Why This Topic Landed in Japan

Overseas interest in Japanese literature is a subject that reliably travels, and this time it came with a number and a masthead: 75,000 copies, reported by the Guardian, with young readers arriving through TikTok reading circles and through the anime Bungo Stray Dogs before reaching the novel itself. That combination moved the discussion away from the usual pleasure at being noticed and toward the books themselves — which of them are being read, and why this author. The reading that British readers are meeting their own unease in Dazai's self-disgust also gave Japanese posters a way to talk about their own country. In Japan the story travelled with the line that British Gen Z had found "the only person who understands me." The second story travelled on a different mechanism. The praise was written as a comparison — no tattoos, nobody overweight, nobody with cosmetic surgery, unlike elsewhere — and a compliment shaped that way invites the reader to check it. Who posted it and how far it spread are not established.

Key Reaction Themes

  • Most of the Dazai posts were biography and reading lists — What he was like at home, the letter begging for the Akutagawa Prize, the fact that the place where he drowned himself is now a stop on a tourist route, and whether anything beyond No Longer Human is reaching British readers.
  • The next largest block read Britain into it — With the state of the country over there, a self-loathing narrator is bound to find sympathy; the two national temperaments may simply suit each other.
  • On the swimsuit post, the main response was a correction rather than agreement — Japanese women do have work done, just at a level that is hard to spot; go to Tokyo and it looks no different.
  • A smaller group took the compliment at face value — Things must be genuinely bad over there, and there is no need to spoil it for someone who was moved.
  • By volume, the largest strand on the swimsuit post was sexual commentary about the models — More than half of what was posted under that story was about the women's bodies rather than about the claim being made.

What Japanese Netizens Are Saying

No Longer Human passes 75,000 copies in Britain

The Guardian reports a revival of Osamu Dazai among younger British readers.

Sources: Yahoo! news, The Guardian, 2ch

Comments:

  • "With the state of the country over there... of course a self-loathing protagonist attracts sympathy."
  • "The national temperaments might just suit each other, lol."
  • "At home he was called a good-for-nothing who wouldn't finish university and wouldn't work, so it seems he wanted the Akutagawa Prize. That was the first Akutagawa Prize, right — Ishikawa Tatsuzo won it."
  • "A while back I also saw that Matsumoto Seicho was popular in Britain. Is Britain all right?"
  • "You won't understand it unless you read it in your teens. It isn't the sort of thing for middle-aged men and women to read and hold forth about."
  • "I wonder how he would have lived in an age like now, where outgoing influencer types are the ones who get praised."
  • "The place where he killed himself has become a tourist spot. Foreigners look at where Dazai drowned himself and then go to the Ghibli Museum."
  • "I wonder whether Schoolgirl and The Pandora's Box are being read. Unlike No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, those are proper coming-of-age literature, lol."
  • "Goodbye is the original harem story."
  • "I've led a life with far more shame in it than he did, and I get nothing for it." [Translator's note: a play on the opening line of No Longer Human, "Mine has been a life of much shame."]

A foreign man's praise for a swimsuit shoot

A post written as a comparison with women elsewhere spreads through the threads.

Comments:

  • "It's just that foreigners' modifications are slapdash. They do get work done."
  • "I think so too. Brown hair has dropped off a lot lately as well, and there are more women to my taste."
  • "Plenty of Japanese women do it, just at a level that's hard to spot. Sorry to disappoint!!"
  • "No need to say something tactless to someone who's moved by it."
  • "As if there are people like this out in the countryside lol" [Translator's note: the video was posted with the caption "this is what I like about the countryside."]
  • "To hell with diversity, long live homogeneity."
  • "It just means things must be pretty bad over there."
  • "They're there when they're there. Go to Tokyo and it's nothing but remodelled humans — even Bem would be startled." [Translator's note: Bem is the lead character of the 1968 anime Humanoid Monster Bem.]