(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.
