![]() To describe the ensuing plot is to list an endless catalogue of maladies: Yōzō lies to an ugly classmate about a matter of love, driving him to commit suicide, and gets involved in an incestuous love triangle that ends in murder. This act of traumatic violence is rendered with shocking and grotesque clarity by Ito and sets the tone for the chronicle of pain that Yōzō endures and inflicts upon everyone in his orbit. To make matters worse, Yōzō’s disconnection kicks into rapid overdrive when he is raped by both a male and female servant on his family’s estate. Yet, Yōzō harbours a secret: he’s completely unable to relate to any of the people in his life, and harbours a profound sense of alienation and emptiness– a howling chasm that yawns ever-wider within him as he lurches towards adulthood. And moreover, he’s hilarious – a goofy joker who engages in pratfalls and mugging to the great delight of his classmates, teachers and most of the adults in his orbit. He’s rakishly handsome and shows signs of artistic talent. On the surface, our dear narrator Ōba Yōzō seemingly has everything going for him – he’s born to an affluent family with good standing in Japanese society. With these facts in mind, it’s safe to say that No Longer Human is a rather grim ride – one that plumbs the depths of psychological and philosophical horror far deeper than anything Ito has produced before. ![]() ![]() In 1948, after the publication of No Longer Human, he successfully ended his life, drowning himself with a lover in a Tokyo canal. He then discovered a talent for writing novels and began growing in stature. An alcoholic, addict and womanizer, Dazai attempted suicide twice, once with a woman who died while he survived. Widely touted as Japan’s second best-selling novel, No Longer Human also serves as a semi-autobiographical chronicle of a writer’s life etched with self-loathing and despair. So unfolds Ito’s stunning 600-page illustrated ode to misanthropy, self-destruction and malaise, based on the 1948 novel of the same name by Osamu Dazai. “It put me at ease,” he reflects, “because the most dreadful thing in the world for me was human beings.” But in Yōzō’s twisted worldview, human society is the nightmare the insects, instead, are a soothing balm. If this was a typical Ito tale, this scene might end with the narrator slowly backing away from the bugs, his mouth gaping in madness and terror. Yōzō isn’t really a joiner type, and he contemptuously imagines the activists morphing into a cluster of giant cockroaches with twitching antennae and black glistening eyes. During a pivotal scene in horror manga artist Junji Ito’s latest book, No Longer Human, the protagonist/antihero Ōba Yōzō is invited to a Marxist group meeting in 1950s-era Tokyo.
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