Between emotive TikToks and unexpected fandom as a character in the manga and anime “Bungo Stray Dogs,” unpacking Osamu Dazai’s ongoing wave of renewed popularity nearly a century after the author’s works were first published is a challenge. The reasons are nearly as complex as the man himself.
Although recognized in literary circles outside Japan ever since translator Donald Keene introduced him to the West in the late 1950s, Dazai’s works have been enjoying a new boom in the past decade. In the past two years, new translations of novels “No Longer Human,” “The Setting Sun,” two novellas “Flowers of Buffoonery” and “The Beggar Student” and two short story collections have all come out, by translators including Juliet Winters Carpenter, Sam Bett and Ralph McCarthy.
Retrograde, by Osamu Dazai. Translated by Leo Elizabeth Takada. 128 pages, ONE PEACE BOOKS, fiction.
That’s partly to do with his work falling out of copyright, making Dazai a cheaper option to publish, as well as with the overall surge of popularity of Japanese literature. However, while other Japanese authors, such as Kenji Miyazawa and Ranpo Edogawa, have also been featured on “Bungo Stray Dogs” and have their work out of copyright, no other writer is enjoying a renaissance of readership like Dazai.
The latest Dazai release, “Retrograde,” is a trio of short stories lyrically translated by bilingual poet Leo Elizabeth Takada and out this month from One Peace Books. The collection shows experimental flair and sensitivity, yet another side of this versatile writer.
“Since the stories are chosen from early in his career, we’re trying to reveal the young Dazai, struggling with his own writing and identity, but also Dazai as a stylist,” says One Peace editor Eric Margolis, who also contributes to The Japan Times.
Showcasing the emerging talents of the youthful Dazai in “Retrograde” is a savvy choice, particularly given the strong interest from younger readers who seek relatability.
Takada says she didn’t know about the internet hype around Dazai before accepting the translation work, her first venture into literary prose after translating poetry and film, most recently Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated film “Perfect Days.” However, the author’s voice and a lack of distance between the reader and writer attracted her.
“There’s a strange closeness you feel when reading Dazai, as if you know him, as if he’s speaking directly to you off the page, as a friend... that sometimes annoying friend,” says Takada. “He’s not writing with an authoritative voice. He doesn’t try to teach you or tell you the answer. He simply suffers alongside you.”
The three stories in the “Retrograde” collection — “Retrograde,” “Das Gemeine” and “Blossom-Leaves and the Spirit Whistle” — all share the common appeal of a familiar narrative voice yet are each stylistically distinct: The first, an examination of a life told backward; the second, an ironic, madcap look at artistic fame and infatuation; and the last, a whimsical tale of sisterly love.
This stylistic virtuosity is unquestionably one reason for his renewed popularity, but it’s more than his approachable, diverse style.
The paradox of humanity, a “beauty of weakness” as Dazai called it in his essays and letters, runs through most of his works. Making seamless connections between desire and defilement, ridicule and hope, he writes with a nihilistic compassion, a wry mockery of the absurdity and darkness in human nature.
Dazai’s dramatic life and death also attract attention and add a perpetually youthful mystique, “akin to pop culture’s ‘27 club,’” says Takada, referring to celebrities such as Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse dying when they were 27. Though Dazai was not 27 but 38 when he died, the myriad ways where his reality and art overlapped — deliberately, mockingly — adds to his appeal.
His first suicide attempt, in Kamakura with a young woman who drowned while Dazai was saved, is detailed in “No Longer Human,” his cult classic about the tortured Yozo Oba.
Ultimately, in 1948, Dazai and his lover, Tomie Yamazaki, drowned themselves — his fifth and final suicide attempt. By the time their bodies were dragged out of the rain-swollen canal near his home in western Tokyo’s Mitaka, the final installment of “No Longer Human” had just been published in a magazine.
While “No Longer Human” is known for its themes of depression and social alienation, translator Bett thinks humor is essential to understanding the writer’s full appeal.
“The popularity of ‘No Longer Human’ in some ways overshadows a part of Dazai’s brilliance,” Bett says. “One of its main thematic ideas is that you can be a clown on the outside and really tortured on the inside. In a lot of his earlier work, Dazai’s focus is less about the torture inside and more about the expression of the farce on the outside.”
David Boyd, who is currently working on a new translation of “No Longer Human” for Penguin Classics, says, “Dazai is so direct, so vulnerable. He takes us to some very dark places, of course, but I think Sam’s recent translations have shown us other, lesser-known sides of Dazai, too — especially how funny he was.”
“There’s a certain type of intelligence and bravery in Dazai that goes beyond being a good writer,” says Bett. “He gives a fair accounting of humanity by being a fair critic to himself. There’s no villains or heroes in his works, and I think, if we’re honest, most people in our lives are just like that, including ourselves. At times, the farce of humanity can be nauseating and hopeless. At times, it can feel like the greatest show on Earth.”
Ultimately, the thing with Dazai is that, love him or hate him, the man himself would probably agree. It’s his very contradictions and vulnerabilities, perhaps — his humanity — that create and sustain his appeal. Dazai will always be authentically and inescapably Dazai.
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