Dazai Osamu
(1909–1948), Japanese writer. Born into a wealthy family in Tsugaru, Aomori prefecture, Dazai Osamu showed a strong interest in writing as a student. Feeling alienated from his family, which had political connections at the national level, and attracted to a bohemian lifestyle and left-wing politics, he failed in his studies. Nonetheless, in 1929, following the first of several attempted suicides, he gained admittance to Tokyo Imperial University. In Dazai's seminal work, "Omoide" (Recollections), published in 1933, he employed his characteristic method of autobiographical storytelling; in "Omoide" the narrator struggles to find some worth in his existence. Plunging into the literary life, he failed to graduate from university, attempted suicide two more times, suffered from peritonitis, became addicted to painkillers, and failed to win the first Akutagawa Prize (a prestigious literary award), which he desperately craved. Encouraged by his mentor Ibuse Masuji (b. 1898), he married and achieved a new stability that allowed him to write short stories and gain recognition. Commissioned to write a travel book about his home province, he published Tsugaru, a masterpiece of reminiscence and anecdote, in 1944. Gradually, he slipped back into his self-destructive ways, and this provided him with the stimulation for his great novel Shayo (The Setting Sun, 1947), which depicts a determined heroine struggling to survive in postwar Japan. In the following year, he published Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human), a reworking of earlier themes. Only a few weeks later he committed suicide with Yamazaki Tomie, one of his disciples.
Further Reading
Lewell, John. (1993) Modern Japanese Novelists: A Biographical Dictionary. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Lyons, Phyllis I. (1985) The Saga of Dazai Osamu. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
O'Brien, James A. (1975) Dazai Osamu. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
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