No Longer Human

The original Japanese title of No Longer Human, Ningen Shikkaku, or Disqualified From Being Human, is also one of its themes. From the very beginning, Yozo is depicted as an “effigy” of a person—that, even to look at him, “Something ineffable makes the beholder shudder in distaste” (17). His childhood grin is “nothing more than a puckering of ugly wrinkles,” and he is described by the unnamed narrator as a “‘wizened, hideous little boy’” (14). His college photograph produces “a sensation of complete artificiality. Pretense, insincerity, fatuousness—none of these words quite covers it” (15). In short, Yozo is lacking something fundamental that makes one a human being; he has been disqualified from the category from the start. However, the narrator’s observations are an outlier: The three photographs, along with Yozo’s grotesque self-portraits, are the only evidence of what lies beneath his façade. Yozo believes his façade, his “human disguise,” is complete enough to endear those around him. The madame of a bar that he frequented describes him as “‘a good boy, an angel’” (177). The discrepancies between his inner self and his outer presentation suggests that it is an internal condition that prevents him from being human: Loss of agency due to childhood trauma causes Yozo to regard himself as something less than human.