Birthdate: 19. June 1909
Date of death: 13. June 1948
Other names: אוסאמו דאזאי, اوسامو دازای, Дадзай Осаму
Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as The Setting Sun and No Longer Human , are considered modern-day classics in Japan. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
One such literary work, No Longer Human, has received quite a few adaptations: a film directed by Genjiro Arato, the first four episodes of the anime series Aoi Bungaku, and a manga serialized in Shinchosha's Comic Bunch magazine. While Dazai continues to be widely celebrated in Japan, he remains relatively unknown elsewhere with only a handful of his novels available in English.
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
Source: No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
The Third Notebook:Part Two
No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book The Setting Sun
Source: The Setting Sun
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
The Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
The Second Notebook
No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This is how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror of the illusion of the ocean called the world. I learned to behave rather aggressively, without the endless anxious worrying I knew before, responding as it were to the needs of the moment.
Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
Source: No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
Third Notebook: Part One
Source: No Longer Human
— Osamu Dazai, book The Setting Sun
Source: The Setting Sun
— Osamu Dazai, book No Longer Human
Source: No Longer Human
