I’ve quit reading this book more times than I remember. As a person who has a lot of self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, it felt too much. I finally finished reading this book today, and I feel numb. I feel sick.
I felt disgust, and hatred towards the protagonist, felt feverish at times, and (much to my horror) I could also empathize, sympathize, relate, and understand why he was doing what he was doing. Part two of the third notebook, the part >!where he watched his wife get raped !<made my blood boil, left me screaming, crying internally.
The fact that the author killed himself after writing this makes me believe that this was no work of fiction, which makes it even more terrifying for me. This is one of my favorite books I’m never reading again.
English is not my first language, so forgive my mistakes.,
by prof_tamura
3 Comments
I read Junji Ito’s adaptation, and while it also made me feel a lot of bad things, I really appreciate having read it.
I’m neurodivergent, and I think it’s pretty clear that the main character is too. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it’s in the fact that he’s so disconnected from society and that he imagines people very differently than they imagine themselves. I think it’s really scary that simply growing up in imperial Japan can make someone like me into such a wretch.
Thanks to the fact that he hid his disconnection from his parents (who probably wouldn’t have understood anyway), he never learned how to really empathise. And since he never shares his thoughts, he comes up with some jokeresque philosophy.
Tl;Dr I find this book really horrifying because I can see a version of myself that became like him, and I hate him.
I was thinking of reading this but going on for your condition I have to reconsider that decision of mine
Agreed. This book is intense, and I love it and hate it.
In the self-loathing, in the sense of seclusion from society, from others, and in the cowadice that the narrator continuously display, there’s poignant relatability.
I would recommend you to read his other works as well. Dazai had a way of describing people that comes off to me as deeply intimate but also viciously cruel. It’s the facet of a person that no one wants to accept but everyone sees in others.
I read this in my late teens when I had few regrets, but now that I am older, I don’t think I would be able to finish it.