Self-Portraits

“Art dies the moment it acquires authority.” So said Japan’s quintessential rebel writer Osamu Dazai, who, disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment, from the nation’s obsolete aristocracy to its posturing, warmongering generals, went his own way, even when that meant his death—and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform, he declared his individuality to the world—in all its self-involved, self-conscious, and self-hating glory. “Art,” he wrote, “is ‘I.’” In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare, in his works, the painful, impossible contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life—fit in and do as you are told—as well as the possibility, however desperate, of defiance. Long out of print, these stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, and Flowers of Buffoonery.