No Longer Human explores what it’s like to feel completely detached and alienated from society. Yozo, the novel’s protagonist, feels fundamentally at odds with everyone around him, finding everything about humanity unnatural and impossible to comprehend. In other words, nothing about human behavior or society feels intuitive to him, and his only way of getting through life is by mimicking the social conduct he thinks other people view as acceptable. And yet, by constantly performing in this way, he ultimately alienates himself all the more, effectively hiding what he calls his “true nature” and thus guaranteeing that nobody will ever be able to genuinely connect with him. In this way, the novel spotlights how hard it can be for people who already feel alienated from society to meaningfully assimilate into a broader community, since their sense of alienation often drives them to behave in ways that only exacerbate their sense of isolation.
However, No Longer Human doesn’t necessarily make a specific argument about social isolation or antisocial behavior. Rather, the novel simply follows Yozo’s alienation, functioning as a snapshot or document of a lonely man. This snapshot doesn’t clarify why, exactly, Yozo initially feels alienated from humanity. Of course, he does have the tragic misfortune of being sexually abused by his family’s waitstaff as a child, and this experience undoubtedly plays into his “fear” of humans and his hesitancy to connect with others. However, it’s difficult to argue that this traumatic experience is the singular origin of his feelings of isolation, since his misgivings and sense of estrangement begin before his abuse. In turn, the novel perhaps suggests that some people are simply prone to feeling excluded from society—and, to that end, that such feelings often become more pronounced over time, as Yozo comes to feel by the end of the novel that he’s so cut off from humanity and society that he’s “disqualified as a human being.” Feelings of alienation, then, are capable of building on themselves, making it that much harder for people like Yozo to forge connections and find a sense of belonging in society.
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Social Isolation and Alienation ThemeTracker
Social Isolation and Alienation Quotes in No Longer Human
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.
Mine has been a life of much shame.
I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.
How often as I lay there I used to think what uninspired decorations sheets and pillow cases make. It wasn’t until I was about twenty that I realized that they actually served a practical purpose, and this revelation of human dullness stirred dark depression in me.
“How about you, Yozo?” he asked, but I could only stammer uncertainly.
Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer “Nothing.” The thought went through my mind that it didn’t make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.
My true nature, however, was one diametrically opposed to the role of a mischievous imp. Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the maids and menservants; I was being corrupted. I now think that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, cruelest crime a human being can commit. But I endured it. I even felt as if it enabled me to see one more particular aspect of human beings. I smiled in my weakness.
I got to my feet with a rueful smile and was brushing the sand from my pants when Takeichi, who had crept up from somewhere behind, poked me in the back. He murmured, “You did it on purpose.”
I trembled all over. I might have guessed that someone would detect that I had deliberately missed the bar, but that Takeichi should have been the one came as a bolt from the blue. I felt as if I had seen the world before me burst in an instant into the raging flames of hell. It was all I could do to suppress a wild shriek of terror.
There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are—the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be…Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms—they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared.
The pictures I drew were so heart-rending as to stupefy even myself. Here was the true self I had so desperately hidden. I had smiled cheerfully; I had made others laugh; but this was the harrowing reality. I secretly affirmed this self, was sure that there was no escape from it, but naturally I did not show my pictures to anyone except Takeichi.
I soon came to understand that drink, tobacco, and prostitutes were all excellent means of dissipating (even for a few moments) my dread of human beings. I came even to feel that if I had to sell every last possession to obtain these means of escape, it would be well worth it.
Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable. Or rather, I felt at ease with it. What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.
I drank the liquor. She did not intimidate me, and I felt no obligation to perform my clownish antics for her. I drank in silence, not bothering to hide the taciturnity and gloominess which were my true nature.
It was entirely different from the feeling of being able to sleep soundly which I had experienced in the arms of those idiot-prostitutes (for one thing, the prostitutes were cheerful); the night I spent with that criminal’s wife was for me a night of liberation and happiness. (The use of so bold a word, affirmatively, without hesitation, will not, I imagine, recur in these notebooks.)
Yes, just as Horiki had said, she really was a tired, poverty-stricken woman and nothing more. But this thought itself was accompanied by a welling-up of a feeling of comradeship for this fellow-sufferer from poverty. (The clash between rich and poor is a hackneyed enough subject, but I am now convinced that it really is one of the eternal themes of drama.) I felt pity for Tsuneko; for the first time in my life I was conscious of a positive (if feeble) movement of love in my heart. I vomited. I passed out. This was also the first time I had ever drunk so much as to lose consciousness.
The next instant he asked with his quiet smile, “Was that real?”
Even now the recollection makes me feel so embarrassed I can’t sit still. It was worse, I am sure, even than when in high school I was plummeted into hell by that stupid Takeichi tapping me on the back and saying, “You did it on purpose.” Those were the two great disasters in a lifetime of acting. Sometimes I have even thought that I should have preferred to be sentenced to ten years imprisonment rather than meet with such gentle contempt from the district attorney.
Just outside the apartment window was a kite caught in the telegraph wires; blown about and ripped by the dusty spring wind, it nevertheless clung tenaciously to the wires, as if in affirmation of something. Every time I looked at the kite I had to smile with embarrassment and blush. It haunted me even in dreams.
(They were happy, the two of them. I’d been a fool to come between them. I might destroy them. I might destroy them both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good mother and child. […]
The voice of a resistance weak but desperate spoke from somewhere in my heart. It said that I had not caused anyone to die, that I had not lifted money from anyone—but once again the ingrained habit of considering myself evil took command.
She stood ramrod stiff. But in her wide-open eyes there was no trace of alarm or dislike; her look spoke of longing, almost of the seeking for salvation. I thought, “She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others.” Not until then did I happen to notice that she stood with difficulty, supporting herself on crutches. I suppressed a desire to run up beside her, but I could not take my eyes from her face. I felt tears starting, and saw then the tears brimming from her big eyes.
Horiki sat in front of me and said, with a gentle smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his face, “I hear you’ve coughed blood.” I felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that I averted my face and wept. I was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile.
This was a really rare event. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.
Even if released, I would be forever branded on the forehead with the word “madman,” or perhaps, “reject.”
Disqualified as a human being.
I had now ceased utterly to be a human being.
