No Longer Human (Junji Ito) (Hardcover)

(W) Junji Ito, Osamu Dazai (A/CA) Junji Ito. Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Plagued by a maddening anxiety* the terrible disconnect between his own concept of happiness and the joy of the rest of the world* Yozo Oba plays the clown in his dissolute life* holding up a mask for those around him as he spirals ever downward* locked arm-in-arm with death. Osamu Dazai's immortal and supposedly autobiographical work of Japanese literature* is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Ito. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo's mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Ito* proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche. For mature audiences.