ It put me at comfort, ” he reflects, “ because the most dreadful thing in the populace for me was human beings. ”
sol unfold Ito ’ s stunning 600-page illustrated ode to misanthropy, self-destruction and malaise, based on the 1948 fresh of the lapp name by Osamu Dazai. widely touted as Japan ’ south second best-selling novel, No Longer Human besides serves as a semi-autobiographical chronicle of a writer ’ randomness animation etched with self-loathing and despair. An alcoholic, addict and womanizer, Dazai attempted suicide twice, once with a charwoman who died while he survived. He then discovered a talent for writing novels and began growing in stature. In 1948, after the publication of No Longer Human, he successfully ended his life, drowning himself with a fan in a Tokyo canal. With these facts in beware, it ’ second safe to say that No Longer Human is a rather ghastly ride – one that plumbs the depths of psychological and philosophical horror far deeper than anything Ito has produced before.
On the surface, our dearly narrator Ōba Yōzō apparently has everything going for him – he ’ randomness born to an affluent family with estimable stand in japanese company. He ’ south rakishly big and shows signs of artistic talent. And furthermore, he ’ randomness hilarious – a goofy joker who engages in pratfalls and mugging to the bang-up delight of his classmates, teachers and most of the adults in his scope. Yet, Yōzō harbours a secret : he ’ mho wholly unable to relate to any of the people in his biography, and harbours a profound sense of alienation and emptiness– a roar chasm that yawns ever-wider within him as he lurches towards adulthood .
To make matters worse, Yōzō ’ s disjunction kicks into rapid overdrive when he is raped by both a male and female handmaid on his family ’ s estate of the realm. This act of traumatic ferocity is rendered with shock and grotesque clarity by Ito and sets the spirit for the history of trouble that Yōzō endures and inflicts upon everyone in his orb. To describe the result plot is to list an endless catalog of maladies : Yōzō lies to an ugly schoolmate about a topic of love, driving him to commit suicide, and gets involved in an incestuous love triangle that ends in murder. As one might expect, it ’ s the women in Yōzō ’ s life that receive the brunt of his sociopathy, offering him their bodies, shelter, money and endless forgiveness in exchange for broken promises, repeated betrayals, and a roil apathy and languor that grows along with his apparently quenchless crave for gin. The book reaches an early fever pitch when Yōzō encourages his depressive lover to overdose on pills with him by the seaside : as her tongue swells and her torso convulses, the still-conscious Yōzō kicks her into the river. And still, his abject liveliness plods ahead.
No Longer Human would be sincerely impossible if not for Dazai ’ s skill at crafting narrative and character and Ito ’ sulfur thoughtfulness and creativity in translating the narrative into art. much like Howard Ratner, the horrifying jeweler trader played by Adam Sandler in the Safdie Brothers ’ 2019 movie Uncut Gems, Yōzō becomes somehow more unsympathetic and makes increasingly bad decisions throughout the class of the narrative. Yet inexplicably I found myself rooting for this depressive poor devil – that somehow, he would see the value of living an honest and kind life and set himself on a better course. This wyrd, indefensible desire keeps the pages turning and hearkens back to Dazai ’ s literary brethren in self-loathing and social hatred, including Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Ito ’ randomness translation of these ideas on the page is about unfathomably intuitive, a brainy experiment with texture and movement that marks a career highlight. He renders No Longer Human’s characters with astonishing contingent and a humanity that belies Yōzō ’ sulfur stunted position while still honouring his twist resource. In this manga, the rigors of life turn all of Yōzō ’ s friends and class into monsters : eyes bulge in mute shock at his misrepresentation, mouth twist into cackling rictuses, and bodies convulse and slump in ramp, pain and defeat. In one scene, Yōzō and his lover are depicted as two bodies melting into each other : a perfect ocular metaphor of how Yōzō ’ s misanthropy consumes everyone around him .
In the fresh ’ sulfur most visceral moment, Yōzō begins a descent into hell, weighted down by 10 tumor-life “ misfortunes ” in his body. He begins violently vomiting them up one by one, reliving the annoyance he has wrought upon others in a desperate attack to slow his down slither. The whole setting is the most Junji-Ito-esque thing I can imagine : a combination of experiential awful and body horror that ’ second about beyond inclusion. But he knows when to dial back, excessively : in a fresh ending to the story, Ito imagines Yōzō meet Dazai himself while staying in a sanatorium. The imagine interaction between the two men is pacify and evocative, using gestures and gazes to convey an unexpected and beautiful here and now of compassion. It ’ s a moment of much-needed reprieve and comeliness .
As I read through No Longer Human, captivated and repelled in equal measurement, depart of me wondered : Do we very need more stories about cynical men constantly getting second ( and third base, and fourth ) chances, even when their stories are rendered by geniuses like Junji Ito ? After all, we ’ ve all known people who, to a less extreme effect, exist like Yōzo : deplorable sacks and energy vampires of all sorts who enact casual cruelties on the people around them and still manage to get by and find people to take care of them, apologize for them, flush love them. But I besides feel most repugnance fans ( specially marginalized folks, specially folks with genial illnesses, and specially those who are creators themselves ) have a happen familiarity with this type of artistic disconnection – of feeling misconstrue, of craving distance and silence from other humans, away from judgment and arithmetic mean and pre-conception. In No Longer Human, Ito and Dazai tap into this electric potential alienation like a vein and plunge deep into its bloodcurdling possibilities. There is something perversely purgative about seeing how deep into the the darkness an artist can go, wondering if we could go there besides and be strong enough to emerge on the other side .
