The Setting Sun (斜陽 Shayō), translated by Donald Keene. Norfolk, Connecticut, James Laughlin, 1956. (Japanese publication: 1947). No Longer Human (人間失格 Ningen Shikkaku), translated by Donald Keene. Norfolk, Connecticut, New Directions Publishers, 1958.

Wolfe, Alan Stephen (2014-07-14). Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6100-2.The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality . . . but fully embodying it is another matter,” the schoolgirl confesses. The hyperbole of her teenage angst is at least in part a stand-in for a larger struggle between the individual and society:

The sly ability to steal someone else's experience and recreate it as if it were my own is the only real talent I possess. Really, though, my guile is so bogus as to be offensive. If I were to experience failure upon failure day after day—nothing but total embarrassment—then perhaps I'd develop some semblance of dignity as a result. But no, I would somehow illogically twist even such failures, gloss over them smoothly, so that it would seem like they had a perfectly good theory behind them. And I would have no qualms about putting on a desperate show to do so.” Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late. The thought occurred to me as I lay there. You wait and wait for happiness, and when finally you can't bear it any longer, you rush out of the house, only to hear later that a marvelous happiness arrived the following day at the home you had abandoned, and now it was too late. Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late.” The body had no connection to my mind, it developed on its own accord, which was unbearable and bewildering. It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it. In the 1930s and 1940s, Dazai wrote a number of subtle novels and short stories that are autobiographical in nature. His first story, Gyofukuki (魚服記, "Transformation", 1933), is a grim fantasy involving suicide. Other stories written during this period include Dōke no hana (道化の花, "Flowers of Buffoonery", 1935), Gyakkō (逆行, "Losing Ground", 1935), Kyōgen no kami (狂言の神, "The God of Farce", 1936), an epistolary novel called Kyokō no Haru (虚構の春, False Spring, 1936) and those published in his 1936 collection Bannen ( Declining Years or The Final Years), which describe his sense of personal isolation and his debauchery.

Schoolgirl has been compared to Catcher in the Rye, and the parallels are obvious. For Schoolgirl’s young observer of the world, almost everything is depressing (she might say “lousy”), from her crippled dog (“I cant stand how poor and pathetic he is, and because of that I am cruel to him”) to her mother’s friends. The narrator’s father has recently died, and though she only considers the loss briefly, it clearly weighs on her:

tomorrow will probably be another day like today. happiness will never come my way. i know that. but it's probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come. Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve. Oh,” Bir dilek hakkım olsa Dazai'nin yüzlerce kitabı olmasına mı yoksa Markus Zusak ile görüşmeye mi harcardım bazı geceler uzun uzun bunu düşünüyorum. Nasıl mı delirdik? İşte böyle. Ne mogu da verujem da je ovo napisao muškarac i ne mogu da verujem da je moguće ovako perfektno predstaviti introspekciju i bujicu misli koje se smenjuju (u svakome od nas u toku dana). Alex Turner bi rekao 𝐵𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑒, 𝑚𝑎𝑛, 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡, a „Učenica“ će nas svojim digresijama provozati kroz naša sopstvena osećanja, (tinejdžerske) nesigurnosti i anksioznosti, brige o toku života, kao i kroz večitu potragu za svrhom i smislom.Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. In the immediate postwar period, Dazai reached the height of his popularity. He depicted a dissolute life in postwar Tokyo in Viyon no Tsuma (ヴィヨンの妻, "Villon's Wife", 1947), depicting the wife of a poet who had abandoned her and her continuing will to live through hardships.

Kitabı okurken koskocaman, ama çok buruk bir tebessüm yüzümden hiç gitmedi. Sanırım şimdiye kadar düşünce biçimini ve akışını kendiminkine bu denli yakın hissettiğim bir karakter olmamıştı, bu sebeple okumaktan çok dertleşmeye yakın bir deneyim oldu. Çerezlik bir okuma niyetiyle başlamıştım ama incecik hâlinden hiç beklenmeyecek kadar etkiledi beni. Japonlar pek çerezlik yazmayı tercih etmiyorlar galiba zaten, ya da bana denk gelmedi henüz. :)Regardless of how short the story is, Dazai had achieved a good level of depth through the mind of the main character, a nameless schoolgirl, who is on the verge of becoming a woman. The contradictions which her character displayed throughout the story alongside her daydreams and judgements on people had made her real as well as a little bit difficult to understandーwhich, of course, is only to be expected of someone at this stage of their life. Moreover, Dazai's depiction of her struggle in overcoming the death of her father felt so realistic. How she did her best everyday to please her mother as she continued to play the role of "the good girl" was emotional. I also sympathized with her mother, whose job must have made it worse for her. Aside from that, I appreciate how rich and inventive the language is. Dazai's writing style is splendid! As a whole, it was a good read. On June 13, 1948, Dazai and Tomie drowned themselves in the rain-swollen Tamagawa Canal, near his house. Their bodies were not discovered until six days later, on June 19, which would have been his 39th birthday. His grave is at the temple of Zenrin-ji, in Mitaka, Tokyo. Words don’t come easy out of your mind and those exact ones which may express what we actually feel are even harder to come by; to have congruity between our thoughts and our words is a rare skill. However, one may not able to put forth the exact words but one may use simple, harmless, docile words to create an atmosphere of enigma to express one’s feelings. It may sound quite simple but had it been so then we might not have been reading Dazai. Schoolgirl is the Dazai’s second book which I read after No Longer Human. We don’t necessarily have a preamble to a book/ its review but it often adds a depth and understanding that is otherwise impossible. Well, in case of Osamu Dazai an introduction might be of great help since he belongs to those authors who write to express their thoughts and feelings per se; his understanding of human psychology, feelings of different stages of human life is second to none. And his own life – his troublesome life, drug addictions, and suicide attempts- adds semi-autobiographical traits to his works and Schoolgirl is no exception here, even though when narrator of the book is a girl. The reader may not be able to get away with an inevitable feeling that Osamu Dazai is perhaps not only the story teller but also a participant here- as it is the case with most of the books by Dazai. The themes woven into the woof and weft of his literary tapestries were so obviously cut from the fabric of his life that even when he assumed the guise of a mawkish female schoolgirl, readers have no trouble seeing through the flimsy veneer. The close connection between Dazai’s life and almost any of his works is immediately apparent, although as an artist he naturally did not confine himself to a mere recounting of autobiographical details. Schoolgirl depicts the story of a young girl who seems to be in conflict with not only her class but also with her emotions, which are so often juxtaposed with how she is supposed to behave. The author did a good job in my opinion at giving a soon to be adult school girls perspective of life. Read more