He’s known as one of Japan’s most prolific and important writers. Now, with the release of a newly translated collection of short stories, Dazai Osamu—known in equal measure for his writing as for his death—is once more laying bare his deepest insecurities and vulnerabilities.
(Content warning: Discussions of suicide)
The Japanese literary legend at his most tormented
On a warm summer day in 1948, the Japanese writer Dazai Osamu committed suicide alongside his mistress, Yamazaki Tomie, by drowning himself in the rushing waters of Tokyo’s Tamagawa Canal.
Dazai was one of the country’s most well-known and prolific writers of the time. His work would later be translated into more than sixty languages. His death marked the end of a life dogged by personal struggles with addiction and mental illness. Authorities recovered Dazai’s body six days later, on what would have been his thirty-ninth birthday.
Dazai was a pioneer of the I-novel (shishosetsu), a genre of Japanese literature known for its confessional and autobiographical writing style. He employed this format to document his anxieties in novels such as No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku, 1948), Schoolgirl (Joseito, 1939), and The Setting Sun (Shayo, 1947), which many consider to be his best works. It was this ability to explore the darker aspects of being human while maintaining his uniquely self-deprecating narrative style that earned Dazai a place in Japan’s list of most influential writers of the 20th century.
Now, with Retrograde—a collection of newly translated short stories forthcoming with One Peace Books—both new and older readers of Dazai can once again experience what Leo Elizabeth Takada, the collection’s translator, describes as Dazai’s “fierce hunger to live.”
“He captures the existential reality of struggles that might seem trivial from the outside,” Takada shares, “but that feel all-consuming when you are the one experiencing them.”
Perhaps this dichotomy is what has been behind Dazai’s gradual resurgence in popularity. He’s gained fame particularly among international readers on BookTok, a subcommunity of literature enthusiasts on TikTok. His sadness and alienation, though deeply woven into his everyday life, were emotions that simultaneously buoyed his curiosity about living.
“They wrestle with contradictions, with uncertainty, with the difficulty of facing themselves—and they are far from perfect,” notes Takada about Dazai’s characters and narrators. “Yet [he] never abandons a gaze of tenderness toward them. His writing dwells on the impossibility of reconciling ideals with reality, or of fully accepting and loving oneself, and he renders those struggles without resolution. At the core is solitude—the sense of being ‘alone together.’”
Dazai’s upbringing was a lonely one
Born Tsushima Shuji in 1909, Dazai grew up as the tenth of eleven children in a wealthy landowning family in Aomori Prefecture—the northernmost prefecture on Japan’s main island of Honshu. His parents, Gen’emon and Tane Tsushima, were largely absent during his childhood. His father traveled often as a politician, and his mother was chronically ill.
Because of this, Dazai was raised by a rotating cast of nursemaids and relatives. He became more isolated and anxious as he grew older. As he grew, he would adopt what he would call his “clown persona” as a consequence of his family’s emotional distance.
Though not overtly a political writer, Dazai had spent his youth deeply interested in Communism. He wrote left-leaning fiction and distributed communist leaflets at demonstrations.
Around this time, too, he went to great lengths to disavow himself from his aristocratic upbringing. Dazai often engaged in drinking and prostitution as a way to both protest societal expectations and to escape his own depression. However, due to increased pressure from his powerful family, he ultimately pledged to stop all involvement with the Japanese Communist Party and focus instead on his literary career.
In addition to some of his more popular works, Dazai wrote several other short stories and novels. These include his first book-length collection, Bannen, or The Final Years. His novella Flowers of Buffoonery, later translated into English by Sam Bett in 2023, was originally included in The Final Years.
Like most of his writing, Flowers of Buffoonery was autobiographical in nature. In it, a young Oba Yozo wakes up in a seaside hospital after a failed suicide pact, only to realize his lover, Sono, did not survive her attempt. This parallels Dazai’s own failed suicide pact with a bar hostess in Kamakura in 1930, which he alludes to again in No Longer Human.
A new collection brings us back to Dazai’s early writing career
Retrograde, then, comes at a decisively good time to be a Dazai Osamu fan. His work has proliferated across social media in recent months. No Longer Human, especially, has been a favorite on BookTok. Schoolgirl also trended recently, with people dressed in Japanese girl uniforms holding copies of the book.
Anime fans, too, are becoming new readers in part due to shows like Bungo Stray Dogs. The show’s writer, Kafka Asagiri, was deeply inspired by No Longer Human and based much of the anime’s themes on those found in Dazai’s work. One of the show’s main characters, Dazai Osamu, is a fictionalized version of the writer.
“We want to show that you don’t need to be an academic to understand Dazai, or to translate him. Dazai has an appeal for all sorts of readers — readers obsessed with Japanese culture, readers who love human psychology, and readers who like pop, punk, and all sorts of modes, aesthetics, stories, and philosophies,” says Eric Margolis, an editor with One Peace Books.
“We really want to see Japanese literature continue to reach new audiences and expand its readership,” says Margolis. “That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited about the translation by Leo Elizabeth Takada in particular—Leo is a talented bilingual poet involved in all sorts of amazing, dynamic cultural projects.” Retrograde includes three short stories from Dazai’s early to mid-twenties, giving readers a glimpse into his younger self’s reflections and musings.
“While I was translating Retrograde, I often found myself listening to the music I loved as a teenager—old school visual kei bands, such as DIR EN GREY, as well as Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana,” Takada says. “Maybe it was my way of reconnecting with that adolescent intensity, or maybe Dazai himself invited me back to it. Either way, he reminded me of why those voices still matter, and I hope readers can feel that same strange mix of despair and vitality in his work.”
Retrograde is available for purchase through One Peace Books (affiliate link).
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