The Setting Sun

Rating:
Summary: Gently slowed me down.
Review: Dazai's style is so different from that of western writers that I at first felt annoyed with his style. Having read Dower's Embracing Defeat and seeing the anime Grave of the Fireflies, I started to develop an appreciaiton of the state of post World War II Japan. The common Japanese were zombified and trying to make sense of the new order. The far left was becoming appealing as were various cults.

Dazai tells the story of a 30 year old woman from the upper class who has lost everything. She moves with her ailing mother and opium addicted brother to the country side where she falls in love with a novelist who is a friend of here brothers and married.

The pace of the story and lack of a final climax frustrated me at times, but the challenge of adjusting to the novel made a more intimate impression on me.

Rating:
Summary: Gently slowed me down.
Review: Dazai's style is so different from that of western writers that I at first felt annoyed with his style. Having read Dower's Embracing Defeat and seeing the anime Grave of the Fireflies, I started to develop an appreciaiton of the state of post World War II Japan. The common Japanese were zombified and trying to make sense of the new order. The far left was becoming appealing as were various cults.

Dazai tells the story of a 30 year old woman from the upper class who has lost everything. She moves with her ailing mother and opium addicted brother to the country side where she falls in love with a novelist who is a friend of here brothers and married.

The pace of the story and lack of a final climax frustrated me at times, but the challenge of adjusting to the novel made a more intimate impression on me.

Rating:
Summary: Dazai's Twilight, and then Darkness
Review: I read this novel when I was eighteen. Now I'm thirty three. I have been reading this novel every year. Gazuko, the narrator of this novel, is one of the most beautiful and courageous heroins ever created. Beautiful and sad. That's life. Maybe sad and beautiful... This is the novel for people who think that's what life is.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, yet Brilliant
Review: Osamu Dazai's greatest sin was honesty, and an equal love of decadence mixed with self loathing. He was a genius, a rebel, a drug addict, a rebel of aristocratic means who disgraced his family often through seedy, sometimes politically verbotten company... a man deeply disturbed (his hobby seemed to be to be attempting suicide, often with his lovers, and until the last effort, in which he drowned himself, were only half succesful... literally.) His two great novels reflected his troubles and innermost thoughts... psychologically, they are dark, disturbing, yet enlightening. Culturally, the self indulgence of such dialogue was equally shocking, though some have suggested that Dazai's outer word reflects the inner most soul of the Japanese. - - I spent four years in Japan, often traveling through the urban landscape of Tokyo, often taking the train to work passing over the banks of the same river where his body washed up (shortly after the war on his 39th birthday), and though 50 years after the fact, in time began to gain an even deeper appreciation for his writings -- however, this is not a mere "Japanese" novel. Osamu Dazai, afterall, was the Japanese Albert Camus - - whimsical as well, and who painted pictures with words as greatly as Akira Kurasawa painted pictures on the screen. Though a tragic novel, it is absorbing, and so well refreshing, rather than leaving one feeling disgusted, one thinks hard, is angered, then finally may feel awakened.

Rating:
Summary: A great work in its own right
Review: Simply an excellent book. One can not read this book and not marvel and Dazai's superb skill as a story-teller. Some consider The Setting Sun to be a "lesser work" than No Longer Human. Sure, whatever. The Setting Sun stands on its own, and is very much a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: A great work in its own right
Review: Simply an excellent book. One can not read this book and not marvel and Dazai's superb skill as a story-teller. Some consider The Setting Sun to be a "lesser work" than No Longer Human. Sure, whatever. The Setting Sun stands on its own, and is very much a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Dazai at His Best
Review: The Setting Sun is no longer an unknown novel for the Western reader, but one should keep in mind that Shayou is, even today, one of the most popular Japanese novels. Basically a portrait of a society in an acute need for change, The Setting Sun is both a reflection of Dazai's period of Marxist activism and, probably, the most interesting illustration of the 'shishousetsu' (the I novel). Just like those in No Longer Human (Ningen shikkaku), the characters in The Setting Sun are Dazai's images of hiw own self. Kazuko, the revolted self, the one waiting for the revolution and for the violent change of the society, decided to defide the rules (she will choose to have a baby, even if not married - a perfectly normal thing nowadays, but not in the Japanese society, back in the 40's), Naoji, her brother, the defeated self, who will choose the suicide, exactly as Dazai himself will do and, of course, Uehara, the writer, the type of the Dazaisesque artist. A novel about a family (meant to represent the whole society, in the light of Lenin's idea about the family being 'the basic cell of the society' - after all, Dazai must have read some of Lenin's works while activ in the communist underground movement, in the 30's) which comes to its extinction. A masterpiece on Dazai's idea of revolte and revolution.