Do Not Ask Me About Osamu Dazai
Do not ask me about Osamu Dazai!
Not because I don’t know anything about him.
On the contrary, while I don’t claim to be an expert
I’m far from it
I do certainly know more than what you’d expect about a Japanese author who died in 1948
At least for a 19 year old Brit in the 21st century.
I read “No Longer Human” and a bit about his life
And from then I was hooked and on a mission to know, well,
Everything.
The autism kicked in
And one thing led to another
And now I’ve had friends tell me I’m better than google when it comes to the subject
While also telling me over and over “you have uni tomorrow, oh my god go to sleep!”
But once the info dumping starts it cannot be helped
The information rushes from my brain
Bursting out my mouth
As though I’m desperately throwing it all up.
But hey, once it’s over, you might know a bit more about the Japanese aristocracy than you used to.
Do not ask me about Dazai Osamu’s life.
I have his autobiography on kindle
And all books relating to him from my university library pinned on my laptop,
Despite the fact I’m not even fucking studying him for class.
Not to mention most of his books are semi-autobiographical anyway!
So unless you want to hear how he was born into an aristocratic family and lived through the death the Japanese aristocracy
How despite being a raging misogynist,
He was extremely left wing and his conflicting identities of aristocrat and communist caused a lot of his depression
How he was mainly raised by his aunt who taught him Buddhism despite his works mainly referencing Christianity
How he was a drug and alcohol addict,
How he threatened to kill himself if his idol didn’t meet him
And said idol became his mentor
How he lost his dad at a very young age and had complex feelings about him when he was alive
Do not ask me about Osamu Dazai’s death.
That is unless you want to be thoroughly creeped out by how excited I get when I talk about it.
I’m not proud but when you learn that he died via lovers suicide with his mistress
Not long after finishing his most famous work
Said work being seen as his suicide note,
You’d understand.
Only 6 days before his 39th birthday
And wasn’t found until said birthday,
Finished his suicide note with a message of how everything passes
And a conversation between two characters talking about him after he died,
A book titled “good bye” already being started to be written but never finished
A message left about his mentor calling him evil
Even though they’d been so close,
I quickly became a detective!
Frantic and wishing to know exactly what was going on in his mind.
A mission impossible for me to finish until I meet the man in hell.
My interest is morbid, I know
And I’m probably scaring you with the juxtaposition of my smiling face and depressing words.
Which is why I’m telling you now,
Do not ask me about Dazai Osamu’s books.
Specifically not about “No Longer Human”
My own copy’s front cover has started to fall off
From the amount of times I’ve opened it.
While it’s not the only one of his I’ve read
It’s my favourite book and his most famous work.
It’s a book I ran out of sticky tabs while annotating.
My grandma asked me once if it was for school and I corrected her saying
“No, this is entirely for fun.”
Dazai may have been a shitty person
But he was far from a shitty writer.
My growing collection of all works that have been translated into English,
Bought black and white
Now colourful and written on,
Just proves my love for them.
So unless you have blocked off 3 hours of your day I repeat,
Do not ask me about Osamu Dazai.
Please note, the above warning also applies to the game ace attorney, my dungeons and dragons characters, the movie/musical Heathers, and anime.
You have been warned.
