Osamu Dazai is one of Japan's most influential and enigmatic literary figures. During his short and turbulent life, he wrote with extraordinary candor about alienation, existential anxiety and despair, leaving behind a body of work that has become a touchstone of modern Japanese literature. This month, in a feature article, we revisit his life, work and legacy.

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— Callie Beusman, Editorial Director

Osamu Dazai: The Edge of Life

Dazai’s No Longer Human opens with the following line: “Mine has been a life of shame. I can’t even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being.” This establishes the tone for a tragic, semi-autobiographical confession told through the notebooks of the protagonist as he descends into physical and psychological ruin.

The author’s own life was marked by repeated suicide attempts and struggles with addiction. The same preoccupations that haunted him — alienation, self-loathing, despair and the search for meaning — also came to define his fiction, blurring the line between lived experience and literary invention.

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