Previous
Takeichi
Yoshiko is 17 years old when she meets Yozo. She works across the street from the bar he frequents in Kyobashi, and she often tells him that he needs to drink less. One night, he drunkenly suggests that they should get married, mainly because he has been thinking about how she’s a virgin and how he’d like to sleep with her. She agrees to marry him if he stops drinking. Although Yozo accepts this condition, he gets drunk the very next day. However, Yoshiko is too trusting to believe that Yozo would break his promise, so they have sex and then get married. Yozo later worries that Yoshiko is too trusting, ultimately associating her tendency to unquestioningly trust others with the fact that she ends up getting raped—something that happens while Yozo himself watches and does nothing. Yozo falls into an even deeper depression after Yoshiko’s rape, eventually trying once again to die by suicide. Yoshiko tragically blames herself for this, thinking that Yozo wants to die because he feels guilty for not protecting her.
Yoshiko Quotes in No Longer Human
The No Longer Human quotes below are all either spoken by Yoshiko or refer to Yoshiko . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Third Notebook: Part Two
Quotes
Horiki sat in front of me and said, with a gentle smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his face, “I hear you’ve coughed blood.” I felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that I averted my face and wept. I was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This was a really rare event. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.
Get the entire No Longer Human LitChart as a printable PDF.
Yoshiko Quotes in No Longer Human
The No Longer Human quotes below are all either spoken by Yoshiko or refer to Yoshiko . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Third Notebook: Part Two
Quotes
Horiki sat in front of me and said, with a gentle smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his face, “I hear you’ve coughed blood.” I felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that I averted my face and wept. I was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This was a really rare event. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning crevice would open between the other person’s heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity.
