While I'm Losing My Humanity

“… I was still nothing but a shameless, stupid ghost, a 'living corpse' who couldn't even manage to die.”

Osamu Dazai, one of the leading writers of twentieth century Japanese literature and famous for his extraordinary life, wrote in One of Japan's most read novels, While I Lose My Humanity, which he completed just before his suicide, the character of an other who is unable to integrate into society, makes a mess of everything, and is doomed to disappoint everyone around him. He tells his sad story.

In the novel, which has many parallels with Dazai's life, Oba Yozo, the son of an aristocratic family who has seen himself as a monument of failure since his childhood, tries to exist with the "clown" role he assumes both at home and at school. In her three-part memoir, which is a confession, she confesses her life full of "shame", full of alcoholism, geishas, and inconclusive suicides.

Losing My Humanity is the final chapter of Osamu Dazai's literary suicide letter, which spans many years.