Why is this book so popular in Japan? It's the second highest selling novel of all time there

Why is this book so popular in Japan? It's the second highest selling novel of all time there.

It's nothing special.

Yes, you know better than all those critics and readers user, you are so special, you have cracked the code and figured out that this book is nothing special. I congratulate you on your astonishing and revolutionary opinion.

What is your opinion of it?

>It's nothing special.
It is relatively simple, but highly enjoyable work. Ofcourse it'll be super popular. Kind of like Stranger but less pretentious.

I don't see how that's relevant.

you know what else is nothing special? your neet diary desu~

>Why is this book so popular in Japan?

Gee, I don't know because it was written by a preeminent Japanese author about a Japanese guy and it takes place in Japan and deals with the idea of being unable to reveal your true self to others while instead putting up a facade which is a reality of the Japanese ethos and is infused with tropes (like love-suicides) which are common and have been admired for centuries within the Japanese canon?


Might be why it's popular in Japan m8.

love it

What is it with Americans and cowboys?

Is it the chaps?

It's the chaps, isn't it?

>the stranger
>pretentious

Because people identify with it. Japanese social life seem work on a success-or-perish level, those who don't become alienated since they don't form part of the world in which they live, but those who do success often do at the expense of giving up most of they would like to do in life, because of this they mail feel they are not true to their own nature and thus become strangers to themselves.
Maybe most people in success-or-perish society become alienated, either to society or to themselves, thus becoming no longer human.

I never claimed to know better than anyone, just offered my opinion and would like to know other's opinions on it to evaluate against my own.

If you have nothing productive to add other than snarkiness maybe you shouldn't have commented in the first place.

Its the lack of grammar

Because you have so much to add to this board with your retarded question that offers no insight at all except into your limited brain capacity :^)

Because it's Japan: The Book. I can imagine it's extremely relatable to your average nip.

I just bought the book and on the 2nd chapter / 2nd notebook. Not really finding it to be that interesting for me.. I also bought his other book The Setting Sun and was gonna read it after this but not sure if I want to if No Longer Human doesn't start hitting me in the feels or something.

pic related

It's only popular amongst edgelords and teens in Japan. Dazai doesn't have any literary merit except for historical purposes.

I found only midway through the last notebook did it become interesting and that's very close to the end.

Maybe Japanese people feel like they are "No Longer Human." I don't know, haven't read the book.

For the same reason cheap cynicism is popular anywhere.

It's a shittier Haruki Murakami book. It's like South of the Border, West of the Sun, but less well-written.

I wonder what expensive cynicism is like. Au Rebours?

You can start with Joyce if you want to see expensive cynicism.

No thanks, I'd rather understand what I'm reading.

setting sun is a superior work

it's also possible (or likely) that the japanese value a different aesthetic sensibility than the average westerner Veeky Forums poster

>japanese value a different aesthetic sensibility
Like everyhing else in that era, it was imported from France. If you want to read assfucker Verlaine tier sublime poetic symbolism, You should go down with the original stuff.

>I didn't read the introduction