winglessnabi-deactivated2020122 asked:
Every time I read No Longer Human I wish even more that Horiki would die a horrible, agonizing, lonely death and then rot in hell for all eternity.
I am unaware of any specific person in Dazai-sensei’s life who he would have based the Horiki on. Donald Keene in Dawn to the West states that No Longer Human “is not factual, and Dazai undoubtedly exaggerated his misfortunes, not in order to make the reader feel sympathy (in the manner of an ‘I novel’), but to make the hero seem even more contemptible,” so I don’t think there needed to be a specific person for Dazai to have in mind when writing Horiki. The character seems to be based on a certain type of person that most likely was very impactful in a very negative way to Dazai’s life. He could also be basing Horiki on himself to some extent.
In No Longer Human, Dazai describes Horiki as follows:
…For the first time in my life I had met a genuine city good-for-nothing. No less than myself, though in a different way, [Horiki] was entirely removed from the activities of the human beings of the world. We were of one species if only in that we were both disoriented. At the same time there was a basic difference in us: he operated without being conscious of his farcicality or, for that matter, without giving any recognition to the misery of that farcicality.
I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose. At times I even felt ashamed of our friendship. But in the end, as the result of going out with him, even Horiki proved too strong for me.
Dazai moved from northern Japan to Tokyo for college and in order to become an author, but in Tokyo his accent and mannerisms made him stand out. He was basically the Japanese equivalent of a hick. My first theory is that Horiki is based on the people in Tokyo who realized he didn’t know about big city life and, under the guise of taking him under their wing, used him and dragged him around with them for fun. But in a way Dazai probably used those types of people as well in order to find some place to belong and some guidance and experience in surviving in Tokyo. To put it another way, Horiki represents the people who seem confident, smart, and friendly but the more you get to know them the more you realize they don’t care about anyone else, will twist words and ideas to fit what they want, and only have shallow relationships with others so they can get what they want from them without having to give anything in return.
My other theory is that Horiki represents a side of Dazai’s own personality. Dazai bases a lot of characters off of his own experiences, personality traits, and ideas of himself. Phyllis I. Lyons stated in The Saga of Dazai Osamu that “Dazai created a unified, many-chaptered narrative out of the confused and accidental events of his life and presented it as the life struggles of a strongly engaging character we can call “Osamu,” as he himself did in some stories. It is Osamu, the literary incarnation of the writer, that captivates the reader as Dazai himself professes to be captivated; and Dazai’s sympathy and fascination (and pity) communicate the vitality of Osamu’s existence to the reader.” When reading “A New Hamlet” it seemed like every character at one point or another represented “Dazai” or “Osamu.” In The Setting Sun it is very apparent that Dazai based the character Mr. Uehara off of himself, but it is also apparent that Naoji is also very much like Dazai-sensei. So that is why I do not think it would be odd if Dazai created Horiki as an extension of himself. Horiki and Yozo are very similar, but while Yozo is aware that he is acting the part of the clown in order to survive in society Horiki seems to be playing that part naturally without even being aware that he is doing it. I would guess that Yozo represents more of the “Tsushima Shuuji” (Dazai’s real name) side of Dazai that is still the nervous writer from a small town and Horiki represents the author Dazai from Tokyo after he had become accustomed to doing whatever it took to survive (borrowing money and using friends included).
But of course all of this is my own conjectures, so take what you want from it. And I am sure that no matter how many times I read No Longer Human I will always loath Horiki.
