11:59 PM
I finished the book No Longer Human today by Osamu Dazai, one of the most famous Japanese writers of all time. I'm not sure what to take from this novel. The story was mainly about a guy who has it all, he came from wealth, he came from political power, he came from a large and caring family, he got the top marks in his school without trying, and he gets the attention of all the girls easily too. He also has art skills and social skills, literally everyone he encounters likes him and he's popular with all his classmates, teachers, and every stranger he encounters. Somehow, with all of this being given to him, he lives one of the worst and most miserable lives imaginable.
You're supposed to feel pity for the main character, Yozo Oba, but after assessing his situation and all he has, it's hard to feel any pity for him at all. It's funny that he will drink himself to near death and be completely broke, and a random woman will come around and invite him over, and she then falls in love and provides for him everything. This happens so many times in the novel. At some point in the novel too, he attempts double suicide with a lover, they both take pills, but he ends up killing her by pushing her off a ledge into the waters below. He's brought into interrogation for questioning, and he's absolved of everything.
Since this was a significant drawback in his life, someone, a guy this time nicknamed Flatfish, adopts him and basically cares for him. He provides him with food, shelter, and he doesn't have to do anything. At some point he meets a pharmacist woman and she gives him some drugs to take as an alternative to drinking, because he gets drunk so often, and he becomes addicted these new drugs instead. The drugs turn out to be opium. It seems like she just has an unlimited supply of these, as he comes by her place every day to pick up these opium drugs, for free, because she says he can pay her off at anytime, but he never does, throughout the whole story.
The end is also ridiculous. He gets put into a mental asylum after getting his wife to commit suicide, and after accidentally killing that pharmacist and her family, and burning her house down. This might just be Junji Ito's interpretation, because I checked online just to make sure, but in the version I'm reading, he meets the author of the story in the mental asylum, Osamu Dazai, perhaps author put himself in the story, or maybe in Junji Ito's version he does, and they become best friends.
After staying in the mental asylum for a while, his brother visits him, and tells him that everything will be provided for him if he moves to the countryside. For some reason, his cousin who he had a kid with early in the story, was also at the mental asylum, so he tells his brother he would as long he could provide for her and their kid too, this could just be Junji Ito's interpretation of it though. Anyway, his brother agreed, and then he moves to the countryside with his family where they live out the rest of their lives.
It's seriously a ridiculous story. I didn't really sum up the whole thing, just parts of it. If I were to sum up the whole story, it would involve several women who took him in and allowed him to live with her. Some of these women were already married too, but the husband wasn't there, or they had kids but were single, and he just lives with them for a while. The story involves several suicides of women killing themselves for him, there is even a murder or two of women killing each other for him. And yet this guy is the victim?
I write as if he has everything, because he does. Everything is just provided for him. The way the story is told though, he always speaks and narrates his story as if he were struggling and having a hard time in life. It's why he drinks so often, it's why he smokes. It's why he tries to commit suicide a few times. The people in his life who died because of him, haunt him every now and then, or he imagines them haunting him every now and then, which is how ghosts are involved.
The story is kind of ridiculous. This is supposed to be a Japanese classic, one of the best works of Japanese literature of all time. The author is renowned, the most famous and most successful Japanese author of his time period. The author committed suicide a week after publishing the novel, or that's what I originally heard, the truth turns out to be that the author committed suicide first, and then the novel was published a month after his death. This work is supposed to be his masterpiece, that's even what the Wikipedia page says, but it wasn't good at all to me.
I very much respect the Japanese and their creations. They make some of the best creations in the world. From games, electronics, artwork, music, stories, food, culture, it seems like everything they produce is of high quality. I would say that your average Japanese citizen, on average, is someone of high skill, education, imagination, and caliber. They have affected culture worldwide, their video game characters like Mario, Sonic, Pokemon, Zelda, have infected the world. Their anime characters too, like Goku, Naruto, Luffy, so many, have infected the world too. Their cars are everywhere, most cars in the world are either Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mazda, Nissan, Acura, Lexus, or etc. Their electronics are everywhere, Sony, Panasonic, Casio, Nikon, Canon.
They are only a small island of 120 million people. The Philippines has roughly as many, the same with Vietnam, and combined their influence isn't close to Japan's. They definitely put their neighbors the Koreans and Chinese to shame, who are supposedly similar or higher in IQ. I think Japan has a bigger influence on the world than China, even with a far smaller population, less than a tenth of its population. The Japanese are poorer on average than Americans though, significantly poorer, even though in my opinion, the Japanese produce more and better.
The Japanese have one of the lowest rates of obesity in the world. They also do have the highest stomach cancer rate in the world, due to their eating of uncooked fish (for ethical reasons I don't recommend eating any flesh at all, cooked or uncooked). They have one of the lowest homeless populations rates in the world, with less than 5000 people in the entire country being homeless, compared to the U.S., where there's more than 1 million homeless. They also do have one of the hardest working and most organized cultures and society in the world too.
They have a tradition of working for one company for their entire life. Whoever you are employed by after graduating, is basically who you will be with for life. Seniority rules above all in the work culture too, meaning you get advancements and raises through seniority and sticking with the company longer, not merit or favoritism. There's also the unspoken rule of having to wait until your seniors leave before you do, this means if your manager is still there, you can't leave until they do, even if that means staying until 11 PM.
The reason why most Japanese anime and so on is about high school aged students, is because that's the last time they are free. After that, it's employment time and they are now working for life. They dislike taking vacation days, and are ashamed when they do. Death from working happens very frequently there, that they have a word for it, called Karoshi.
I'd go on with my train of thought, I could keep typing for many paragraphs longer, but I am very sleepy. I did all of my workouts again today, 4 sets of my workouts, and I did all my brain training again. I cleaned the kitchen, and I got some work done. I didn't sweep though. Overall, I thought today was another good day.
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