History Literature / NoLongerHuman

* AddledAddict: Yozo becomes an alcoholic and a heavy morphine user toward the end of the story to self-medicate his anxiety problems, which takes a serious toll on his health and results in his confinement to a mental hospital.
* TheAlcoholic: Yozo, later in life.

* AddledAddict: Yozo becomes a heavy morphine user toward the end of the story, which takes a serious toll on his health and results in his confinement to a mental hospital.

%%* LackOfEmpathy: Yozo's biggest problem.

* ImpliedRape : Heavily implied that Yozo’s family maids sexually harassed him.

* PoisonousFriend: Horiki, who also has a convenient habit of showing up just as Yōzō is about to recover from whatever ails him.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Yozo is clearly mentally unwell, but it's hard to pin down exactly what's wrong with him. His psychology contains elements of depression, dissociation, anxiety and autism, along with stranger things, such as his claim that he has never experienced the physical sensation of hunger.

** Amusingly, Junji Ito's adaptation outright has an author avatar...for Dazai, who comments that Yozo's life is similar to his, and writes a book called ''No Longer Human'' based on Yozo.

* DownerEnding: Despite all of his suicide attempts, Yozo ultimately survives. However, he is no happier than before, and lives a lonely existence, completely estranged from humanity, after his release from a mental hospital. Despite still being young, he looks much older due to the toll taken by all his stress and suffering. He describes himself as "disqualified from being human." The manga is worse, with [[spoiler:Yōzō trapped in an abusive marriage, with a son implied to be the reincarnation of the boy from middle school that haunts him, looking like he's 90, and being functionally braindead at the mere age of 39]].

[[quoteright:246:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nolongerhuman.jpg]]

* AuthorAvatar: The narrator, Oba Yozo, is essentially a stand-in for Dazai himself, with many elements of his life such as his suicide attempts, tumultuous relationships and drug addictions paralleled in the novel.

* ByronicHero

* HumansAreBastards: Yozo believes it, and the book doesn't do much to suggest that he's at all wrong.
* LackOfEmpathy: Yozo's biggest problem.

* ChickMagnet: In the manga, Yozo draws female attention like moths to a light, which is attributed to a combination of good looks and a certain kind of melancholy.

* SpookyPainting: Yozo becomes enamored with the eerie paintings of artist Amedeo Modigliani, feeling that they communicate the underlying evil of humanity by portraying ordinary people with distorted proportions. As a result he takes up painting himself in order to express his true thoughts on people, and paints a self-portrait so hideous he refuses to show it to anyone except Takeichi, whose approval of Modigliani's work was what inspired him. Takeichi tells him he will be a great artist someday.

** Amusingly, Junji Ito's adaptation outright has an author avatar...for Dazai, who comments that Yozo's life is similar to his, and writes a book called No Longer Human based on Yozo.

* DownerEnding: Despite all of his suicide attempts, Yozo ultimately survives. However, he is no happier than before, and lives a lonely existence, completely estranged from humanity, after his release from a mental hospital. Despite still being young, he looks much older due to the toll taken by all his stress and suffering. He describes himself as "disqualified from being human." The manga is worse, with [[spoiler:Yōzō trapped in an abusive marriage, with a son implied to be the reincarnation of the boy from middle school that haunts him, looks 90, and is functionally braindead at the mere age of 39]].

** In the manga, [[spoiler:the author Yozo meets in the asylum]] is so distraught at seeing [[spoiler:Yozo in his horrific state at the very end]] that he loses all the hope for life that he had gained and drowns himself with his lover.

* RapeAsDrama: Yozo himself is molested as a child by servants in his household, which greatly affects him. Near the end of the book, he sees his wife Yoshiko being sexually assaulted, which causes a major rift in their previously (by Yozo's standards) healthy relationship and encourages his descent into morphine addiction.

* DrivenToSuicide: Yozo attempts suicide multiple times throughout the book, but fails each time. In one case, his suicide partner is not so lucky.

* WideEyedIdealist: Yozo's wife Yoshiko is so idealistic she even seems to truly believe Yozo needs morphine as a beneficial medicine even after he's hospitalized for his addiction to it. She also stays devoted to him long after he stops caring about her.

* {{Bookends}}: He notes that when he was young, he was violated by servants; in this case, sexually. Near the end of the book, he notes that he was being violated by a servant again; this time, he was talking about how his caretaker is giving him laxatives.