An Ordinary Man

An Ordinary Man
(style of Osamu Dazai)

Ah, the world is truly without salvation. The weak are trampled, the strong swagger. Witnessing this, my heart often feels as though it will burn with rage. No, not just burn—at times it feels as if my entire body is consumed by fire. And yet, you see, when one surveys the whole, the earth appears, strangely enough, to be constructed with a kind of reason. Creatures devour one another, kill, and vanish. And yet, inexplicably, the whole continues to turn, as if some invisible conductor were directing a vast orchestra.

Do you understand, dear readers? Faced with such absurd spectacles, I cannot help but rage. That is only natural, for I am a heretic of sorts. The masses neither comprehend my fury nor are capable of doing so. No, to hope for such understanding is nothing but a dream upon a dream. And so I am left to bury my anger deep within my chest, and to smile quietly. To smile, nothing more. Pitiful, unbearably pitiful.

It seems being a heretic is a kind of destiny. Ōshio Heihachirō, Sakamoto Ryōma, Martin Luther King… each appeared in the fissures of their age, each burned away his life, and each perished. A hero is loneliness itself, a series of death-throes, a being endlessly showered with cold, scornful eyes. Popular support? Nothing but a shadow, an illusion. There may be fervent sympathizers, yes, but they whisper only in the dark, never emerging into the light. Half-hearted heretics become all the more perfect targets for ridicule. Particularly so in Japan. The hero’s path is nothing but a cold solitude, a string of death-throes.

Anticipating this, I lowered my flag. Ah, readers, surely you will laugh here. Pathetic, utterly pathetic. Even while carrying the impulse to resist with my whole being, in the decisive moment I let it go. A true hero would never do such a thing; he would scatter in blood, unyielding. But I, I lower my flag. What cowardice! What a wretched spectacle! Yet, to protect those closest to me, there is no other way. Laugh, readers, laugh at me.

Ah, still I laugh. I laugh as I live on. Bereft of a hero’s thunder, but clutching laughter and the tiny joys of daily life—that, too, is a kind of heretic’s way of living. The rage does not vanish. The loneliness remains. Yet, by lowering my flag, I survived. Pitiful, ironic, but still—I remain here.

The world will never understand me. The cold eyes will not relent. And still, it does not matter. For within me, there burns a small light of the soul. To bear my fate, to live as a heretic, to lower my flag and yet to laugh—this, I tell myself, is enough. Laugh, dear readers. Laugh at the pitiful heretic’s meager triumph.