Ningen Shikkaku

Set in modern day Tokyo, Dazai's tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japan's far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts, referred to in the novel as "memorandums," which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties. (Source: Kodansha USA) Adaptation of the original work of Dazai Osamu.

Manga based on the original classic novel by Dazai Osamu. Illustrated by Yasunori Ninose, it depicts human beings' negative emotion and sexual intercourse as tentacles, which have enthralled Ninose since he was five years old.

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 Itou. 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 Itou, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche. (Source: VIZ Media)