When Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide, Osamu Dazai almost gave up writing. Since the father of the Japanese story – or mother, as they would say today – had died, Dazai felt that the chain had to be broken. But he continued, reaching his last completed novel, I Was No Longer a Man (translated by Stelios Papalexandropoulos, published by Gutenberg, 2022). It was published in three parts in a magazine the summer he committed suicide. Just like his idol.

A curious thing happens to Dazai: the further he goes to hell, the more he degenerates. It evaporates. The more he visits all the stages of impoverishment (the course from abstinence, to alcohol, to morphine), the more casually he loses his fat, his skin. He flakes off. He becomes a bone roaming around Tokyo. More human than ever. Tokyo is hell, and the correct title of the novel would be: “I was already a man.”

Life has three stages. Childhood, youth, adulthood. There is no more. Then everything repeats itself and Dazai can’t stand it. It’s like he’s circling around the tree until he falls to the ground in a daze. It revolves around the same theme as the narrators in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which is based on two Akutagawa stories. History repeats itself in variations through a series of different accounts. Except that Dazai seems to be witnessing to himself. For your lost life. For his fall. For his downfall. But this is not true. And nothing is a lie.

“All writers are bums.” And if not all, then at least those of us who really need it.

Dazai was the son of a wealthy family, a shy boy who freed himself from drinking and literature. He spent his youth spending his money on clothes, alcohol, books, and brothels. He became a Marxist. He was married twice. He was romantically unstable. He was accused of the suicide of his beloved, and as a result he became a morphomaniac. He was not yet thirty-nine. All of the above is reflected in the 150 pages of the book. It can be conditionally attributed to autobiographical writers. Or in the literary genre that dominates this era and is a sign of our time: auto prose. A species that comes from a reservoir of selfishness and fear. Except that “I was no longer human” is a written reactionary. This is anti-fiction. Because the more autobiographical it becomes, the more disciplined it descends into fiction. Vice versa. In the same time.

Dazai interprets society as a collection of bacteria. One infects the other. The infection spreads through anxiety, fear of death, disbelief, misunderstanding. As he tries to gather his main ingredients, as if he were trying to scratch his bottom with a pencil, he sinks and gets dirty in equal measure. He lends himself to her schedule. And, being an outcast, immoral, crazy, he eventually turns into a man. Because, paraphrasing his phrase, as soon as he stops thinking, he will understand. So this novel that seems to come from our most hidden side, dark but bloody, reminds us that society is a virus. Like language, writing: “Something mysterious exists at the bottom of human society.”

It is no coincidence that the book won a huge readership and still remains one of the best-selling novels in Japan, where it was already loved from the very beginning. He got fans, he influenced people. It became a movie, a manga, an anime. This book is like a parasite. In fact, in our country, with its capricious literary production, the inexplicable happened. This year, within a few months, Dazai’s masterpiece, until recently unknown to the Greek public, has been translated three times and published by the same number of publishers. As if an old frozen virus, well guarded since 1948, was released into the atmosphere and decided to conquer us. Even Patti Smith was possessed by Dazai’s spirit. In 1983, after the birth of her son, she immersed herself in Japanese literature. He converted a small closet next to his bedroom into a sanctuary for writing and reading. In those years when she left the music scene to devote herself to her family, Dazai and Akutagawa gave her inner cohesion, courage. Courage bestowed by ghosts: “Akutagawa, cursed by nature, and Dazai, who cursed himself.”

One night he dreamed of two Japanese men. “Don’t waste your time on us,” Dazai and Akutagawa said in unison, “we’re just two bums.” “All writers are bums,” Patty muttered in her sleep. And if not all, then at least those of us who really need it.