No Longer Human

In honor of the 100th birthday of Osamu Dazai Usamaru Furuya retells Dazais most important work No Longer Human in modern day Tokyo where modern vices can bring ruin to the self-loathing.Furuyas adaptation of No Longer Human takes place nearly seventy years after Dazais original. Set in modern day Tokyo Dazais tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japans far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts referred to in the novel as "memorandums " which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties. The comic is narrated by the artist Furuya himself making appearances at the start of each volume. In many ways it could be said that Furuya has traveled a path that may be similar to Daza