This article attempts to bridge the vast gap between Western and Asian literature by exploring the despair of the protagonist of the famous modern Japanese I-novel No Longer Human (人間失格). Therefore, (de)colonization or imperial oppression is a common theme in Asian literature; and similarly, most of the literature, except the precolonial, is approached from a postcolonial point of view. Instead, Asian literature, like literature from all parts of the world, also reflects and focuses on representing the everyday experiences in different Asian societies - and on this universality of humanity.
Nevertheless, Asian literature exhibits universally applicable themes such as inner turmoil, identity crisis, moral dilemmas, and so on.
Asian Literature and the Canon: Dazai in Context
The gradual disappearance of the spontaneous use of classical Chinese created new barriers to communication throughout East Asia, and therefore “the only way to overcome the barrier was to master a European language (English or French), the language of the imperialist nation-state” (Sakaki 144). He explains that the Orient is not only "the place of Europe's largest, richest, and oldest colonies, [but also] the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural rival, and one of its deepest and most recurrent images of the Other" (Said). 1). Phyllis Lyons is one of the few scholars who has written extensively on Dazai, explaining that “all modern Japanese fiction is ultimately written with a knowledge of Western fiction” (Lyons 97).
Sharalyn Orbaugh examines Alan Wolfe's thorough work on Dazai to outline that "the development of the Japanese novel has often been calculated on a value-based scale.
Research Question, Rationale for Research, Theories and Methods,
This argument applies to the Eurocentric literary canon as stated by Atsuko Sakaki in her book Obsessions with the Sino-Japanese Polarity in Japanese Literature, where she explains that in Japan (until the contact with European imperialism): “The control of Chinese literary canon. The author focuses on the use of “post-structuralist and reconstructive theory” by both Fujii and Pollack in positioning Japanese literature in the canon. Serrano-Munoz examines “the relationship between the reproduction of hegemonic discourses of national representation in the reception of literature in translation and its processes.
James O'Brien is one of the few scholars who has extensively studied Dazai Osamu and his works. Phyllis Lyons, one of the other scholars writing on Dazai besides Alan Wolfe, reviewed O'Brien's book. In her review she supports his suggestion of "interconnections that produce the distinctive qualities of his art" (Lyons 119).
Regarding her analysis of Dazai's art as it matured over time, he wrote that "this is partly a matter of the author achieving a better understanding of himself, a more complete implementation of his 'love curriculum' from work to work in Saga" (O'Brien 281) . But she points out that her critical analysis reduces all of Dazai's works to a general “context of searching. In the article "Reconsideration of the Culture of Shame", the authors explore the concept.
McCarthy,” author Joel Cohn argues against one of the widely held views on Dazai's works, namely that his works are derivative of his biography. In her article entitled “Crime and Punishment: The Subjectivity of the Modern Morality and Its Manifestation in the Meiji Man,” Autumn Smith makes a comparative analysis of Soseki's Kokoro and Dazai's No Longer Human. He “understands “the non-human is no longer human” and these people have “a spiritual mutation” in terms of their psychology.
Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most famous researchers in the field of existentialism.
The Human in Dostoevsky, Dazai, Camus and Murakami
But his nihilistic character is not the most important feature, rather it is his behavior through which Dostoevsky portrays the constant common experience of the human condition of misery - as Dostoevsky notes "Man is sometimes extraordinary, passionate, in love with suffering, and that is a fact" (Dostoevsky 53). Man in Dostoevsky works to assert the constancy of pain as a permanent and inseparable part of human existence, no matter how 'advanced and better' the world may have become: He shatters our delusion of believing that to changing something can free us from suffering He thought he was despicable, we as readers would also find him to be until the end of the novel when the old woman calls Yozo an angel.
The case of rebellion in the face of the Absurd brings us to Sisyphus and Meursault, the absurd heroes of Albert Camus. Sisyphus, one of the most famous and frowning mythical figures, was punished by the gods for rolling a massive stone up a steep hill; but every time it reached the top, it turned back down, condemning Sisyphus to repeat the same grueling task for eternity. The absurd hero confronts the Absurd, and his realization of the Absurd frees him—he may never find any meaning because everything would be undone by death, but he rebels against the absurd by finding happiness in what he does.
Near the end of the novel, when Meursault is pressured by the priests to accept God, "as if the blind rage had washed [him] clean, rid [him] of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars , [he] opened [himself] to the gentle indifference of the world. Yozo's experiences as a child along with the realization of his very different view of the world had completely scarred him. Regarding existence and suffering, one of the most common and recurring themes in Murakami's novels the search for identity and one's suffering arising from an identity.
In an attempt to find meaning and make sense out of the world, he follows his college friend and this leads him to dive into alcohol and enter into a series of meaningless relationships with women - none of which bring him closer to his quest . However, in the 2000s, Japanese culture and society changed radically from that of the 1980s and 1990s as communication and globalization became widespread.
Existence, Identity and Society (Sartre, Camus, Dazai)
Albert Camus, however, believed that the pain of an existential crisis is the result of realizing the absurdity of the world. The absurd "is born of this confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world" (Camus and O'Brien 32). Since literature is a mirror of human experience and society, many literary works depict these existential crises and the individual's struggle to find meaning, in an attempt to capture and put their lives on paper.
Although Osamu Dazai may not have had much exposure to the formal study of existentialism, nor is he labeled as an existentialist writer, his novels, which are highly autobiographical, give us ample opportunity to delve into the experience of the absurd and an existential crisis that Dazai was. known for being a man who depicts his lifelong suffering and comes to terms with it through his writing. This section of the thesis looks at the portrayal of the self in an existential crisis from living with bad faith and inauthenticity in Dazai's No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku / . 人間失格). The unknown narrator in the epilogue describes the inexplicable feeling stirred in him by looking at three photographs of the notebook writer taken in his childhood, youth and middle age, who we later find to be the protagonist Oba Yozo.
He tells how his father's acquaintances did not find his father's speech amusing, but they flattered him with lies; his cousin is not fond of a friend whom she considers to be a "close friend". An interesting aspect of the absurdity involved is looking at his relationship with women as an adult in light of Freud's notions of the phallic phase. As if the multi-layered absurdity wasn't enough suffering for Yozo, Dazai introduces us to other aspects of his existential crisis stemming from his awareness of others and the realization of the limitless freedom and choice he had.
Sartre describes the initial fear of other people (“the Other”) in a negative way: other people are beings who undermine and threaten the stability of the world one has built for oneself” (Wicks 46). Sartre explains that “bad faith” is the denial and avoidance of the responsibility that accompanies the realization of one's unfettered freedom;
Ningen Shikkaku: Critical Disability Theory
This part of the paper aims to explore Yozo's experience as a "disabled person" and the ways in which he is treated by able-bodied society in order to understand the ways in which No Longer Human portrays the experience of disabled people in uniformitarian modern Japanese society. Moreover, in confinement, these people are observed under the “medical gaze,” which is the dehumanizing point of view of the specialist—from the medical point of view, the person is nothing more than a system of organs (Foucault 89). What really destroys the reader in seeing society's mistreatment of Yoz for being different is when the novel reveals the sheer desire of the 'disabled' or human to be 'human', to be accepted by society, to be seen as a person above all differently.
The most heartbreaking aspect of the novel occurs when Yozo cries and says, "God, I ask you, is non-resistance a sin?". Osamu Dazai, one of the many prominent Japanese writers of the early 20th century, remains an extremely underrated figure. Dazai's novels speak of the unspoken experience of Japanese people, which still makes him revered today.
Review of The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study with Translations.; Return to Tsugaru: Travels of a Purple Tramp., by P. Methamphetamine Solution: Drugs and the Reconstruction of Nation in Postwar Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. Nihilism and (non-)humanity in Dostoyevsky's Demons and Dazai's No Longer Human.” The University of Edinburgh, 2017,.
A Canon with a Critical Difference.” Journal of the Japanese Teachers Association, Vol. Crime and Punishment: The Subjectivity of Modern Morality and Its Manifestation in Meiji Man.” Wittenberg University Journal of East Asian Studies, vol.
