Chuuya’s character is an inexhaustible spring. I can’t describe the joy I get out of writing such a deep, intricate character and then having everyone read about him.
dazai looks up from his game. chuuya stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets, eyes shifty and biting his lower lip. dazai hits pause, grins.
“awww, is chuuya going to cook for me?”
“wha- huh? no, fuck off, i’m not your maid. ’m just thinking of ordering something.”
dazai makes a face. “you’re subjecting me to the foul thing that is takeout? your cruelty knows no bounds. a good dog would make me a properly balanced meal that is perfectly tailored to my tastes.”
“call me your dog one more fucking time,” chuuya says, though it’s only half-hearted. he seems distracted. “i don’t have time for this- do you want something or not?”
dazai waves his hand. “just get me whatever you’re having. i don’t care either way.”
“of course you don’t,” chuuya scoffs. “you’re paying me back though.”
“hey no fair, i didn’t even ask in the first place.”
“don’t worry i’ll just let you starve to death next time.”
“that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“freak.”
“only for you.”
//
an indiscernible amount of time passes, and dazai startles when chuuya dumps the plastic bag on the table next to him.
“the closest place didn’t have any crab meat, so i got you chicken katsu instead. don’t wait too long to eat it or it’ll get cold.”
dazai blinks at the food, then at chuuya, whose ears have turned a bright shade of red.
“thanks mom,” dazai says.
“haha you’re so go funny,” chuuya replies, deadpan, and storms off.
hours pass.
dazai forgets about it. it’s not on purpose. he never can tell when he’s hungry and eating is such an unnecessary inconvenience to his every day life. he only ever eats when forced, or when the hunger pangs become too strong to ignore.
“what the actual fuck.”
chuuya gets angry. it’s not his regular anger, where there’s no real heat behind it. there’s a faint red outline, and his hair is levitating ever so slightly. dazai raises an eyebrow.
“jesus calm down, it’s whatever, i’ll eat it now if that’ll make you happy.”
“no don’t fucking- it’s probably cold and might have gone bad and it definitely tastes gross, i’ll get some more.”
“it’s fine i swear—”
“god shut up for once!”
dazai can see his hands shaking. there’s anger in his voice, yes, but there’s also. fear. and hurt. huh. he’s never heard that from chuuya before. any other day, any other circumstance, and he would have pushed a little more, seen how far he could go. but chuuya’s not meeting his eyes and his hands are in fists and he almost looks like he’s about to cry. there’s no fun in that.
chuuya’s voice breaks. “just let me. let me order something else.”
“okay,” dazai says.
//
dazai doesn’t forget to eat it this time. he never forgets again, at least not when chuuya’s around.
dazai and akutagawa are parallels uniquely bound to each other for having had their similarly violent disregard for life displaced by the cunty sparkle in one's eye that comes from watching one's narrative foil wife be swallowed by a singularity only to pop back out carrying both (i) immense compassion for the pitiful man who bore and then became subsumed by such singularity; and (ii) the fierceness of heart and sense of self to wreck that singularity's shit.
that prior to the above, both dazai and akutagawa also fought alongside their narrative foil wives against transcendent skill users driven mad by grief in Fifteen and 55 Minutes respectively is like. another parallel. as was that time in Dead Apple when, within hours of each other, both dazai and akutawa's narrative foil wives exercised marked self possession over their respective abilities to kill two iterations of the same dragon that had cornered them into relinquishing to their abilities as children. and like, fuck it, the way dazai waxed poetic about his narrative foil wife's physics shattering ability to steinbeck as chuuya fought lovecraft and the way akutagawa waxed poetic about his narrative foil wife's physics shattering ability to ivan as atsushi fought ivan — in each case, admitting that their narrative foil wives can only shatter physics when dazai and akutagawa are there to enable them to do so (dazai because chuuya will be physically overwhelmed and killed without no longer human nullifying arahabaki; akutagawa because byakko's claws extend when wrapped in (or stirred by...) rashomon; chuuya and atsushi's divinity, in each case, emitting only when dazai and akutagawa are within reach).
In belated celebration of Nakajima Atsushi's birthday, please have some of my favorite details about irl!Atsushi from Nobuko Miyama Ochner's dissertation, Nakajima Atsushi: His Life and Work:
Nakajima loved his children, sometimes anxiously.
While homesick in Micronesia, Nakajima wrote to his wife that he wished he'd become so sick he'd pass out so that his unconscious body would be shipped home to Japan.
Nakajima became so upset when others were late that it would nearly trigger his asthma— which he kept to himself (except around his wife, for whom he was very much a wet cat).
Nakajima loved gardening immensely and took tender care of his flowers, even asking his wife to hold an umbrella over them to protect their blooms from the rain.
Nakajima also loved animals; he kept birds, befriended the neighborhood pets, and took his eldest son on walks to look at squirrels— each carrying a book in hand, of course.
The US entered WW2 while Nakajima was living in Micronesia. When Nakajima heard his first air raid warning, everyone else in the house at which Nakajima was staying took shelter in the mountains, including his host. But, when his host returned home, he found Nakajima still in the house, seemingly undisturbed and reading a book. Nakajima continued to read even as his host began to dig an air raid shelter under the kitchen floor. When his host (annoyed) asked what Nakajima wanted to do in the event an air raid were to occur, Nakajima calmly replied that he'd die with a book in his hand.
Nakajima loved his life and family in Yokohama very much and pined for them desperately while he was in Micronesia, although he suffered silently—
—except when writing to his wife, for whom he was, as always, her wet cat.
There are many other endearing details about Nakajima, like that he was a strict but cheerful teacher adored by his students, that he married his wife for love while still a college student despite then-cultural norms and their parents' opposition, that he admired a kind of spiritual richness above all qualities— but, I'd rather end on the anecdote that Nakajima once stayed up all night playing nearly forty (40) games of shogi (Japanese chess) with a neighbor, and he won every game. The neighbor did not visit him again.
Wondrous tags by @beautifulbisexualqueen hath summoned me to gush :3
I adore every single one of those so much. I never knew this man was so unbelievably wholesome in so many ways, and it all stems from the love for his family. To quote myself from when I was gushing with the sskk gangTM:
asagiri saying he's not going to make bsd characters completely off their irl counterparts because "they'd all be depressed drunkyards"
*makes atsushi a canonically lovable wet cat who loves his family who is also unintentionally hilarious and pathetically adorable*
(the wet cat analogy is still cracking me up)
It's crazy how much we look up to and idolize those famoue people, only to realize they are just normal humans like the rest of us, with their own silly antics and little imperfections.
It was also so important for me to learn that he had asthma because: 1) self-projection comfort go brrrr, and 2) it's very interesting in the meta play of author-character because Akutagawa was the one chosen to reflect his real life counterpart's illness and not Atsushi.
Oh that note, my dearest friend @gothicmatter is craving a deep dive medical (and i assume story significance too) analysis on Aku's sickness so umm if any professional in the field sees this - chop chop!
Awwwww!!!! I'm glad that you liked my tags @dancing-dawn! Sorry it took me too long to respond! I ran out of reblogs! Lol! You are soooo right about BSD Atsushi having so many similarities to his real-life counterpart! Both are lovable, unintentionally hilarious, and people who love their families deeply. I also find it fascinating that he married for love at a time when that wasn't common. But man, does it show through how much he loved his wife and how she was clearly his person. Also, as someone who comes from a family of asthma, I love that the real life him struggled with it! Having asthma isn't easy to deal with!
Yeah!!! Real historical figures that people idolize are also people, and it's sooo fascinating to see their humanity in their imperfections! It's one reason why I love history sooo much! People have been people since the beginning. It shows through our art, our writing, our own words, and more. We humans are so complex and can be sooo silly, too! But doesn't that make life worth it? People never fail to amaze me whenever I look at the lived experiences of people in history. People will never not fascinate me with our ability to survive even in less than ideal odds.
Interestingly enough, the real-life Akutagawa had mental health issues (like visual hallucinations and insomnia) that are similar to the BSD Atsushi (Akutagawa had a mother who had mental health issues like him). It actually influenced his sucide at the young age of 35. He was scared that he was sick like his mother. So interestingly, their real-life authors' health issues were switched between the two of them in BSD. Man, the real him is fascinating to examine. He is sooo messed up as a person, but sooo tragic at the same time! He died so young, and it's so clear that he needed more support for his mental/physical health issues at a time when a lot of those resources weren't available to him.
That analysis of Akutagawa that your friend is making sounds like it will be amazing! Definitely will check it out when it comes out! Also, that drawing with Atsushi and monopoly that you are planning to make sounds like it will be glorious! I look forward to seeing it! I trust your vision!
To clarify, @dancing-dawn and @beautifulbisexualqueen, bsd!Akutagawa and bsd!Atsushi's medical difficulties aren't switched.
bsd!Atsushi's hallucinations likely have significantly less to do with irl!Akutagawa's hallucinations, and more to do with bsd!Atsushi's implied CPTSD and irl!Atsushi's own philosophy and past (including his intense anxiety and vivid visualizations). They may also relate to the role of apparitions in Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari.
Also, while bsd!Atsushi doesn't have asthma like irl!Atsushi, Asagiri likely didn't just give irl!Atsushi's asthma to bsd!Akutagawa. According to irl!Akutagawa's doctors, he was chronically ill with pleurisy, which is a lung disease marked by shortness of breath, chest pain, and (sometimes) a cough; and which is caused by other, often more serious underlying conditions--details that Asagiri seems to have taken inspiration from for bsd!Akutagawa's terminal and chronic illness(es).
I've included details about (1) irl!Atsushi's philosophy and past, (2) the role of apparitions in Tales of Moonlight and Rain, and (3) irl!Akutagawa's health conditions (ft. a linked retrospective study on his health and suicide) below, along with some analysis of how each may relate to Asagiri's choices for the characters in bsd.
irl!Atsushi's Philosophy and Past
According to Ochner, cited above, "Nakajima seems to regard dream as indispensable to human existence." Ochner further observes, "[Distance] between the protagonist and the narrator is a device Nakajima used in order to portray a man consumed by an insidious malady of skepticism--self doubt, and doubt of the meaning of existence. The creation of a persona enabled Nakajima to telescope selected experiences from his past. [His characters are] a part of Nakajima, but only an aspect of him, intensified, as seen through the self-critical eye of the author."
While irl!Atsushi was not an orphan abused by a headmaster, he did have a tumultuous childhood marked by intense isolation and he experienced some cruelty from his stepmother. According to Ochner:
Atsushi was a lonely child.... He recollects in his adulthood that when he was very young he sometimes thought that everyone in the world except himself was a fox spirit disguised as a human being meant to deceive him....
Additionally, also according to Ochner, irl!Atsushi did experience some intense visualizations:
Nakajima tells us that when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, he was subjected to a nightmarish vision of the dying universe and the meaninglessness of human life, expounded by his teacher with 'malicious persistence'.... In bed at night, he would imagine the meaningless, dark, unending flow of time after the universe became extinct, and would scream and jump out of bed in terror, or on a street he would suddenly stop seeing and hearing the people or streetcars passing by, and would freeze on the spot in terror.... At other times, he had nightmares....
irl!Atsushi's childhood experiences and fears left him without a firm sense of identity, and may have contributed to his works' most recurrent themes, which include self-doubt, isolation, helplessness against inexplicable fate, the uncertainty of human existence, and persistent anxiety about existence.
The violence and intensity of irl!Atsushi's visualizations of his fears, and the processing he did in his literary works of those fears through persona characters, are likely sources of inspiration for bsd!Atsushi's visual journey through his own traumas and fears, represented by the Headmaster, and by his journey through the gate in Dead Apple to confront his repressed memory of Shibusawa and the spectral form of his tiger (which changes through Dead Apple in response to Atsushi's psychological state and readiness to accept the tiger as part of himself).
Apparitions in Tales of Moonlight and Rain
bsd!Atsushi's hallucinations may be, in part, inspired by narrative devices and running motifs in Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari, in which, according to J. Thomas Rimer in Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions: "[Akinari] finds great significance in [older literary structures] which succeeded for him in manifesting certain profound realities of human life.... by way of example, Akinari's use of certain principles in the structure of the noh drama in constructing his narratives...."
Rimer highlights a specific sequence he describes as peculiar to noh: "[The] spectator is moved closer and closer to the inner truth of the protagonist, until all the tensions within that protagonist's soul are laid bare..." often by an "apparition" which "reveals its innermost feelings, then disappears...."
The "apparition" is another element of noh that Akinari borrows for Tales of Moonlight and Rain ("apparition" referring more specifically to ghosts, characters who undergo unnatural transformations, or otherwise supernatural characters embodying revelations relating to the inner psychology of the protagonist):
...many of Akinari's characters seem to represent a personification of the powerful emotions they manifest. In this respect, such figures closely resemble the protagonists of the noh drama who... epitomize certain powerful psychic states. Manago [from "The Lust of the White Serpent"], for example, represents a manifestation of lustful passion, just as the warrior Akana Soemon, who returns from the dead to keep his appointment in "The Chrysanthemum Tryst," seems the embodiment of fraternal affection."
For bsd!Atsushi, the Headmaster is a manifestation of his intense desire to devote himself towards saving others as a means to give his life meaning and purpose. The Headmaster is someone in his life who contributed substantially to bsd!Atsushi's self-doubt and sense of worthlessness through verbal and physical abuse -- but he isn't physically present for most of the series, except for when he's killed while trying to visit bsd!Atsushi after learning bsd!Atsushi has become someone who helps others. So, the visage bsd!Atsushi sees when he hallucinates the Headmaster is a "ghost" of the Headmaster, and more specifically, a spectral manifestation of who the Headmaster represents to bsd!Atsushi. Because, as far as we're shown in the narrative, the Headmaster appears before bsd!Atsushi to motivate him and drive him forward in moments bsd!Atsushi becomes lost, overwhelmed, or frozen by uncertainty.
bsd!Atsushi eventually seeks to obscure the image of the Headmaster with an image of bsd!Dazai instead, who bsd!Atsushi is more ready to accept as a source of personal strength and guidance, considering the Headmaster's abuse and bsd!Atsushi's sincere and justifiable anger and resentment. But, we're reaching a point in bsd!Atsushi's narrative arc where bsd!Atsushi's intensity of emotion, that inner well of strength, that drives him to act is no longer well-personified in the Headmaster, which may cut towards the Headmaster's promise that bsd!Atsushi won't see him for very much longer.
Also, unlike irl!Akutagawa's paranoia and hallucinations, bsd!Atsushi's hallucinations appear to have been triggered by Q's curse, where before he experienced vivid flashbacks rather than the Headmaster's spectre. So, that's worth acknowledging.
irl!Akutagawa's Afflictions
Regarding irl!Akutagawa's diagnoses and suicide, a biographical study by Sachi Sri Kantha (Suicides of elite Japanese writers: The case of Ryunosuke Akutagawa) provides the following diagnoses from irl!Akutagawa's doctors: insomnia, gastric hyperacidity, gastric atony, dry pleurisy, neurasthenia, chronic conjunctivitis, and brain fatigue. As far as I've read, irl!Akutagawa's doctors did not identify an underlying cause for his pleurisy, but there are many potential causes of pleurisy (some of which present with symptoms like coughing blood).
Kantha also alludes to the detail that irl!Akutagawa's doctors over-prescribed him barbiturates to treat some of these conditions, namely insomnia, which likely exacerbated his psychological and physical symptoms (including paranoia and pleurisy) and on which he ultimately overdosed.
Kantha also provides a summary of the circumstances which may have contributed to irl!Akutagawa's suicide:
Multiple reasons have been suggested for Akutagawa’s suicide. First was that he suffered from hallucinations of inheriting the schizophrenia traits of his biological mother. Second, the financial burdens left by his brother-in-law’s suicide, in January 1927, left Akutagawa in a desperate situation. Third, a medically pertinent possibility was insomnia, for which Akutagawa had been tinkering with prescribed sleep inducing medicine, Veronal, and potassium cyanide. Fourth, according to Healy, mental collapse of his novelist friend Koji Uno (1891– 1961) in May 1927 might have precipitated the suicide.
However, Sachi Sri Kantha is an interdisciplinary biologist, not a psychiatrist and certainly not one of irl!Akutagawa's doctors, so please take the study with a grain of salt. Further, there's only so much that we can know or infer regarding irl!Akutagawa's conditions, and to the extent that we speculate, we should speculate with deference to our limitations.
All of this to say, bsd!Akutagawa's illnesses likely were inspired by irl!Akutagawa, and not borrowed from irl!Atsushi. There just happen to be similarities in the health struggles faced by irl!Akutagawa and irl!Atsushi, the two of whom shared many other similarities in their literary voices, influences, and legacies--which is likely why Asagiri chose them as narrative parallels in bsd in the first place.
this is so important actually. the image and voice of dazai, one of the smartest people atsushi knows, manifested by atsushi's mind telling him that he knows something dazai doesn't. he can do what dazai can't. he's smart enough to save everyone, despite his doubts about himself. and he knows it, even if he needs a voice that isn't his own to say it to him.
