"My life has been filled with shame."
"I cannot imagine what it must be like to live as a human being."
Yozo Oba suffers from intense anxiety and feels disconnected from the happiness that others seem to experience. He leads a dissolute life and resorts to wearing a mask to hide his spiraling descent towards death.
Junji Ito's manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai's famed autobiographical Japanese literature is a perfect illustration of Yozo's fragile mental state. The visuals in the manga are both delicate and grotesque, capturing the very essence of Yozo's mind. Ito's work serves as a testament to the terror that resides in the human psyche.
