Dazai Osamu

Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) was born about halfway

between Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) and Mishima
Yukio (1925-1970) and Abe Kobo (1924-1993), and, in
that generation following the Pacific War, when Japan was
occupied by Americans, his celebrity came in between,
too. Kawabata was an established writer while Mishima
and Abe were building their early reputations (Mishima to
establish his much younger), and Dazai was, for a time, the
most distinguished writer in town--so an important 20th
century Japanese novelist--making him Mishima's early
competition. And Mishima saw him as representing all that
he most despised in post-war Japanese fiction, hated to be
compared to him.
Dazai became celebrated for two short novels, The Setting
Sun and No Longer Human, both translated into English.
I read both of them back when I was reading all the
Japanese fiction I could get my hands on, but did not care
for either, and have not read either again. The Setting Sun
was published in 1947, and is set in those years shortly
after the end of the war. It was a very popular novel, and
the title came to represent Japanese of the upper classes
who had fallen because of the war and American
occupation. But Dazai was already well known for
personal characteristics reflected in the major characters as
well--nihilism, drunken dissipation, despair (a kind of
model for our hippie generation)--so, although the central
character is a young woman, Kazuko, the novel is read as
strongly autobiographical. This is true for No Longer

Human, too, which is perhaps even more autobiographical,

and, as Donald Keene describes it, is "an attack on the
habits and traditions of Japanese society, but above all ... a
record of his alienation from society." (1063) I was not
attracted to the narcissistic qualities in these two novels, or
to the fact that Dazai, after having failed in two previous
love suicides (in which the women succeeded) succeeded in
a love suicide June 13, 1948 (he and the woman drowned in
the Tamagawa Reservoir). I just didn't much like him or
his characters--never used those novels in courses I taught.
But I did use one of his short stories, Villon's Wife, several
times, because it was in the anthology I most frequently
used in the survey course of Japanese Literature, Donald
Keene's Modern Japanese Literature, and I actually came
to like that story very much (sort of like Oe's The Catch,
the exception that proves the rule). The husband in the
story may be the closest self-portrait of all, and the most
despicable, in his drunken dissipation, unfaithfulness, and
unforgivable treatment of his wife, but the story is told by
the wife, who, in her attempts to accommodate herself to all
of this comes through as an attractive and courageous
character--and you realize that even Dazai, in his more
sober moments perhaps, must have appreciated her virtues.
Anyway, that's the one I recommend--then, if you want to
read either, or both, of the novels, you will be reading
fiction that was very popular in Japan in the decade after
the end of the war, and may, indeed, reflect some of the
values in flux in that traumatic time, particularly for young
Japanese who would have seen themselves as having lost
everything.

I will be comparing Akutagawa to Edgar Allan Poe next

month for their short lives and some of the qualities of their
fiction, and it is easy to compare Dazai to Akutagawa
(1892-1927), as well. Akutagawa was more of Tanizaki's
generation, but died in his late 30s, as a suicide, as Dazai
did. But, I am happy to say, I am very fond of
Akutagawa--a highly disciplined literary artist.
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