Dazai by Moriyama Daido

No doubt it's about time I created a Facebook page for these kinds of book reminding posts and likes, but a book that appeared last year that I'd love to have a flick through, (although you can see a page by page flick through here), is Moriyama Daido's Dazai, published by Match and Company as part of their MMM series. The book consists of a new translation of Dazai Osamu's 1947 story Viyon no Tsuma/Villon's Wife by Ralph McCarthy accompanied with a photographic narrative set to the story by Moriyama.

Dazai by Moriyama Daido at Match and Company

Waiting

Recently noticed this short, two page story by Dazai Osamu translated by Angus Turvill linked at the end of his wikipedia page, so I hope it's ok for me to link it here too. Originally published as Matsu in 1942, the narrative is similar to that of Schoolgirl.

Waiting

Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai

Recently published by One Peace Books comes this early novella by Osamu Dazai translated by Allison Markin Powell who has also translated Hiromi Kawakami, (a translation of Kawakami's Tanizaki Prize winner, Sensei no kaban/The Briefcase is forthcoming in March 2012), and has also translated Motoyuki Shibata, and Kaho Nakayama. The narration here is set in the war years and comes from a young girl whose family has recently lost their father, within many of Dazai's narratives, whether they're male or female, the presence of Dazai's voice can often be detected somewhere within, much of Dazai's craft with his fiction is his ability to disguise this fact. Many of his stories and novels are peopled with figures who are not swimming in the same direction as the rest of society, or hold contrary beliefs or visions. The details of the girls background  are slight and the focus of the novella is in capturing the girls stream of thinking which we follow over the course of a day. She takes a train to school, getting off at Ochanomizu, perhaps a more thorough student of Japanese Literature could write a small tome on the appearance of Ochanomizu in Japanese novels, as the place is mentioned in a few I've recently come across. At school we read her observations on her teachers Miss Kosugi and art teacher Mr Ito, she has been told off as she embroidered a flower pattern on her underclothes, something inappropriate in the austere times. The narrative captures really well the nuances of thinking of the young girl and the flaws that she observes in others often bounce back at her ending in self recriminating reflections on her self. When she returns from school, she finds her mother has house guests, the Imaidas, she observes - While surely there's something to be said for suppressing your own feelings for the sake of others, if everyday from now on I was forced to nod and smile at people like the Imaidas, I would probably go mad. As with much of Dazai's fiction there is a brittle melancholy to the piece, sitting at the porch in the evening washing out her things she imagines another girl like herself sat in a flat of a Parisian backstreet, sharing her sadness with this imagined figure - Nobody in the world understood our suffering. In time, when we became adults. we might look back on this pain and loneliness as a funny thing, perfectly ordinary, but - but how were we expected to get by, to get through this interminable period of time until that point when we were adults?. The novella catches this moment of transience, what is remarkable about the piece is the absence of the commotion of the external world, only events linked  directly to the immediate family are touched upon, and amongst these events she still ponders on the good things that humans can do, there are pointers of the age of the novellas setting, the actor Jushiro Konoe, a reading of Kafu Nagai.     

The book has been fantastically presented with a bit of a refreshing contemporary twist which works really well, Allison Markin Powell's translation flows really well, to read this translation is to experience this girl's thoughts and observations with a clarity that tugs effectively at the reader's empathy. A passage at the beginning of the book that stood out is when she takes off her glasses, looking at the world she prefers to see things slightly blurred and out of focus - I like to take my glasses off and look out into the distance. Everything goes hazy, as in a dream, or like a zoetrope - it's wonderful. The novella has a contemplative tone, capturing her reflections on her family, the change in her mother since the death of her father, her thoughts on her sister, briefly she remembers them living together in their previous house, and she receives a letter from her cousin Junji being transferred to a regiment in Maebashi. I only hope that this is the first in a series of Modern Japanese Classics from One Peace Books.

One Peace Books

  

The Setting Sun

The Setting Sun, Dazai's first novel was published in Japan as Shayo in 1947, translated by Donald Keene, who also writes an introduction which has dated slightly, in it he makes some interesting observations about the changes of attitudes in Japanese society. The current edition is available from New Directions. Donald Keene points out that The Setting Sun is one of Dazai's more objective works, although there's traces of Dazai throughout many of the characters in the book. Set against the austerity of the end of the war, it's narrated mainly by Kazuko the daughter of an aristocratic family, but due to the family's dwindling wealth they have had to move the family home from a house in Tokyo to a villa in Izu. It could be said that Dazai is writing from an autobiographical perspective, as he too came from a large wealthy family. Kazuko explains that ten years previously her father had died in the house they lived in at Nishikata Street, the departure from their old family home takes an emotional toll on their mother. They wait to hear from her brother Naoji, who has been away fighting, their uncertain as to if he's still alive, since moving into their new house, mother has weakened a great deal, much of Kazuko's time is spent looking after her, they talk of the past, Kazuko's earlier marriage that ended with her having a pregnancy that ended in a still birth, at that time her relationship with her husband wasn't going well, and mainly as a result of a careless remark it was thought that Kazuko was having an affair with an artist called Mr Hosoda. During the end of the war Kazuko had worked in a camp, 'What a dreary business the war was' she surmises.

They learn that Naoji is alive, and when he returns out of the blue, mother's condition deteriorates, Naoji heads straight for the local inn. They also learn that Naoji has become addicted to opium, a habit he had started at school, in imitation of a certain novelist. Kazuko's days are spent tending her mother and knitting, a pale pink wool she uses contrasts with the greyness of the sky, in a descriptive passage I really admired. Whilst her brother is away in Tokyo drinking with novelist Uehara, (this character seems to be the one that could resemble Dazai the most), she decides to tidy her brother's things that are still in the moving crates, she picks up one of his diaries entitled, 'Moonflower Journal', and starts to read what he has written. It could be said that Naoji's character reminds us of Dazai too, Naoji's writing could be seen as being very Dazai like, 'Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings', he states in his polemic like entry. As her mother's condition worsens, the doctor's diagnosis that it's T.B and she passes away some days later. Kazuko's increasing anxiety grows, not knowing where things will end up, piece by piece, she has had to sell the family's belongings to get by, her attempt at addressing the problem is by writing letters to Uehara, imploring him to let her become his mistress, she wants his child, she had briefly met him before, whilst trying to sort out her brothers debt with the chemists, and their meeting had ended with him kissing her.

Through depicting the decline of an aristocratic family, themes familiar with those of many of Dazai's stories and novels appear, alienation, isolation, his character's struggle to fit in with society at large, in Naoji, who's use of drink and drugs is an attempt to disguise his inability to live, this soon wears out, he, like Yozo in No Longer Human sees only hypocrisy in the society around him. Although reading Dazai can be a saddening experience, his writing has an inspiriting quality to it. Something I find strange in Dazai's novels, is his character's observations on religion, which is usually the Christian religion, something I'd like to find out more about, Phyllis I.Lyons - The Saga of Dazai Osamu, a book I'd like to read, may offer an explanation. Sixty odd years on from when they were first published, Dazai's novels offer a chronicle of the times he lived in, from an inner perspective and to an extent in this novel an objective one, the dilemmas that face many of his characters still finds a validity in today's world.


New Directions

Shayo (movie trailer)

No Longer Human

With a new film adaption of No Longer Human/Ningen shikkaku on the way, also a full length animation, I thought it was time to read Dazai's novel. The novel is made up of three notebooks, the third being in two parts. Widely regarded as Dazai's masterpiece, Yozo's story runs parallel in parts with Dazai's life story, first published in 1948 just after his death, the novel is the second best selling novel in Japan, Kokoro,  by Soseki apparently is the first. Translated by Donald Keene who also writes the introduction in which he points out that critics of 'The Setting Sun' never referred to his writing as 'exquisite', I guess he means what I have read in other criticism that some writers could be seen as using 'exoticism' in their writing. Keene also points out that in No Longer Human, the influence of Western writers on Dazai is evident, there is not many direct references to Japanese culture in the book at all, Yozo lends a copy of 'I am a Cat' to one of his cousins, and mentions that he never really liked sushi, that's about it.

The story of Yozo is very much the story of Dazai's, born into a large family, being brought up on a country estate, his father a politician, not being able to fit in with the people around him, constantly playing the clown to avoid scrutiny, somehow knowing that to enter into the deceitful realm of the adult world, doom will not be far away, the novel is a polemic against society, and Dazai's constant battering and confusions at the relationship between the individual and society,trying to decipher how each influence each other, the drunken dialogue's between Yozo and Horiki I found particularly intriguing, as well as his thoughts on religion. Yozo makes his way to Tokyo and art school, but spends most of his time drinking with Horiki, and the descent into alcoholism, which leads to his drug addiction begins. He has a brief flirtation with a left wing party, which he has no real great commitment to, Yozo constantly sees the farcical in things,and for this reason he always remains outside. Happiness is something which appears to be at an impossible distance away, unobtainable. After surviving a suicide pact he had with a woman who died, he's cut off from the family and lodges with a friend of the family, but soon runs back to his drinking companion Horiko, the novel covers the events of Dazai's life.

It reads very much like a fictionalized autobiography, but you get the feeling when reading Dazai that he's keeps himself distant from the narrative, but the sense of honesty in his books is immediately disarming. Yozo appears to be a character with many flaws, and through the cracks, perhaps you can see a glimpse of the fragile state of Dazai's thought and emotions. For quite some time I'd read about Dazai, but could never fathom what his books would be like to read, I think 'The Setting Sun' is a work in a different direction which I'd like to explore soon.

New Directions

Self Portraits

'Self Portraits' is a collection of eighteen semi autobiographical stories by Osamu Dazai, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy, who also provides a great introduction and biographical notes at the start of each of these stories. Dazai is probably best known for his two novels 'No Longer Human' 1948 and 'The Setting Sun' 1947. Dazai is described as the enfant terrible of Japanese Literature, who had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the literary establishment, although he found a mentor in Masuji Ibuse, and had forays with the Communist Party, (illegal in his day). This year is the centenary of Dazai's birth, Osamu Dazai being a pen name, he was actually born Tsushima Shuji, in 1909, into a large, wealthy farming family, but from these stories you get the impression that from an early age he found it difficult to fit in. His father died when he was fourteen, and the death of Akutagawa in 1927 affected him dramatically, he began to neglect his high school studies, spending more time at his story writing. In 'My Elder Brothers', Dazai gives us a glimpse of his childhood with his brothers, their attempts at starting a literary magazine, Bunji, the eldest son, became head of the family after the death of their father, and would control Dazai's financial allowance from the family, which Dazai would usually squander away on booze. Two of Dazai's brother's died early, Reiji died of septicemia and Keiji died of tuberculosis. Dazai returns to his relationship with Bunji in the later story 'Garden', when he had to return to the family home, after the house where he was staying in Kofu was bombed.

Covering the major events in Dazai's life, marriage, betrayals, suicide attempts, evacuation from Tokyo during the bombing raids, the house in Kofu where he and his family was staying, that was hit by a bomb, (Early Light), his plan of burying everyday necessities in the garden proved to be a good plan. It also includes pieces on everyday foibles and experiences, like his fear of dogs, and an account of being invited back to a gathering in his home town, which turned into a drunken disaster. 'Merry Christmas' written in 1946 is a moving story of a chance encounter of bumping into the daughter of woman he used to know, Dazai names his character as 'Kasai'. He relates how during the war it was difficult to find booze and that somehow the girls mother always managed to have something to offer him whenever he called. He used to sit with her and get drunk, the daughter seems evasive when Kasai asks after her mother, he decides that he wants to pay her a visit, and when they reach her apartment he calls out her name. The daughter finally tells Kasai that her mother died in the air raids in Hiroshima, and that before she died she cried out his name.

 

One of the larger pieces is 'One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji', the same name as Hokusai's famous series of pictures. It mainly covers the period when Dazai stayed at Tenka Chaya, a tea house near Mt Fuji, in a series of vignettes Dazai offers up moments when the mountain appeared to him, sitting up all night drinking sake, after a 'certain persons' shocking confession, at dawn he went to relieve himself, and through the mesh covering the window he saw a pure white Fuji, standing in the dark little room, stroking the mesh screen and weeping with despair, he recounts. Also after drinking with a group of students, walking home he looses his coin purse, irrate at first, Fuji soon works it's magic on him, and calmly he retraces his steps and finds his purse.

At the beginning of the short piece 'I Can Speak' there's a little question that seemed to stick with me as soon as I had read it, Dazai, or his character asks, 'What is life-the struggle to surrender?, The endurance of misery?', particularly the first bit ' - the struggle to surrender', it seems to capture, for me anyway, how Dazai may have lived his life which is caught in this collection. Dazai is one of those writers that manages to write down any aspect of life's experience and imbue it with something utterly original, through his own struggling, he seems to point to just how important individuality is, no experience is wasted in his writing, as indeed it should be in life.

Recently Aomori Art Museum held an exhibition, celebrating the centenary of Dazai's birth, download the pdf of the handbill to see some examples of Dazai's painting. Also a film to watch out for is 'Villon's Wife' based on one of his short stories, starring Asano Tadanobu and Matsu Takako, you can see a trailer at the film's website.

Contents of Self Portraits -


My Elder Brothers
Train
Female
Seascape with Figures in Gold
No Kidding
A Promise Fulfilled
One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji
I Can Speak
A Little Beauty
Canis Familiaris
Thinking of Zenzo
Eight Scenes from Tokyo
Early Light
Garden
Two Little Words
Merry Christmas
Handsome Devils and Cigarettes
Cherries