The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu DazaiThe Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Obathe narrator of No Longer Human at a younger ageis being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he convalesces, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes,