Osamu Dazai

Place: Tsugaru in Aomori Prefecture, Japan Time: Spring 1944As World War II was coming to an end, Osamu Dazai (born Shuji Tsushima) returned to his home in the northern tip of Honshu, Japan on assignment from a publisher to travel and write about the part of Japan where he was born and raised.He writes with humor and warmth about old friends, the people (family and servants) who nurtured him, his obsession with crabs, and his worries over sake in times of rationing. He writes with pride about his home even as he learns about some of its customs and history for the first time. This travel journal is part travelogue, part history lesson, and part love story.Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was a twentieth century Japanese author. He is best known for the novels The Setting Sun and No Longer Human.

The war is over. Japan is defeated. As his country rebuilds, a young man must fight disease and rebuild his life. He will start at a peculiar sanatorium, where everyone gets a nickname, and where he is surrounded by an odd assortment of patients and caregivers.Osamu Dazai was a leading Japanese modern fiction writer who wrote in the genre of the "I" novel. His work reflected his troubled life, but Pandora's Box is one of his optimistic novels.

The Japanese edition of Run, Melos! a book of short stories written by Osamu Dazai, including the story of the title of the book, which is considered one of the best works of this author.

Il sole si spegne la storia di una famiglia nobile, caduta in disgrazia dopo la seconda guerra mondiale.In un crescendo drammatico, la giovane Kazuko racconta, attraverso la tragica epopea della propria famiglia, la graduale scomparsa dei valori tradizionali in una societ che pi non riesce a riconoscersi nel passaggio alla modernit e nei cambiamenti postbellici.La madre, una donna dolce e affettuosa, a seguito della morte del marito costretta a vendere la propria casa e a trasferirsi in provincia, dove la vita meno cara; Kazuko, consumata dall'affetto per i suoi cari e disperatamente bisognosa di amore, crede di trovarlo tra le braccia di un vecchio scrittore depravato. Il fratello Naoji, sopravvissuto alla guerra e incapace di identificarsi sia con il ceto aristocratico di appartenenza, sia con la classe del popolo, cerca l'oblio nell'alcol e nelle droghe.Un libro in cui si riconosciuta l'intera generazione sorta tra le rovine del dopoguerra.

Osamu Dazai is one of the most famous--and infamous--writers of 20th-century Japan. A Shameful Life (Ningen shikkaku) is his final published work and has become a bestselling classic for its depiction of the tortured struggle of a young man to survive in a world that he cannot comprehend. Paralleling the life and death of Dazai himself, the delicate weaving of fact and fiction remorselessly documents via journals the life of Yozo, a university student who spends his time in increasing isolation and debauchery. His doomed love affairs, suicide attempts, and constant fear of revealing his true self haunt the pages of the book and reveal a slow descent into madness. This dark tale nevertheless conveys something authentic about the human heart and its inability to find its true bearing.

Denna bok avslöjar Yozo Obas plågade psyke när han navigerar i avgrunden av samhällets förväntningar och personliga kamp. En djupgående utforskning av existentiell förtvivlan som granskar den mänskliga tillståndet med hjärtskärande introspektion.

From Wikipedia: The Setting Sun (ae-ue' Shayo) is a Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. It was published in 1947 and is set in Japan after World War II. Principal characters are the siblings Kazuko and Naoji, and their elderly mother. The story shows a family in decline and crisis, like many other families during this period of transition between traditional Japan and a more advanced, industrial society. Many families needed to leave their old lives behind and start anew. Throughout the story, mostly through the character Naoji, the author brings up a number of social and philosophical problems of that time period.

This is a superb new translation of the story that propelled one of 20th century Japan's most acclaimed writers into the spotlight. "Schoolgirl" is the novella that first established Dazai as a member of Japan's literary elite. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, the 1933 work gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language, and how it illuminated the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them - a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally. This new translation preserves the playful language of the original and offers the reader a new window into the mind of one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century.

From Wikipedia: No Longer Human (a e-"a ae Ningen Shikkaku) is a Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. Published after "Run Melos" and "The Setting Sun", "No Longer Human" is considered Dazai's masterpiece and ranks as the second-best selling novel in Japan, behind Kokoro.

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.