Yozo Oba cannot feel what other people feel, so he plays the clown to hide it and lets drink, women and other people's money carry him along. His story, Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, opens this twelve-episode anthology of modern Japanese literature across four episodes. Five more adaptations follow: Ango Sakaguchi's In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom, Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, Dazai's Run, Melos!, and Ryunosuke Akutagawa's The Spider's Thread and Hell Screen. Each segment stands on its own.