cereal and choccy milk!?

Since I'm getting back on the modern literature grind, I suppose the most natural course of action is to read Ningen Shikkaku. (I don't usually do this, I'm going to refer to this title with the romaji name since there are multiple translations. This might become a custom for my future modern lit posts, though.)

I say "back on," because this isn't my first time in this side of town. For a period in middle school, I became very interested in Japanese classics, and during our trip to Japan I bought「斜陽」(Shayō / The Setting Sun) by Dazai and「羅生門・鼻」(Rashōmon, Hana / The Nose) by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. I had originally only gotten them as a sort of supplementary material for Bungo Stray Dogs, but boy, was I hooked by Shayō! Not that the Akutagawa works were bad in any way, of course; it was probably just too challenging for younger me. Anyways, I had become very invested in Shayō. I wrote many notes on stickies that I still keep in my copy, and even made my summer book report and poster assignment for Japanese School about it.

However, we became unable to return to Japan for several years due to the pandemic, and while I did have the interest I lacked resources so I didn't buy any books after that. It's also hard to find books like those at a good reading level! That blank shifted my autistic attention elsewhere, so for the most part my classics streak had died down.

Fast-forward to earlier this year; I came across the Kajii Motojirō short story「桜の樹の下には」(Sakura no Ki no Shita niwa / Under the Cherry Trees)—I will talk more about it at a later opportunity—which led to my discovery of the amazing Aozora Bunko that reignited my interest in classics. Aozora Bunko is a site that collects Japanese literature whose copyrights have expired and makes them accessible to everyone online. It's almost a crime that I didn't know of this site several years earlier! The collection is so vast and full of works that I was eyeing for a while but was too intimidated to purchase or read, such as Dogura Magura, Wagahai wa Neko de Aru (I am a Cat), and this Ningen Shikkaku, and even works that I didn't even know I had wanted to read. And here I am, reading Dazai and writing about it again.

(I will be using Keene's translation for the English portions here, since it's more readily available to me.)

I had nearly forgotten how much I love the style of Dazai's writing. This is somewhat due to the time period in general; it's different from nearly any writing you'd see today—of course, this is from 1948 (happy 75 years!). It has a retro feel to the way kanji and katakana are used/spelled, especially. Comma usage is also much more frequent. Dazai's style, at least in what I've read from him so far, really puts these commas to use.

The entire highlighted portion in this paragraph is functionally a single run-on sentence. This is only a few pages into the book, and it already clearly shows how unstable Yōzō is, his rambles emanating absolute confusion and fear towards humanity.

However, at the same time, it's not neccesarily as hard to read as English classics with similarly long sentences. I believe this is part of the beauty of both Japanese as a language and Dazai's style of writing it. Because Japanese, especially that of this time, doesn't have as clear-cut grammatical rules about commas as English (well, as the child of a grammar teacher, I do know a disproportionate amount about English grammar via my mother's ranting). Aside from a few rules for things like lists and suggestions to prevent confusion about adjectives, comma placement is mostly based on the rhythm of the sentence. Especially in works like these, it provides a distinct cadence; I could even call it poetry.

These kinds of rambles found in Dazai literature are my absolute favorite. While it does give a deep sense of dread, it's strangely comforting at the same time, and this juxtaposition is just fantastic for me.

I found Yōzō to be much more relatable—or maybe "understandable"—than I had initially expected. I recall having read just the prologue somewhere at least a few years ago; I expected him to be a sort of strange person whose antics the reader would observe with curiosity. God, was I wrong!

His remark about hunger was what stood out to me the most:

I completely understand this! Not to the extent of never having experienced hunger, but I have a very hard time recognizing when I'm hungry. I can never notice when I should eat until my stomach is physically growling, and sometimes even then I wouldn't feel—as in sense in my mind alone—"hungry." During those days, I wouldn't recognize the state of my body until I've forced myself to make or buy a meal (because I should put something in my body before my 1PM class, or something like that) and there is food sitting right in front of me. During periods of depression, this was much worse for obvious reasons. I've learned relatively recently that this reduced (in Yōzō's case, complete lack of) ability to percieve hunger is one of the lesser known characterists of autism.

This portion also rang a bell. I think this one's a bit more obvious so I won't explain much. In short, this sense of alienation from every other "regular" person—as if either everyone else is crazy and you're the only sane person, or you're the insane one—is a familiar feeling to many autistics, often in those who haven't yet realized that they might be autistic. Again, this is also coming from my own experience.

Will I end up keeping track of every autistic moment in this book? Who knows.... —Just kidding! There are way too many. I'm getting a feeling that every single sentence in the book will be very, very autistic.

It took me by shock how suddenly and bluntly the abuse was stated. I can't comment on this portion as much as I'd like; I think I lack the knowledge and vocabulary on the matter to properly convey my thoughts and feelings.

I think that Yōzō's reaction is something that is very much real—not telling anyone because he feels like it would be futile, and that people of higher power will simply tidy it up in a way that's convenient for themselves. I have a personal connection to this feeling (though, god, not anything as horrible as this!), and so it was very vivid and sort of alarming for me. The matter-of-factness of his writing cuts deep into the reader where it hurts and leaves an impact. Yōzō doesn't even consider telling anyone, because he had just accepted as fact that he wouldn't be able to get any help; it's incredibly saddening.

On a much more lighthearted note: I have the sense of humor of a child, so I giggled at the fact that I came across the word おチンポ (peepee). I really didn't expect that.

I found out, as I was preparing to write this entry, that the title I knew as No Longer Human (by Donald Keene) had a re-translation: A Shameful Life (by Mark Gibeau). I read about some of the differences in this Ganriki article, and it looks like pretty interesting stuff!

I and many other Japanese people have felt it a bit strange that 人間失格 Ningen Shikkaku, literally "failure to qualify as a human," would be translated to "No Longer Human," so this was a bit refreshing for me. It looks like A Shameful Life also more closely matches my style of translation, which aims to be faithful to the writer's original style and format as much as possible (which is probably also due to our time periods). (This reminds me of the 図書 magazine article「君子、危うきに近寄らず」by Kameyama Ikuo. It's not available anywhere online, and it's only in Japanese, but it has some interesting commentary about Kameyama's Russian translation work.)

I'm considering comparing the two English versions sometime after I finish this read-through. It most likely won't be very thorough, but I'm very curious what differences in style the new version has. It's not at all often that I get to look at multiple same-language published translations of the same book from different times, so it may be a good learning opportunity for me as a translator.

Great, great thanks to Keene and Gibeau (beforehand) for their work. I know I haven't said many positive things about Keene's, but I'm sure I'll find very good things in both! And of course, Keene's contribution to the fame of this novel in the West is immesurable regardless of my opinions on his style.