I have read some people saying that No Longer Human is misogynistic. After reading The Setting Sun, another book by Osamu Dazai, I think the misogyny in that book is often misunderstood.
The main character in No Longer Human seems to blame the women in his life about his problems but it's clear that these women only try to help him and that he's the one who is destroying his life. I interpreted the misogynistic comments as another aspect of the delusions of a deeply disturbed guy. Like of course someone delusional like that is going to blame women for his problems. People also often forget that there's a part of the book where the protagonist literally says that women are more honorable than men.
This becomes even more obvious if you read the Setting Sun, another book that features a self-destructive guy, Naoji, who has a sister who is not perfect but also clearly the more reasonable and dependable of the two. In fact there's a scene where their mother is literally dying and the daughter is constantly there doing what she can to help, while the son is basically being useless and drunk all the time. I doubt this is something that someone who believed men are better/superior would write.
TL;DR Was Dazai sexist? Yes, but not more than any other Japanese guy of his time. From reading The Setting Sun it is clear to me that he's not very misogynistic and that the comments in NLH are meant to show how disturbed and delusional the protagonist is.
by Serious_Guide_2424
5 Comments
I saw a post recently saying that misogynistic characters != a misogynistic narrative and I think that distinction is important here. The mouthpiece of the story demonstrates more misogyny than the narrative does which colors people’s opinions
In my opinion, these are the characters he wants us to see. I think that he wants the reader to be disgusted at their hypocrisy. The best way to tell a man’s heart is how he treats those that he sees as “weaker” than himself. So I think Dazai wasn’t any worse than the next guy at the time (which wasn’t the best lol) and the sexism is part of what we need to understand the kind of man we’re dealing with. Although he gives us empathy for them through the narrative, it doesn’t mean he agrees. It just allows us to get in the mind of a man like that which is super interesting to see and as a woman has helped me understand the kind of men who treat women the way these characters did.
Right, Yozo’s not someone you’re supposed to agree with on his view of the world. I also interpreted it as the character being somewhat misogynist, but . . . he also hates almost every man he interacts with.
I don’t think the main character in No Longer Human is supposed to serve as any kind of a model. I thought it was a portrait of a very alienated and selfish person, that was the point, this is how people go wrong.
I get what you mean, you see these takes everywhere. Honestly, I’ve dropped the rope about people conflating opinions / attitudes of a character with attitudes of the author. Respect to all the people who still dive back into that breach every other day and explain that *no, actually, Nabokov isn’t a pedophile just because Humbert Humbert is a pedophile, no, actually, Dazai isn’t a misogynist just because Yōzō is a misogynist, no, actually, Thomas Pynchon is not a psychopharmaceutically engineered super-soldier with erections that predict the future just because Tyrone Slothrop is a psychopharmaceutically engineered super-solider with erections that predict the future,* but I can’t do it anymore. If you read at a booktok level like that, more power to you, but there’s no way we can have a fruitful discussion, so I choose to not engage.