If Dazai Osamu can be associated with any school of writers in modern Japan, that group would be the burai-ha, or the "vagabond school." Especially active in the years immediately following World War II, the group included such minor writers as Sakaguchi Ango and Oda Sakunosuke. Like these and other members of the group, Dazai regarded himself as a social misfit whose writing would evoke the pathos of his condition.

Dazai can certainly be characterized as a relentlessly autobiographical writer. His earliest work recounts a troubled childhood and adolescence closely resembling his own; his final novel, published only after his death, portrays a figure both saintly and mad who undergoes many of the degrading experiences that Dazai suffered. His narrative is typically cast in the first person, with the narrator most often resembling the author. So firmly does the narrator establish a certain personality, including his habits of...