The waterfall dream

The waterfall dream is a brief, recurring vision of happiness that Yozo, the protagonist of No Longer Human, conjures at a decisive moment in his life: the image of himself and Yoshiko, the young woman he decides to marry, riding bicycles together to see a waterfall framed in green leaves. It represents the only concrete, positive aspiration he ever allows himself, a fragile fantasy of ordinary domestic joy that stands in stark contrast to his chronic dread of human beings, his self-destructive habits, and the eventual collapse of his marriage. The dream is never realized; it becomes a symbol of the happiness Yozo believes is reserved for others, and its failure marks the point at which he abandons all hope of a normal life.

Origin and Context

The dream first appears in Yozo's mind during the winter evening when he decides to marry Yoshiko, a seventeen-year-old girl who works in a tobacco shop near the bar in Kyobashi where he has been living as a kept man. Yoshiko has just bandaged his bruised arm after he fell drunk into a manhole in front of her shop, and her earnest, unsmiling concern—"You drink too much"—strikes him as something holy. He is overwhelmed by the realization that "uncorrupted virginity" is not a sentimental illusion but a real, present thing. In that moment, he makes up his mind: "We would get married. In the spring we'd go together on bicycles to see waterfalls framed in green leaves." The dream is thus born from a sudden, desperate hope that he might, for once, seize a "great savage joy, no matter how immense the suffering that might ensue." It is a then-and-there decision, a gamble on the possibility of a life he has never known.

The Dream as a Contrast to Yozo's Reality

The waterfall dream is defined by everything Yozo's actual life lacks: simplicity, health, shared purpose, and a connection to nature that is neither ironic nor fearful. Throughout his notebooks, Yozo describes his existence as a series of hellish ordeals—the gloomy ritual of family meals, the terror of human conversation, the squalor of bars and pawnshops, the degradation of morphine addiction. His only escapes have been alcohol, prostitutes, and the temporary oblivion of sleep. The dream of bicycles and a waterfall is the opposite of all this: it is active, innocent, and forward-looking. It imagines a future in which he is not a clown, not a drunkard, not a kept man, but a husband sharing a simple pleasure with his wife. The green leaves and the waterfall evoke a pastoral purity that Yozo has never experienced, a world where trust is not a sin and happiness is not a trap.

The Dream's Failure and Aftermath

The waterfall dream never materializes. After Yozo marries Yoshiko and they rent a room near the Sumida River, he does give up drinking for a time and devotes himself to drawing cartoons, but the fragile peace is shattered when Horiki returns and, during a drunken evening, reveals that Yoshiko has been violated by a shopkeeper. The incident cleaves Yozo "through the forehead between the eyebrows," and his hair turns prematurely grey. From that night onward, he loses all confidence in himself and all hope for the things of this world. The dream of the waterfall is explicitly recalled in his despair: "That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me." He concludes that his only remaining course is to pile one humiliating sin on another until he dies. The dream thus becomes a measure of his fall: the one good thing he could imagine is now impossible, and its impossibility confirms his disqualification from human life.

Thematic Significance

The waterfall dream functions as a rare positive pole in a narrative dominated by shame, fear, and self-destruction. It is the only concrete image of happiness Yozo ever formulates, and its failure is the turning point after which he abandons all resistance. The dream also echoes other fleeting moments of imagined transcendence in the notebooks—the halo of Mary he sees on prostitutes, the "cathedrals of melancholy" that crumble under vulgar words, the prayer for a "will of ice"—but unlike those, the waterfall dream is not a metaphor for escape or punishment; it is a vision of ordinary, embodied joy. That it proves unattainable is the novel's most devastating verdict on Yozo's capacity for life. In the end, he retreats to a decaying house by the sea, cared for by an ugly old servant, and his only remaining truth is the phrase "Everything passes." The waterfall dream has passed too, leaving no trace but the memory of its impossibility.