Takeichi Reveals the Incident

Takeichi's exposure of Yozo's deliberate clowning during a physical training session is a pivotal moment in No Longer Human, shattering Yozo's carefully constructed facade and revealing his deep-seated terror of being seen as a fraud, a fear that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

The Exposure

During a physical training period at his high school by the sea, Yozo, in a premeditated act of clowning, deliberately missed the horizontal bar, sailing through the air to land with a thud on the sand. The class burst into laughter exactly as he had planned. But as he got to his feet with a rueful smile, the puniest boy in the class, Takeichi, crept up from behind and poked him in the back, murmuring, "You did it on purpose." This simple accusation from a boy Yozo had dismissed as a simpleton, whose scrofulous face and floppy jacket marked him as an outsider, struck Yozo like a bolt from the blue. He felt as if the world before him had burst into the raging flames of hell, and it was all he could do to suppress a wild shriek of terror.

Yozo's Reaction and the Fear of Exposure

The ensuing days were imprinted with Yozo's anxiety and dread. He continued his miserable clowning on the surface, but now painful sighs escaped his lips. He was consumed by the thought that Takeichi would see through every act and spread the word. His forehead broke out in a sweat, and he stared around him with the wild eyes of a madman. He brooded over desperate strategies: to keep a twenty-four-hour surveillance over Takeichi, to persuade him that his antics were genuine, to become his inseparable friend, or, failing that, to pray for his death. The one thing that never occurred to him was to kill Takeichi, as he had never once desired to kill anybody, thinking it might actually bring his adversary happiness.

The Attempted Reconciliation

In an effort to win over Takeichi, Yozo clothed his face in the gentle, beguiling smile of a false Christian. He strolled everywhere with him, his arm lightly around his scrawny shoulders, his head tilted affectionately. He invited him in honeyed, cajoling tones to come and play at his lodging house. One day after school, during a sudden downpour, Yozo grabbed Takeichi's hand and ran with him through the rain, lending him his umbrella. At his room, he examined Takeichi's horribly running ears and, simulating exaggerated concern, painstakingly swabbed them with cotton wool and alcohol while Takeichi lay with his head on Yozo's lap. Even Takeichi seemed unaware of the hypocrisy and scheming behind Yozo's actions, and instead offered a compliment: "I'll bet lots of women will fall for you!" This was a prophecy Yozo would later recognize as demoniacal, more horrible than Takeichi could have realized.

Consequences and Significance

This event was one of the two great disasters in Yozo's lifetime of acting, the other being the district attorney's quiet smile when he saw through Yozo's feigned coughing of blood. The exposure by Takeichi, a boy Yozo had considered beneath notice, was a profound shock that confirmed his deepest fear: that his entire persona was a fragile, transparent lie. It reinforced his conviction that he was fundamentally different from other human beings and that his clowning was a desperate, last quest for love. The incident also led to a crucial development: Takeichi's introduction of a van Gogh self-portrait, which he called a "picture of a ghost," opened a new path for Yozo. This encounter inspired Yozo to begin painting his own "ghost pictures"—self-portraits that revealed the harrowing reality he had so desperately hidden—and to secretly affirm this true self, even as he continued to hide it from the world. Takeichi's two prophecies—that Yozo would be "fallen for" and that he would become a great painter—would follow Yozo to Tokyo, marking the trajectory of his subsequent life.