Osamu Dazai Essay Example for Free

Osamu Dazai Es citeOsamu Dazai was one of Japanese fabricationist and considered one of the most important storytellers of postwar Japan. While know primarily as a novelist, Dazai also earned recognition for his numerous petty stories, including Omoide (Memories), Sarugashima (Monkey Island), and Ha (Leaves), which were publish in Bannen, his number one collection of mindless stories. Like most of his longer fiction, Dazais short stories are autobiographical and reflect a troub lead life marred by alcoholism, drug addiction, and several suicide attempts. Nevertheless, Dazais fiction showcases his artistic imagination and unique confessional narrative technique. Dazai was born the youngest of ten children in Kanagi, a sm on the whole town in northern Japan, to one of the wealthiest families in the region. While Dazais later years were turbulent, he grew up a sensitive child in comfortable surroundings. Later in his life, however, his wealthy background led to self-conscio usness, contri preciselying to a nagging sense of isolation that is an undercurrent byout his fiction.Dazai underwent his apprenticeship in writing during the 1920s firearm attending secondary schools in Aomori and Hirosaki and published m some(prenominal) of his early stories in magazines founded and run by aspiring young authors. By the time he attended Hirosaki Higher School, however, Dazai began to live the unconventional lifestyle that brought him much fame. Despite his widely recognized talent, however, alcoholism, drug addiction, affairs with geishas, suicide attempts, and frequent psychological traumas plagued him the rest of his life. In 1930, Dazai enrolled in the Department of French publications at Tokyo University, but by the end of his first year, he ceased attending classes. Instead, Dazai became involved with left-wing politics, caroused, and renewed his relationship with a geisha he met while attending Hirosaki Higher School.His family disapproved of this relati onship, leading to one of Dazais suicide attempts. He attempted to take his own life on at least triplet former(a) occasions and ultimately succeeded in a double suicide with a young war widow woman in 1948. This episode, among several instances of double suicide in Dazais fiction, is retold in his widely acclaimed novel, No Longer Human. Dazais highly autobiographical fiction first garnered popular and critical attention later the publication of his first collection, Bannen (The Final Years). The first and most significant of these stories is Omoide (Memories). With its highly person-to-person tone, Memories reveals a common narrative technique in Dazais writing. Revealing his childhood and adolescent traumas, as well as his need for companionship and approve, Dazais first-person narrative attracts the pointers sympathy while raising doubts about the authenticity of the narration because of exaggerated rhetoric.Gangu (Toys), another tale in Bannen, illustrates Dazais playfuln ess. In this tale, the narrator after briefly relating his financial troubles details his plans to concoct a tale recounting the memories of an infant. While these and other early pieces exemplify the personal tone of much of Dazais work, another group of tales shows his talent for imaginative storytelling. Two tales Gyofukuki, translated as Metamorphosis, and Sarugashima, translated as Monkey Island provide good examples of this. In place of the Dazai manage protagonist present throughout most of his other short fiction Metamorphosis is about a peasant girl who, on the verge of puberty, takes on the appearance and identity of a fish. Monkey Island presents two forgivingoid monkeys as its protagonists. In astonishment, one of the monkeys soon veritableizes they are the objects of attention, rather than the spectators, of the humans walking through the zoo. In his final years, he composed a series of stories that evince his interest in domestic issues, as titles such as Villon s Wife, Father, and Family Happinesssuggest.As critics have remarked, the stories of these collections are among the few works of artistic value produced by a Japanese author under the strict government censorship during military man War II. While famous in Japan and avidly read especially by the younger generation Dazai has not achieved the international stature of Japanese writers such as Natsume Sseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and End Shusaku. This is partly due to problems with translating Dazais highly personal style. Yet Dazai has earned himself a position in modern Japanese earn more or less comparable to that of an F. Scott Fitzgerald, as opposed to a William Faulkner, in modern American belles-lettres. Donald Keene, Dazais principal English translator, has described him as a Japanese writer who emerged at the end of World War II as the literary voice of his time. While Dazais body of work is sometimes criticized for its shockable scope, m whatever critics mai ntain that his fiction contains some of the most beautiful prose in modern Japanese literature.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. yet Dazai was already well cognise for personal characteristics reflected in the major characters as wellnihilism, drunken dissipation, despair (a large-minded 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, as well, which is perhaps correct more auto biographical, 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 didnt much like him or his charactersnever used those novels in courses I taught. But I did use one of his short stories, Villons Wife, several times, because it was in the anthology I most frequently used in the survey course of Japanese Literature, Donald Keenes innovational Japanese Literature, and I actually came to like that story very much (sort of like Oes The Catch, the exception that proves the rule).The husband in the story may be the imminent self-portrait of all, and the most despicable, in his drunken dissipation, unfai thfulness, 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 audacious characterand you realize that even Dazai, in his more sober moments perhaps, must have appreciated her virtues. Anyway, thats the one I recommendthen, 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 unite in that traumatic time, peculiarly 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 Tanizakis generation, but died in his late 30s, as a suicide, as Dazai did. But, I am happy to say, I am very fond of Akut agawaa highly disciplined literary artist.(MAIN BODY)NO LONGER HUMANThis concord, by Osamu Dazai, is an example of the Japanese genre of shishosetsu, a kind of autobiographical fiction. Its different from what we think of as autobiography, in that the purpose is not so much to tell a story there is no real emplotment, beginning, middle, end in the traditional (or Aristotelian) sense, but rather, the text is a sort of rambling exploration of the self. Style is de-prioritized, sincerity and immediacy are tantamount. There is no constrained form, but rather, an attempt to establish a direct link between author and reader, to explain a particular perspective. The book is largely autobiographical, found on events from Dazais own life. He was a literary rock star, but a deep miserable guy, attempting suicide several times before finally succeeding. Theres actually a monument at the spot where he killed himself (along with his mistress), and apparently concourse gather there on the an niversary of his death every year.In any case, the book itself is interesting. It makes me want to learn Japanese, for starters, because no matter how great the translator, theres no getting around the fact that the grammatical structure of Japanese is exclusively different from that of English, most importantly, for this book perhaps, in that it is entirely possible, and even common, to construct a sentence in Japanese with no subject. Apparently the entire book is written in this form, which would be particularly appropriate to the work itself. Though I wonder if the Japanese reader would truly think of this as particularly artful, given that its apparently a standard thing to them. But I guess thats a interrogatory for psycho-linguists to answer. The book is the related story of a very unhappy guy who is essentially chronicling his downward spiral. Though its hard to say if its really a downward spiral though he does pinpoint a moment at which he ceased to be human, its not e ntirely clear that he was ever really human (by his own definition) to begin with. One question is what it means, in his eyes, to be human.There is a clear parallel to Notes from the Underground (Dazai was big into Dostoevsky, and the main character refers to Crime and Punishment), in that both are notes from deeply unhappy men who are convinced of their own uniqueness, but there are definitely differences. Dostoevskys character is raging against rationality, and the way in which it dehumanizes people, so in a sense, though he calls himself a mouse, etc, he could be seen as claiming that he is really the only human. Dazais character, Yozo, sees himself as inhuman, mainly, it expects, because he lacks certain basic human traits. He claims, for instance, that he has never felt hungry. However, there is also a certain issue of domination at play he is unable to say no to anyone, to turn down anything. In this sense, one could say that he is entirely determined by the outside world.De spite the fact that he has an privileged life, he keeps it hidden from the outside world. In fact, his behavior is entirely, he claims, an act, he plays the clown for the amusement of others, refusing to let his own feelings show. But Im not certain if this is really the case. For instance, he wants to be an artist, and actually disobeys his father in order to pursue his artistic career, and confesses to the other authority figure in his life, Flatfish, that he wants to make art. So it seems as though the masking process is incomplete in this case, and at times he does transmit authentically.I wonder if the same could be state for the Underground Man? I think that its slightly different in his case, in that the construction of the Underground Man is such that he cant behave authentically, because he has no stable self. Yozo, on the other hand, certainly has an inner life, its just a rather empty one. He doesnt seem to have any real will of his own, or rather, the will that he does have is purely towards self-destruction he can get booze and drugs, and drink himself into a stupor, without any difficulties. But then again, he also seems to have a brief lull of happiness, directly following his marriage. But even there, its hard to say if hes happy. peradventure its most accurate to say that he is so constructed as to be incapable of happiness? Hmmm.Theres more thinking to be done here.Unfortunately, I seem to like each Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) book less than the previous one. No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku, 1948) is more epigrammatic that The Setting Sun (Shayo, 1947), but perhaps I am too old for it (as I was once too young to read Proust) to be much moved for the plaint of a creature too delicate for the world. I cant muster sociological interest in it as affable history of the 30s either, since dissipitation is basically timeless (though the preferred means vary). I read the epilogue differently from translator and longtime Columbia professor Donald Kee ne as showing the notebooks writer was successful at mimicking good nature, not that his widow is right and the writer wrong. (In the way that most men fail to see their own cruelty, Yozo had not noticed his gentleness and capacity for love-p. 9 really? a capacity for love? and gentleness? or solipsism mixed with diffidence?) I am not so sure that Keene was right that the Japanese are certainly much more like Americans than they are like their ancestors of one hundred years ago.As far as literature is concerned, the break with the Japanese chivalric is almost complete (p. 7), though this is more credible now than it was six decades ago. Dazai seems very traditionally Japanese to me in many ways, a descendant of Sei Shnagon both in wit and to some degree in aesthetics (Dazai is still plenty delicate and fairly indirect, even about what she would have considered vulgar and even sordid matters, very regretful and very perishable). Would Keene have been moved to translate Dazai, if the re was nothing of the Japanese tradition that Keene venerates in Dazai? Let alone, recall translating Dazai as if I were writing a book of my own, an experience he only otherwise had with Kenks Essays in Idleness (On Familiar Terms, p. 189). I like Keenes image of Yozo as a man who is orphaned from his fellows by their refusal to take him seriously (p. 8, see p. 139), which in turn is a result of his desperate clowning.Of course, this resonates with my experience of people not believing I could possibly be serious when I am, and feeling Im not like other people, incapable of getting by. And unusual or extravagant things tempt me (p. 23). It is interesting that someone who felt himself different from an early age and for whom it would be no exaggeration to say that my only playmates while I was growing up were girls (48) became a diffident lady-killer rather than a homosexual. ba cannot forget his abuse by a female servant when he was young. In high school, he played the buffoon. At university, he finds bad influence from Horiki and leads a life of debauchery (nonstop smoking, alcohol abuse, promiscuity), culminating in a double suicide (it cannot seriously be billed a love suicide) in which the married woman drowns and he survives.After macrocosm expelled from the university, ba is clan and sober for a time in a relationship with an innocent young woman, but Horki shows up and leads ba back into temptation, now adding morphine to alcohol abuse and being incarcerated in a mental asylum, where he is numb rather than violent. As for being zombified by Japans defeat, Dazai seems to me to have been as self-destructive and intellectually nihilistic while the Japanese Empire was rising as in the general anomie after Emperor Hirohito renounced divinity and the US occupied the archipelago. (Imamuras Pigs and Battleships show some of this social breakdown and women who were better at surviving it than the men.) The original publication sold more than six million copie s in Japan, more than any Japanese novel other than Kokoro (1914) by Sseki Natsume. A manga version was published in 2009, the centenary of Dasais birth, and also filmed.(CONCLUSION)Attending Meiji Gakuin University from the age 15 to 19, Toson gradually became aware of literature under the influence of unconventional traditions of the school. Toson literature is even said to originate during his days at the university. Toson joined Bungakukai, a literary group, and as a amorous poet, published a collection of poems including Wakanashu. Later, Toson turned a novelist and published Hakai (The Broken Commandment) and Haru (Spring), and is thus regarded as a prominent naturalist novelist. His other works include, Ie (Family), considered to have achieved the highest level in Japanese Naturalism literature, Shinsei (New life), a confession of his own incestuous relationship with his niece, Yoakemae ( forrader the Dawn), a historical novel modeled on the life of his father. Altbough he b egan his serialization of Tohonomon (The Gate of the East) in 1943, he died of a separatrix at his own home in Oiso, Kanagawa prefecture on 22nd of August.(BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST)Dazai, Osamu, and Donald Keene. No Longer Human. Tokyo Charles E. Tuttle, 1981. Print.Lyons, Phyllis I., and Osamu Dazai. The Saga of Dazai Osamu a Critical Study with Translations. Stanford, CA Stanford UP, 1985. Print.Hachimaki, Emi. . Aozora Bunko. Aozora, 1 Jan. 1999. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. http//www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000035/files/301_14912.html.(REFERENCE)http//kirjasto.sci.fi/dazai.htmhttp//www.jlit.net/authors_works/dazai_osamu.htmlhttp//wlc.drake.edu/wordpress/japanese/2010/02/28/osamu-dazai%E3%80%80%E5%A4%AA%E5%AE%B0%E6%B2%BB%EF%BC%89/