The Unnamed Speaker Character Analysis

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.