No Longer Human

PROLOGUE-PART 1

Reading Check

1. “[S]hame“ (Part 1)

2. The three mealtimes with his family (Part 1)

3. Anything anyone offered to him (Part 1)

4. Yozo says a “respected” man is one who succeeds in conning and tricking others, but who is eventually discovered in his trickery and made to feel ashamed for the behavior. (Part 1)

5. Yozo’s father’s friends speak poorly of his father but are kind and complimentary to his face. (Part 1)

Short Answer

1. The narrator reviews three photographs of a man in his childhood, his university years, and his older years. The narrator remarks on the nature of the man in the photos; in particular, he finds the child’s expression appalling and the lack of characteristics in the older man’s photograph disconcerting. This establishes an uneasy and wary tone for the subsequent chapters. (Prologue)

2. Yozo describes his childhood in a sterile manner, focusing on his self-proclaimed “abnormalities.” He felt as if, despite those around him telling him he was lucky, he actually was not happy. He recalls not understanding the true function of basic items (e.g., railways and bed sheet sets) as well as being sickly; he also recognizes that he was never hungry. (Part 1)

3. Yozo recalls that he struggled to connect with his peers, as he often spiraled into personal and existential questions regarding the nature of humans and the capacity to suffer. In order to deal with his “dread” of human society, he invents “clowning” as a coping mechanism. (Part 1)

4. When Yozo’s father asks him and siblings what gifts they would like to receive, Yozo is unable to speak nor think of any witty response to his father’s request. When his brother responds on Yozo’s behalf requesting a book, Yozo notes how this answer displeases his father; as a result, he sneakily writes “lion mask” in a notebook in his father’s office, to the eventual amusement of his father. (Part 1)

5. Yozo uses the phrase “a mischievous imp” to describe himself in relation to his education. He recalls doing exceedingly well at school despite never studying; he writes stories and creative pieces that he knows will make his professors laugh, often using embellished and false details. (Part 1)

PART 2

Reading Check

1. Yozo is afraid of people. (Part 2)

2. “Thanks to Setchan almost all the visitors to my room were girls.” (Part 2)

3. That women would fall in love with Yozo and that Yozo would be a painter (Part 2)

4. “[S]qualor” and “violence” (Part 2)

5. Alcohol, tobacco, and sex workers (Part 2)

6. Horiki explains that Tsuneko looks “poverty-stricken.” (Part 2)

Short Answer

1. Takeichi is a social outcast at the military school. When Yozo fails a physical drill on purpose for comedic effect, Takeichi tells Yozo that he knows he did it in order to make people laugh. Yozo is unnerved because Takeichi sees the truth in Yozo’s actions; he is afraid of being exposed as a con. (Part 2)

2. Takeichi shows Yozo a picture of a Van Gogh painting, telling him it is a picture of “ghosts.” Yozo is simultaneously alarmed and intrigued by this idea and realizes painting may be a strategy for confronting his fear of humans. (Part 2)

3. At his father’s insistence, Yozo enrolls in a university to become a public servant; however, finding the university dormitory life to be “appalling,” he leaves the dormitory and begins to spend his time secretly taking art classes. Here, he meets Horiki, who introduces him to the “mysteries of drink, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops and left-wing thought.” Although he does not necessarily like Horiki, he finds a unity with him in that they “were both disoriented.” (Part 2)

4. Horiki introduces Yozo to employing sex workers as well as the communist meetings. Yozo finds solace in both activities, the first because he finds both “security” as well as “a natural friendliness which never became oppressive” with the sex workers. With the communist meetings, Yozo is intrigued by the “underground movement” and possesses an “attraction for its odor of irrationality.” (Part 2)

5. A combination of loss of his family home, an inability to manage his expenses and an increase of “jobs” for the Marxist organization lead Yozo to the conclusion that the only way out is dying by suicide. He then describes a situation where he meets a married woman named Tsuneko at a bar who admits that she is “unhappy” and the two begin a relationship. (Part 2)

6. Upon his second meeting with Tsuneko, he realizes that within his drunken stupor he feels love and tenderness for her. Ironically, this prompts him to plan to die by suicide with Tsuneko. They enter the water together in the evening; he is saved while she drowns. (Part 2)

PART 3-EPILOGUE

Reading Check

1. “[P]arasite” (Part 3, Chapter 1)

2. Embellishment of details (Part 3, Chapter 1)

3. Chivalry (Part 3, Chapter 2)

4. A shopkeeper raping Yoshiko (Part 3, Chapter 2)

5. That while many unhappy people exist, Yozo’s unhappiness comes from his own faults, whereas others’ unhappiness results from society’s faults. (Part 3, Chapter 2)

6. Yozo’s father (Epilogue)

Short Answer

1. Shizuko is a widowed woman with one daughter whom Yozo meets accidentally while at Horiki’s. With his current housing situation with Flatfish in a precarious state, Yozo finds some luck living with her as a “kept man.” She is able to get him a job at the newspaper as a cartoonist; however, he is overall unhappy with these changes in life. (Part 3, Chapter 1)

2. Previously, Yozo believed that society was an unknown entity that was “something powerful, harsh and severe”; however, in his argument with Horiki, Yozo comes to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief that society functions in human ways: “What is society but an individual?” (Part 3, Chapter 1)

3. Upon seeing Shizuko and her daughter happy without him, Yozo takes solace at a madame’s bar; he lives with this woman and works for the establishment, drinking every day. He feels better about society at this time, but he is still fearful of humans. During his drunken bouts, he meets a local shop girl named Yoshiko, who he believes is a virgin. He promises to stop drinking and they marry; however, this only brings more sadness to him as well as his new wife. (Part 3, Chapter 1)

4. Yozo invents a game with Horiki where they must label nouns as either “tragic” or “comic.” In their discussion, they determine that both “death” and “life” are “comic” nouns, while Yozo’s work as a cartoon artist is an “extremely tragic noun.” In their inebriated state, Yozo realizes that Horiki himself did not think of Yozo as a human being. (Part 3, Chapter 2)

5. In his drunken spiral, Yozo visits a pharmacy, where the pharmacist (in her attempt to help him fight his alcoholism) gives him a variety of medicines, including morphine. He quickly becomes addicted to morphine, and eventually is sent to a hospital where he stays until his father dies. At his brother’s request, he leaves Tokyo and stays in a house with a servant who “violates” him. (Part 3, Chapter 2)

6. During his travels, the narrator meets the madam of the bar where Yozo used to frequent. She gives Yozo’s notebooks to the narrator hoping that a novel could be made of them. He quickly reads the notebooks as he is fascinated with the material, and the madam remarks that Yozo was really known as “easy-going and amusing, and if only he hadn’t drunk—no, even though he did drink—he was a good boy, an angel.” (Epilogue)