Some parents carefully vet what their children read, believing that not every book teaches good things. It's an understandable worry, but I don't share it. Most people's nature is more like a lotus—growing out of the mud without getting stained. Even Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, the founding text of literary decadence, becomes, in the hands of an optimistic and kind reader, a way to guard against their own pessimism.
The simplest analogy is a kitchen knife. A knife is just a knife. What makes the difference is who holds it. Some use it to cook; others use it to kill. The knife is just a knife.
Last night I finished the "Preface" and "First Notebook" sections of the book.
How to put it? The author seems deeply pessimistic. That pessimism comes from two traits in his personality: a self-negating character and a people-pleasing one.
He is naturally sensitive and kind, and he hates hypocrisy, but the family environment he grew up in pushed him toward a self-negating character.
That self-negation turns inward first and then outward. He negates himself first, and then the whole world.
But to get along with the people around him, another side of his personality evolved: people-pleasing.
He does what he doesn't want to do, full of inner resistance, but as long as he is alive he has to keep going. That's why, right at the start of the "First Notebook," he says: "My whole life has been a series of shameful things." That way of thinking ultimately left him with a lifelong urge to destroy himself. In a sense, that urge is also a kind of passion for life—except that, in his view, this passion had to be expressed through extreme means, such as suicide.
Whether in Japan or China, the distance and coldness between people always exist. People who are too kind cannot "survive" in such an environment, because they live too earnestly.
In today's popular language, Dazai and his character Ōba Yōzō would be called extreme cases of "mental exhaustion," or jingshen neihao. Of course, that phrase is a bit shallow as a summary, because it ignores the good side of their worldview.
Fairy tales cannot be written by anyone but the kindhearted. Even someone as decadent as Dazai—labeled part of the Japanese "Buraiha" or decadent school—once wrote Otogizōshi, a book of fairy tales. It shows that there was always a good side to Dazai's heart, a side that could look at the world with delight.
When we read, we should bring clear-eyed critical thinking. Think more, and when necessary, criticize. This world has its dark side, and it also has a side full of sunshine.
A note: the copy I have was borrowed from the Huairou Library. It's published by Beijing Yanshan Press, and the translator is Ren Yanhong.
I checked ten other editions on the Tomato Novel app, and I think the translation I have is the best.
Here are those ten versions of the same opening line:
- "My life has been full of shameful things."
- "I have come through a life full of shame."
- "I have lived a life accompanied by many humiliations."
- "I live a life full of disgrace."
- "I have come through a life full of shame."
- "My past life has been full of shame."
- "From childhood to adulthood, I have always lived a life full of shame."
- "My life is filled with shame."
- "My past life has been nothing but shame."
- "Looking back on the past, I feel endless shame."