I’m reviewing this for the first time after a reread that solidified it as a favourite. The first time I read this, my focus went to the human relationships within these pages and Benny (the protagonist) and Annabelle’s (his mum’s) emotional journeys. During my second read, I could focus more on the themes of the book that I only engaged with superficially during my first read. The heart of this book is in its characters, but a lot of its messages are in the circumstances that surround them.

It was a lucky coincidence that I happened to be reading Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin at the same time as this. This book almost feels like a fictionalised version of the main arguments of Kropotkin’s work when it comes to human nature and the inadequacy of the state as a means to satisfy human needs (but The Book of Form and Emptiness goes much farther than Mutual Aid in its critique of our idea of progress—more on this in the next paragraph). Through the characters’ hardships, we see the care institutions of the state fail again and again. To give an example, the state is supposed to step in and help Benny and his mum deal with the hardest moment of their lives: the sudden death of Kenji, who was Benny’s dad and Annabelle’s husband. They don’t have a support network, they are alone in the world, and the state’s interventions only worsen their situation at every turn.

This book also questions our notion of progress: we equal modernity with positive development; advances in technology with quality of life improvements; the modern nation state with the peak of civilisation. Yet this novel disregards this framework and asks us: what does progress mean? Who gets to define it? Who benefits from it? What happens to people who get left behind? What are we progressing towards, and is it a worthy goal? Who do our institutions serve? And, at the end of the day, does the help we need come from our institutions, or from the people around us who care?

I also happened to reread Ending the Pursuit of Happiness by Barry Magrid earlier this year, another one of my favourites, which deals with Japanese zen philosophy and how it has been grossly misunderstood and co-opted by self-help rhetoric. What is zen? Zen is about, among many other things, accepting life as it is in all its perfection and wholeness, yet understanding at the same time that is is also ever-changing and can be influenced (and improved) by our actions. Yet zen is not about self-improvement: rather, it directly challenges the notion of self-improvement and tells us that we (and the world we live in) are already perfect as we are. The Book of Form and Emptiness also deals extensively with Japanese zen, weaving it into its narrative through the character of Aikon and her book Tidy Magic (a clear reference to Marie Kondo), but also through the story and the predicaments its characters find themselves in.

This book also deals with neurodivergence and the difficulties that existing as a neurodivergent person in modern society entails. It questions our notions of sanity and insanity. It’s also a critique of materialism and consumerism and the circumstances that lead us to engage in them. It also plays with form and typography in fun and interesting ways. It’s so difficult to convey in just a few words everything that this book is and how much all of the main characters’ stories mean to me and how deeply touched I am by them.

This is a book about grief, about life, about modern Western society, about zen, friendship, love, anger, frustration, community, art, sadness… It’s one of those books that I feel were written for me specifically, and I’m sure I will be returning to it again and again in the future.

Let me end this review with a couple of quotes:

“Our beautiful blue planet is intricately alive. (…) Immersed in the miniscule details of daily living, we believe our lives to be separate, and our selves to be separate, too. But this is a grave delusion. The truth is that everything depends on everything else. A flower depends on the sun and the soil and the rain and the bee that pollinates it. It cannot survive apart from these things, and without them, the flower would die. Humans are the same. We need the sun and the soil and the rain and the plants we eat. We need our mother and father and all our ancestors stretching back into the past. We are a continuation of them and we would not be alive without them. And all of us—flower and bee, you and me—are tiny parts of the living body of the planet.” (pp. 492-493)

”Dreams are important, right? That's what I tell Benny. I tell him that his father and I had lots of dreams, and some of them never amounted to much, but the sweetest dream of all came true, and his name is Benny.” (p.544)

I’m afraid this is going to be a “hear me out” type of review, which probably means it’s also going to be a long one. In all honesty, I came into this novel expecting not to like it. I was prepared for a depressing, dry, “man wallowing in self-pity” type of novel and, although all of those expectations were partially correct, this book still ended up surprising me in a lot of ways.

I will start with a bit of context, because I believe that cultural context is always important when interpreting works of literature. Our interpretation of experiences and the frameworks through which we see life are contingent on our cultural context, and I think coming into this novel with some understanding of the context Dazai wrote it in is essential to understand it.

This novel is part of the “I-novel” (私小説) literary genre, a genre that can only be understood through Japanese history. In the “I-novel”, authors use fiction to talk about their own personal experiences in a confessional tone. Despite events being fictionalised, “I-novels” focus on authors’ real feelings and struggles, while also serving as a way to highlight specific aspects of society that the they want to grapple with. This genre has its origin in turbulent times in Japanese history: the forced opening of Japan’s borders, cultural Westernisation, militarisation and imperialism… In other words, it was a response to shifts in Japanese identity and rapid societal change that were mostly outside of the control of ordinary Japanese people.

In No Longer Human, Japan is going through one of those periods of rapid change that requires a rearticulation of Japanese identity. World War II has been lost, Japan’s heinous war crimes and savage imperialism have have been forcibly ended, the country is in shambles and can’t resist further Westernisation and US influence. Our protagonist, Yozo, is living in a society still ruled by strict expectations of conformity and obedience, but that is fracturing under pressure. Yozo only has this cultural language to express himself in, a language that doesn’t match who he really is and can’t quite convey the complexities and the depths of his lived experience. But still, he decides to sit down and try anyway, to write about all the pain he has both experienced and witnessed (rigid social expectations, dehumanisation, war) in a society that sees responding to that pain as a form of weakness and even madness.

At this point in the review, I have to be honest. I 100% think that Yozo, as he describes himself and his experiences in this novel, is autistic, and so I can’t help but relate to him on that level. His deep feelings of isolation, his problems with socialising, with being human, with just existing in a society that is actively hostile towards him… These are all feelings that are very familiar to me, and so I couldn’t help but empathise with Yozo. It’s not possible to grow up autistic in a context that lacks understanding of your neurotype, punishes autistic behavior, and is full of complex unspoken social rules, and not be traumatised by it. And Yozo is not only autistic and heavily masking, but he is also dealing with the trauma of being repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child. So, he doesn’t get a great start in life. And, with all that baggage and no help in understanding himself and his experiences from any lens other than that of guilt and shame, it all goes downhill from there for him.

Unfortunately, for someone who can relate to Yozo’s state of mind as he enters adolescence and then adulthood, his “downfall” is not surprising, nor did I find the decisions he makes shocking. I thankfully have managed to not fall into substance addiction by a combination of sheer luck and genetics, but the same can not be said for other neurodivergent people in my family. It’s a tale as old as time: display autistic traits → be rejected or harmed by others because of it → start masking and live in fear of being “found out”→ lose yourself + gain a depression and anxiety disorder in the process (yay!)→ fall into addiction to cope with both your feelings and the pressures of socialising and forcing yourself to live a neurotypical life. This is the path Yozo finds himself in very early in his life; a path that, with no understanding of why he doesn’t feel human, of why there’s this deep well of loneliness and anxiety inside him that he can’t seem to fill, he can’t escape.

This is a novel about trauma, addiction, self-destruction, fear, suffering, and the monsters we can become when we can’t find a way to stop the pain. It’s the story of someone who can’t accept the cruelty and the greyness of a world run by greed, competition and power, but who also has no framework to articulate those feelings, nor anyone else who seems to see how bleak of a world we have created for ourselves. Yozo lives in a society that, once it deems someone as “insane” and in need of psychological assistance, it also deems that person as no longer human. I thought all of those feelings, and the struggle of it all, were expressed very directly in this novel, with no sugar-coating. Yozo becomes a horrible person in a horrible society that has failed him from day one, and despite his many blatant flaws, I couldn’t help but feel for him.

Let me end this review by saying that this book won’t be for everyone. There’s some awful content in here, being inside Yozo’s mind is no fun, and he does also embody the deeply misogynistic and ableist ideology of his time. I could read this novel in the context it was written in and, also because of my own personal experiences, deeply relate to Yozo and find this account of his (i.e. Dazai’s) life valuable and touching. However, this is a very uncomfortable read at times, and so if you find the misogyny or the content to be too much, it’s perfectly fine to put this novel down and go read something else. You don’t have to suffer through it. My positive review is not an endorsement but rather a reflection of my own personal experience of this novel.

There are more aspects of this novel that I would like to discuss, but given that this review is already way too long, I think I’m going to let the book sit and come back to the forum with more thoughts once I’ve processed it all. Now I shall go pick up some lighter, happier reads to remind myself that there are also good things in life... And if you made it this far, thank you for reading my review to the end!

“The world that exists behind a story is never fully known, not even to the author. That is what I had in mind as I created this. I hope you have enjoyed reading this memento of a story that has ended.”

It’s unusual to start a review with a quote from the book’s acknowledgements, but I feel like this quote really captures the spirit of the novel. Strange Weather in Tokyo is a memory, a brief glimpse: we open a window into the characters’ lives, get an unfiltered look at their world and inner feelings, and then close that window again, gently. There is no big plot, no emotional catharsis or epiphanies: there is just life, as complex, subtle and unexplained as it actually is.

Our protagonist, Tsukiko, is lonely in every possible way. She is literally alone: she lives alone and spends her free time mostly alone. She is also emotionally alone: she does not have friends nor family whom she feels emotionally connected to. And, as a single Japanese woman in her thirties with no intention of marrying nor of developing her “wifey skills” (e.g. cooking), she is also alone in a social sense: she exists outside of social expectations and traditional narratives of what her life should look like.

Tsukiko is also very detached from her own emotions: she often knows how she’s feeling, but not why or what it means. Because we are inside her head, we feel all of her contained, confusing yet sincere emotions, and also follow her in rare moments of emotional clarity. I think this is what makes her such a compelling protagonist: she doesn’t try to hide her thoughts or feelings, not from the reader nor from herself, but she simply doesn’t know how to interpret them or act on them. This tension is what gives the story momentum.

This tension is also what opens up a space in Tsukiko's life for Sensei's presence. Her old school teacher, Sensei is now in his seventies and just as lonely as Tsukiko (literally, emotionally and socially), but much more experienced due to his age. Tsukiko and Sensei connect because they understand the kind of loneliness the other one is experiencing, and the fact that they are in such different life stages makes it so that they have nothing to hide from each other. What could they possibly have in common, other than their past teacher-student relationship? Why would Tsukiko care about a seventy-year-old man who isn’t related to her in any way?

In my opinion, it is this apparent lack of connection that makes it possible for Tsukiko and Sensei to connect: they don’t want anything from each other, they can hardly influence each other’s lives in ways that matter to the rest of society, and that gives them a special kind of freedom that is hard to find in Japanese society. Whether their connection is romantic, familial, platonic, or something else entirely, doesn’t really matter: this is simply a story about two people who, at a specific point in their lives, are able to give each other a kind of comfort and understanding they can’t get from anyone else.

I really loved this. The writing is seemingly simple yet packed with meaning, just like the story: nothing much really happens, yet the emotions and inner worlds of the characters are rich, layered and compelling. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes, and each chapter reads almost like a short story. The structure works perfectly with the story and mirrors Tsukiko’s flowing, uneven emotional world. I’m looking forward to picking this one out of my shelf here and there to briefly glimpse back into Tsukiko's life and reread my favourite chapters.

So, all of that being said, would I recommend this novel? Well, yes and no. Like I said at the start of this review, you won’t find much plot or big cathartic moments here: this is a very slow story focused on Tsukiko’s inner life and her relationship with Sensei, where often what is left unsaid is just as important (if not more) than what is explicitly stated on the page. In my opinion, this is Japanese literary fiction at its best, full of sincere emotions and subtle writing, but it definitely won’t be for everyone.