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Yozo
The unnamed speaker narrates the prologue and epilogue of No Longer Human, explaining that he never met Yozo—or, in his words, “the madman who wrote these notebooks.” Nonetheless, the speaker used to frequent the bar in Kyobashi that Yozo himself used to visit, which is why he knows the bartender from Kyobashi, who used to serve Yozo. When the speaker visits the countryside to see a friend and buy some seafood, he goes into a café and recognizes the bartender from Kyobashi. They talk about old times, at which point the bartender asks if the speaker ever knew Yozo. Even though he didn’t, the bartender still gives him Yozo’s notebooks, saying he might be able to use them for a novel—a suggestion implying that the speaker is a writer. That night, the speaker stays up reading the notebooks. Although he seems repulsed by Yozo as a person, he can’t help but acknowledge how interesting the writing is, so he decides to publish the notebooks without changing them.
The Unnamed Speaker Quotes in No Longer Human
The No Longer Human quotes below are all either spoken by The Unnamed Speaker or refer to The Unnamed Speaker. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Prologue Quotes
The head is shown quite large, and you can examine the features in detail: the forehead is average, the wrinkles on the forehead average, the eyebrows also average, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the chin…the face is not merely devoid of expression, it fails even to leave a memory. It has no individuality. I have only to shut my eyes after looking at it to forget the face.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire No Longer Human LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Unnamed Speaker Character Timeline in No Longer Human
The timeline below shows where the character The Unnamed Speaker appears in No Longer Human. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue
An unnamed speaker describes three pictures of someone he simply refers to as “the man.” The first picture...
(full context)
...nothing unique or individual about the expression. The entire thought of the picture creeps the speaker out, making him feel extremely uncomfortable, but he can’t say exactly why—there’s just something indescribable...
(full context)
Epilogue
The voice of the unnamed speaker returns, saying that he never met “the madman who wrote these notebooks”—that is, he never...
(full context)
The unnamed speaker tells the bartender from Kyobashi that he never knew Yozo, but she still gives him...
(full context)
The unnamed speaker decides to get the notebooks published without alteration. The next day, he returns to the...
(full context)
