Not my cup of tea at ALL but very well-written and moving. About the decay (I choose that specifically in lieu of “decline”) of the “aristocracy” in post-WWII Japan, told through the lens of a single family, focusing on a sister and daughter and her relationship to her brother and her mother. A bit too…symbolic…for me (not sure that’s the word) and not the kind of book I usually enjoy but this was too good to ignore. I have another of his and will definitely read it now, but it will take me a little time to work up to it. ( )

It's astounding how huge the gaps are in my knowledge of literature. I've read almost NO Japanese bks & NONE from Africa. I did read this but I don't remember jack-shit about it. I guess I'm just going to have to live another 54 yrs to fill in the gaps. Then I'll have to live another 54 yrs to read bks about sports & car mechanics. ( )

In this short book, I was able to feel, albeit from a far distance, the weight and anxiety that the demise of the Japanese empire had on its people at the time. ( )

Osamu Dazai: The Setting Sun

Osamu Dazai was a tortured personality. Born in 1909, he attempted suicide twice before he was twenty. In 1930, he entered the Department of French Literature at Tokyo University; he did not speak a word of French and boasted later that he never attended a single lecture in five years. He spent his time on literary and left-wing activities. He began publishing stories but his most important literary activity came after the war. The Setting Sun was his first novel, published in 1947. Dazai was known for a dissolute lifestyle, overwork, insomnia, and heavy drinking; tuberculosis, which he contracted before the war, reasserted itself. In June, 1948 he committed suicide by drowning just before his 39th birthday. It was a double suicide with a woman for whom he had abandoned his wife and child.

In his introduction to the Tuttle version of the book that I have, the translator Donald Keene, described Dazai as, "one of the great chroniclers of Japanese life". The book was popular for, "the depth of its understanding of the Japanese...and reveals aspects of the Japanese nation as a whole." Dazai published in 1947; his novel is set in a period of massive social, cultural, economic change in Japan but part of its enduring appeal may well be the sense of disconnect, discontinuity, discrimination and desperation that many feel in our fast-paced, rapidly evolving technological societies. A principal character says, at the end of the novel: "Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are." This sense of uncontrolled change and transition is not limited to any one society or period of time.

This is less of a novel, in terms of plot or character development, than it is a biting look at a changing, uncontrolled, unforeseeable world powered by personal angst of a high degree. It also highly autobiographical in its philosophies and approaches to life and society. Keene remarks on the "deviant behaviour" of some of the characters and there is quite a list: drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, adultery, divorce, familial dysfunction, hedonism, solipsism, sophistry, anarchism, suicide...all mixed in with poverty, social change, and the struggles of social and economic classes. Everything was changing with no real sense of what the direction might be and many in society must have felt adrift. The irony is that this framework pretty much describes many of the blockbuster novels popular today everywhere, but in Japan in the mid-1940s this was shocking behaviour and lifestyle.

This not a happy book. In fact there is not a contented person in it. The only person not marked by some sense of tortured self is the Mother, but she symbolizes the old ethos of society and fades away to death. The dissolute son, Naoji (Dazai?) summarizes his outlook on life: "Philosophy? Lies. Principles? Lies. Ideals? Lies. Order? Lies. Sincerity? Lies. Truth? Purity? All lies." There is talk of social and economic revolution from Kazuko, Naoji's sister, who wrestles with her own demons. Reading Rosa Luxemburg, Kazuko (Dazai?) is struck by the "sheer courage the author demonstrated in tearing apart without hesitation all manner of conventional ideas....Destruction is tragic and piteous and beautiful. The dream of destroying, building anew, perfecting."

A number of things struck me in reading this book. Dazai's style of writing is short and succinct; he punches out opinions and aphorisms in this first-person narrative style where we also hear other voices through diaries.

I find the references to Christianity interesting. As far as I can see, Dazai himself was not Christian, and given his general outlook on life as enunciated, for example, by Naoji, I doubt that Dazai found any comfort in structured religion. Dazai was a committed Marxist in his youth and I could see that influencing his view of religion, particularly as he seems to introduce Christian concepts only to ridicule them or to draw inappropriate metaphors. It is interesting that Dazai made the family Christian (Kazuko refers to studying the Bible in Sunday school classes) but this does not guide their lives. Mother, speaking of the illness that followed her forced move, with Kazuko, from a mansion in Tokyo to a small villa deep in the countryside, says: "God killed me, and only after He had made me into someone entirely different from the person I had been, did he call me back to life." Kazuko muses that "a resurrection like Jesus'" is likely not possible for ordinary human beings. At the end of the novel Kazuko, who has become pregnant in a one-night stand with a dissolute writer whom she pursued for just this purpose, muses: "Even if Mary gives birth to a child who is not her husband's, if she has a shining pride, they become a holy mother and child." I think a committed Christian might find this blasphemous.

Dazai makes a number of references to Western writers and philosophers including DH Lawrence, Nietzche, Checkov, Marx, Karl Kautsky, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Lord Byron, Turgenev, Hugo, Dumas, Musset, Daudet; all writers with a 'smell of revolution" in their works. Daudet is interesting because one of his best-known books is In the Land of Pain, which details his very painful experience with treatments and operations to try to manage the degeneration of spinal nerves resulting from syphilis. It is tempting to see the story of Daudet's physical pain as a parallel for the social, moral 'pain' that Dazai explores, but this is likely just gross speculation. In the Land of Pain was written in 1930; I have no idea whether it was available in Japanese--we know Dazai could not have read it in French!

It is not a major aspect of the novel, but there is the mother/son theme that appears often in Japanese literature, in the love/anguish relationship between Mother and Naoji. It is certainly not as pronounced as in The Doctor's Wife, but Dazai does see the concomitant effects on other family members, in this case, Kazuko.

Two arresting images serve as bookends to the novel. On the first page, there is a short reference to "the cherry tree in full bloom". Cherry blossoms are revered and widely celebrated in Japan for their beauty and, in their short life spans, as allegories for the ephemeral nature of life. On almost the last page of the book, Kazuko says: "The revolution must be taking place somewhere, but the old morality persists unchanged in the world around us and lives athwart our way. However much the waves on the surface of the sea may rage, the water at the bottom, far from experiencing a revolution, lies motionless, awake but feigning sleep." Thus, beauty may exist and may give pleasure, but it will be short-lived. The blossoms will reproduce every year, but in essence they never change; they are celebrated today exactly as they were a thousand years ago. Real, profound change, as in the water at the bottom, is difficult if not impossible to achieve, but we keep bobbing on the surface.

At first I did not care for this book. I'm still not sure I would recommend it to a friend, But its appeal grows on me as I think about it. Dazai wrote about a very specific time and place, but I think much of the dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and anger that he expressed have a much broader relevance.

One of my sempai at my dōjō took a class in Japanese literature a few years ago and Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun was the book that stuck with her the most. I know of Dazai from reading John Nathan's biography of Yukio Mishima since he is mentioned several times in that book, but I know very little about him and his work beyond that. The Setting Sun, first published in Japan in 1947, was one of his last novels to be finished before his death by suicide in 1948. Like much of his work, The Setting Sun incorporates autobiographical elements into the story. Dazai was a very popular author in Japan, particularly during the postwar period, and quite a few of his books have been translated into English. In fact, I believe The Setting Sun, translated by Donald Keene, was Dazai's first novel to be made available in English.

Kazuko is a young woman from a minor aristocratic family, although that means less now after the war. Married once but now divorced she lives with her mother. After her father's death the two move to a house in Izu, no longer able to afford living in Tokyo. With their money gone and little support available to them from surviving family members, the two women resort to selling off their clothing and belongings. Kazuko's troubles continue when her brother, thought to have died during the war, returns home. As glad as she is to see him alive, Naoji is a relapsed opium addict and a strain on the family's dwindling finances. Kazuko is steadily losing her sense of self and place in society. However, she knows she is the only person who can change her own fate and she is prepared to take those steps.

I liked Kazuko as a protagonist. I definitely didn't agree with all of the decisions that she made, and she occasionally annoyed me, but she was an authentic character. Her fondness of and frustration with her mother and brother is obvious, but she truly does care about her family. Kazuko both admires and reveres her mother, realizing that she will never be able to achieve the same level of distinction that comes so effortlessly to her mother. Naoji's relationship with her sister is understandably strained, but at the same time she still seems willing to do anything for him. This is certainly not to say that Kazuko is entirely unselfish--she is quite capable of acting in complete disregard for other people, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The Setting Sun is a short novel, well under two hundred pages, but Dazai is still able to create quite an emotional impact. The book is written from Kazuko's perspective, but much of it is made up of journal entries and letters rather than being a straight narrative. Dazai also has a propensity to use flashback sequences which can be effective but also confusing if the reader isn't paying attention. There is also a significant amount of symbolism involved but it is not impenetrable. Overall, The Setting Sun is a rather melancholy and pessimistic story. Kazuko is having to deal with the literal and figurative death of both the Japanese aristocracy and her family while struggling to claim her life as her own in a society still in transition. I found The Setting Sun to be an engaging novel and will probably seek out more of Dazai's works to read.

Experiments in Manga ( )