Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - No Longer Human

sigh... how do i start this review? this was such a complex book and i have complex feelings about it.

it has been on my tbr since maybe about one or two years? it caught my attention because, honestly, i have kind of a savior complex and i've always been interested in mental health issues.
but the main reason why i decided to finally read it this time was because of its short length and because of my reading slump. so if you want to read this, i would recommend you to wait until you're in a good state of mind because it can be triggering.

i must also admit that after finishing the story i found myself confused at some things. so hence why i decided to read junji ito's manga adaptation, which has helped me to get a better overall view of the story.

i think it's easy to emphathize with yozo's character at the beginning. he is a people pleaser who can't say no and can never wish bad things to anyone. he makes everyone believe he is a comedic clown-ish guy.
although terrible things happen to him (which perpetuate his nihilism and pessimism) he doesn't talk about them with no one.

he is not very good at keeping friendships and doesn't have any special bond to his family. i guess that's understandable, since his belief of everyone being a terrible person alienates him from society.
so, as he grows up, he ends up becoming an alcoholic and, eventually, a drug addict.

another important theme in yozo's life are women. disclaimer: this was written in the 40s or so, therefore it is clearly a product of its time. expect lots of misogyny.
the thing is that im not really sure of how he felt about them. did he just 100% think they're impossible creatures who he couldn't understand? were his insecurities and anxiety making him believe he was not worth enough to be loved? a mix of both things? i also can't understand how did he attract so many women (specially after he grew up and stopped acting funny 24/7), did they sense he was broken and thought they could fix him? or did the author just see women as desperate human beings who would do anything for some male affection?

personally, i think the most interesting parts were the first one and the epliogue (as soon as i finished, i went super quickly to read the prologue again and it all made sense, lmao). during the other parts sometimes the writing felt off and i couldn't understand exactly what was going on.

for example, i was super confused about why he felt relieved by his father's death by the end. i even had to skim through the book to find out if i had missed some horrible thing he did. but i guess that, just like other terrible things in the story, it was something implicit

as this is kind of an autobiography, i am not completely sure of what message the author meant to give.
but what i got from this story, is how alienation, depression and not properly coping with traumas can fuck up a person. but i guess one of the main conclusions leads to a couple of questions: how many pain can a human being go through? how much can everyone else emphathize with them? at what point do these two answers collide and when does someone become no longer human?

im a super empathetic person so i was always waiting for yozo to get better? maybe to actually fight and pursue for his dream of becoming a painter, even after that man laughed at him?
but i lost part of my faith on him after he just watched his wife getting raped without a word. i guess that triggered some memories in him? so that's why he couldn't do anything, but i still felt uneasy.

ps: a part that really hit me, for some reason, is when he got in the psych ward and said that, after that, he was no longer human. maybe this whole book is just about his "journey" to dehumanization?

Content Warnings