Osamu Dazai

Novel of present day Japan. Reaction of an upper-class family to the war and the resultant cultural impact.

The Setting Sun

𓂃 𓈒𓏸

“As long as you love me, all I want is to spend my whole life by your side.”

This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. 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.

bianca

I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.

I should have died sooner. But there was one thing: Mama’s love. When I thought of that I couldn’t die. It’s true, as I have said, that just as man has the right to live as he chooses, he has the right to die when he pleases, and yet as long as my mother remained alive, I felt that the right to death would have to be left in abeyance, for to exercise it would have meant killing her too.

I cannot think of the slightest reason why I should have to go on living. 

Only those who wish to go on living should.

Just as a man has the right to live, he ought also to have the right to die.

Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness—they’re heartbreaking. Whenever you can hear the gloomy sighs of woe from the four walls around you, you know that there’s not a chance of happiness existing just for you.

There was something wrong about these people. But perhaps, just as it is true of my love, they could not go on living except in the way they do. If it is true that man, once born into the world, must somehow live out his life, perhaps the appearance that people make in order to go through with it, even if it is as ugly as their appearance, should not be despised. To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension.

“I don’t understand the world.” Mother turned her face away. She spoke in a low voice, almost to herself.

“I don’t either. I wonder if anyone does. We all remain children, no matter how much time goes by. We don’t understand anything.”

I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once one has exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness—if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now.

I spent the whole of the next day close to Mother’s bedside, knitting. I am much faster than most people at knitting or sewing, but not very proficient at it. Mother used always to point out place after place in my knitting that was poorly done. That day I did not feel particularly like knitting, but I took out my box of yarn and for appearance’s sake, so that Mother would not think it strange that I spent all my time glued to her bedside, began to knit with a determination that suggested I had no other thought in the world.

Mother stared at my hands. “You’re making socks for yourself, aren’t you? Don’t forget, unless you increase the length by eight they’ll be tight when you wear them.”

When I was a child I could never knit properly, no matter how much Mother helped me, and now I discovered myself just as upset as I used to get then, only to be swept by nostalgia at the thought that this was the last time that Mother would ever guide me. I could not see my knitting for the tears.

A sensation of helplessness, as if it were utterly impossible to go on living. Painful waves beat relentlessly on my heart, as after a thunderstorm the white clouds frantically scud across the sky. A terrible emotion—shall I call it an apprehension—wrings my heart only to release it, makes my pulse falter, and chokes my breath. At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips.

To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.

Thus every day, from morning to night, I wait in despair for something. I wish I could be glad that I was born, that I am alive, that there are people and a world.

When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn’t write a novel, people said I couldn’t write. When I acted like a liar, they called me a liar. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering.

For the first time in my life I realized what a horrible, miserable, salvationless hell it is to be without money. My heart filled with emotion, but I was in such anguish that the tears would not come. I wondered if the feeling I experienced then was what people mean by the well-worn phrase “dignity of human life.” I lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling incapable of the slightest motion, my body stiff as a stone.

“He’s all right. Naoji’s all right. Scoundrels like Naoji simply don’t die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. Naoji wouldn’t die even if you clubbed him with a stick.”

 Mother smiled. “Then I suppose that you’ll die an early death.” She was teasing me.

“Why should I? I’m bad and ugly both! I’m good for eighty years!”

“Really? In that case, your mother is good for ninety!”

“Yes,” I said, a little perplexed. Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young. Mother is beautiful. But I want her to live a long time. I was at a loss what to say. “You are being difficult,” I protested. My lower lip began to tremble, and tears brimmed over.

eleanthi 

It’s no use. I'm going. I cannot think of the slightest reason why I should have to go on living. Only those who wish to go on living should. Just as a man has the right to live, he ought also to have the right to die.

morgan

If because of love I were to swear to obey without fail these teachings of Jesus, to the very letter, I wonder if He would condemn me. Why is physical love bad and spiritual love good? I don’t understand. I can’t help feeling that they are the same. I would like to boast that I am she who could destroy her body and soul in Gehenna for the sake of a love, for the sake of a passion she could not understand, or for the sake of the sorrow they engendered.

Took me forever to finish this idk why I really liked no longer human but I’ve been so stuck with this one 

Kat 

felt empathy towards Kazuko’s feelings of longing and the flashbacks as a way of fleshing out the identities of the character truly made each one feel really whole

Lettuce Wrapped Cabbage Cat

This is what happened when a high born aristocrats fell into addiction which result in poverty and whining about it and is very meta of dazai. the dying mother is a metaphor for dazai aristocracy's slow suicide 

solitones

斜陽

Setting Sun, The

azliana aziz

i feel like the triumph of this book is in the sophistication of the form that goes hand in hand with the themes of identities and persona. fumiko enchi crafted her story adroitly and in true matter of fact affection but still managed to be prickly as hell.


am actually pretty mad at myself for reading this one only now.

Not a match for “No Longer Human”, I found this bleakness in this story less poignant.  

Xiang

tragic figures. awfully flawed. will tug at ur heartstrings all the same whether or not the layers r uncovered.

weli 

Ismail 

** spoiler alert **
            Dazai's "tension toward the ground" is expressed most vividly in the concluding scene of the story. Kazuko tells Uehara that she has just one favor to ask of him. She wishes for his wife, Suga, to hold Uehara's child by Kazuko in her arms- "even once will do" and let Kazuko say to her "Naoji secretly had this child from a certain woman.." She is not sure her-self why and asks him not to request an explanation. Dazai takes us here into the area that Joseph Campbell calls "where words turn back." It is an area of creative mythology where Dazai draws on Christian as well as traditional Japanese sources. Prior to her one last request, and in the same last letter to Uehara, Kazuko tells him that "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." As the child is biologically Kazuko's by Uehara,it is spiritually Suga's by Naoji.

Dazai because of his own struggles in life he has found a way to portray the world in its true form.He portrays the miserable life that someone can experience, someone that is constantly trying to find a will to live. In this book he portrays it beautifully.This novel set in the early postwar years tells the story of the main character Kazuko and her family of a mother and brother former aristocrats that live now in poverty.Kazuko not having found a person to truly love which is a thing she really yearns to,is trying to overcome the struggles in life as she lives in a nation of social and moral crisis.She is constantly doubting if there is a point in living and desires to discover love at the same time as taking care of her sick and slowly dying mother.Someone who Kazuko has never been able to get along with, that in my interpretation, is just another tragic hero of this story that struggles to go on with his own life is her brother. Naoji her brother having gone to war, and being a drug addict slowly converting into alcoholism is shown as arrogant and as someone who doesn’t care a about his family but portrayed having his own struggles

I really liked this book

Dazai because of his own struggles in life he has found a way to portray the world in its true form.He portrays the miserable life that someone can experience, someone that is constantly trying to find a will to live. In this book he portrays it beautifully.This novel set in the early postwar years tells the story of the main character Kazuko and her family of a mother and brother former aristocrats that live now in poverty.Kazuko not having found a person to truly love which is a thing she really yearns to,is trying to overcome the struggles in life as she lives in a nation of social and moral crisis.She is constantly doubting if there is a point in living and desires to discover love at the same time as taking care of her sick and slowly dying mother.Someone who Kazuko has never been able to get along with, that in my interpretation, is just another tragic hero of this story that struggles to go on with his own life is her brother. Naoji her brother having gone to war, and being a drug addict slowly converting into alcoholism is shown as arrogant and as someone who doesn’t care a about his family but portrayed having his own struggles

This book has a very nice flow to it. It also contains some of the most beautyful passages i have ever read. Made me cry. Truly reccomend ;)

Martina

This work depicts the decline of the Japanese nobility after World War II. It focuses on Kazuko and her brother 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. Through the character Naoji, the author brings up a number of social and philosophical problems of that time.

The story was poignant, heart-wrenching. Dazai Osamu is really great in weaving sorrow and depression through subtle violence but humane in nature. Sometimes a change is a fearsome thing to face.

Gilbert

my first book of the year, and my third book from osamu dazai. one thing that will never fail to amaze me when i pick up anything from dazai is that how much i feel for the characters he write about. it's absurd of how i can actually feel the pain about the grief he writes, of having to sit beside your beloved mother that has always favoured the other sibling despite how much you've done for her, yet you are still the less half. i have to say that his works have become more of a personal effect that has taken upon me, and taken comfort in my very core.

maia

on the last day of the cursed year that is 2022, i did not expect to pick this up and like it 

. i did not, after all, enjoy 'no longer human' all that much*.

'the setting sun' is a reflection of the dusk of japanese aristocracy and the struggle of the upper echelons to adjust to the new times. i am rare to sympathise with the aristocracy - however, dazai's depection is incredibly empathetic to the point where one cannot help but be immersed within the struggles of kazuko and her family.

the novel is an excellent and gripping (in spite of its shortness) family drama that represents a pivotal moment of japanese history.

*perhaps having a female character as the p.o.v. helped lessen the moments of misogyny which lets the reader immerse themself better into the novel.

on the last day of the cursed year that is 2022, i did not expect to pick this up and like it this much. i did not, after all, enjoy 'no longer human' all that much*.

'the setting sun' is a reflection of the dusk of japanese aristocracy and the struggle of the upper echelons to adjust to the new times. i am rare to sympathise with the aristocracy - however, dazai's depection is incredibly empathetic to the point where one cannot help but be immersed within the struggles of kazuko and her family.

the novel is an excellent and gripping (in spite of its shortness) family drama that represents a pivotal moment of japanese history.

*perhaps having a female character as the p.o.v. helped lessen the moments of misogyny which lets the reader immerse themself better into the novel.

Hellboy TCR

Novel takes a turn for the worse in chapter 4, I have no clue why. I tried one more chapter. Done.

this book is kind of boring. i like dazai’s writing style, but his novels tend to be more intrapersonal than plot based. 

The Setting Sun

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