Yozo and Hirokazu Shigematsu's friendship

The friendship between Yozo and Masao Horiki is one of the most corrosive and defining relationships in No Longer Human, a bond forged not from affection or respect but from a shared capacity for degradation and a mutual, unspoken recognition of each other's emptiness. Horiki, a swarthy, neatly dressed art student six years Yozo's senior, first approaches Yozo by asking to borrow five yen, immediately establishing a dynamic of exploitation that will characterize their entire association. Yozo, new to Tokyo and paralyzed by a morbid fear of human beings, finds in Horiki a practical guide to the city's pleasures—drink, tobacco, prostitutes, and the art of spending minimal money with maximum effect—and a companion whose ceaseless, nonsensical chatter relieves Yozo of the terrifying obligation to speak. Yet even at the outset, Yozo despises Horiki, recognizing him as a fool whose paintings are rubbish, a "genuine city good-for-nothing" who operates without consciousness of his own farcicality. Horiki, in turn, treats Yozo not as a full human being but as a living corpse, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost to be utilized for his own amusement. This fundamental contempt, hidden beneath a surface of camaraderie, defines the relationship's trajectory: it is a friendship of mutual degradation, a pact between two men who, as Yozo later reflects, "despising each other as we did, were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves."

The Dynamics of Exploitation and Dependence

Horiki's role as Yozo's guide to Tokyo's underworld is inseparable from his role as an exploiter. He introduces Yozo to drink, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops, and left-wing thought, a combination that Yozo finds strange but which Horiki presents as a coherent education in urban pleasure-seeking. Horiki is a master of bargains, adept at navigating streetcars, buses, and steam launches to maximize experience at minimal cost, and he handles all financial transactions, relieving Yozo of the paralyzing anxiety of paying bills. This practical dependence, however, masks a deeper parasitism: Horiki repeatedly borrows money from Yozo, invariably five yen, and later, after Yozo's marriage, pressures him to pawn his wife's clothes to fund their drinking. Yozo, incapable of refusal, submits to these demands, even as he recognizes Horiki's "icy, crafty" egoism. The asymmetry is stark: Horiki uses Yozo for money, entertainment, and access to women, while Yozo uses Horiki as a shield against the world, a buffer against the terrifying silence of human interaction. Yet this dependence is also a trap. When Yozo runs away from Flatfish's house and seeks refuge with Horiki, he is met not with sympathy but with cold practicality: Horiki, concerned about his own reputation and possessions, scolds Yozo and tries to send him back. The only reason Horiki participates in the subsequent settlement with Shizuko is under pressure from her, and he thereafter behaves as the great benefactor to whom Yozo owes his rehabilitation, a role he plays with self-important gravity.

The Antonym Game and the Revelation of Contempt

The true nature of their relationship is laid bare during a drunken evening on the roof of Yozo's apartment near the Sumida River, shortly after Yozo's marriage to Yoshiko. The two men play a guessing game of antonyms, a diversion Yozo invented, which descends into a bitter, revealing exchange. When Yozo asks the antonym of "crime," Horiki answers flatly, "The law," his face, caught in the red light of a neon sign, taking on "the somber dignity of the relentless prosecutor." Yozo is shaken to the core. Horiki's simple, self-satisfied equation of crime with law reveals his utter lack of understanding of Yozo's tormented inner world, where crime is a metaphysical wound, not a legal category. Horiki then dismisses the whole discussion, declaring himself a "virtuous citizen" and Yozo a criminal. The game culminates in Horiki's drunken, menacing threat to go downstairs and "commit a crime" with Yoshiko, a threat that foreshadows the catastrophe to come. This moment crystallizes the relationship's fundamental dynamic: Horiki, the "virtuous citizen," judges and condemns Yozo, the "criminal," while simultaneously exploiting and degrading him. Yozo, unable to contradict anyone to his face, can only mutter a desperate, almost inaudible monologue about the true antonym of crime, a search for God, salvation, or love that Horiki dismisses with a crude pun on "rice."

The Catastrophe and Its Aftermath

Horiki's most devastating act is not his exploitation but his role in the violation of Yoshiko's trust. On a sticky summer night, after the two men have been drinking gin on the roof, Horiki goes downstairs and discovers Yoshiko being molested by a shopkeeper. Instead of intervening, he returns to the roof to inform Yozo, clearing his throat noisily to draw attention to the scene. Yozo, paralyzed by fear, runs back to the roof and collapses, his hair turning prematurely grey from that night. Horiki's parting words are a mixture of false sympathy and cold judgment: "I sympathize, but I hope it's taught you a lesson. I won't be coming back. This place is a perfect hell... But you should forgive Yoshiko. After all, you're not much of a prize yourself." This betrayal is the decisive incident of Yozo's life, a wound that splits him "through the forehead between the eyebrows" and throbs with pain whenever he encounters a human being. Yet even after this, Horiki reappears. When Yozo, now a morphine addict, plans a final suicide, Horiki arrives with Flatfish, wearing "a gentle smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his face." Yozo, shattered by this unexpected kindness, weeps and allows himself to be bundled into a car and taken to a mental hospital. Horiki's gentle smile is the final, cruelest manipulation: it disarms Yozo's resistance and delivers him into the asylum, where he is branded a madman and a reject. The relationship ends not with a confrontation but with a surrender, Yozo's will annihilated by the one gesture of apparent kindness from the man who has destroyed him.