Osamu Dazai
1909–1948
Biography
Osamu Dazai (太宰治) was the pen name of Shūji Tsushima, a Japanese novelist born in 1909 in the Tsugaru region of Aomori Prefecture. He came from a wealthy landowning family, studied at Hirosaki High School, where he briefly joined leftist student activism, and then spent years struggling with despair, suicide attempts and drug addiction. He wrote through the war years and, after 1945, became one of the best-known writers in Japan. He took his own life in 1948.
His major works include Run, Melos! (走れメロス), a short story of friendship and a pledge that retells an ancient tale the German poet Schiller had also turned into a ballad; The Setting Sun (斜陽), a bestseller about a fading aristocratic household; and No Longer Human (人間失格), his last book and the one most read outside Japan. After the war he was grouped with Sakaguchi Ango, Oda Sakunosuke and others as the Buraiha, or "Lawless" school of writers who broke with the literary and moral norms of their time.
Two of his books are on this site under their Japanese titles. Hashire Merosu (走れメロス) is a race against time in which a man runs to save his friend's life. Ningen Shikkaku (人間失格) is told through three notebooks, framed by a preface and an afterword, by a young man who feels unable to live as other people do. Both show the mixture of comedy, self-accusation and sharp feeling that made Dazai's work so widely read.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
人間失格
by 太宰治
Three notebooks left by a man who has never understood other people tell how he hid behind the mask of a clown and slid through drink, drugs, women and a failed double suicide. Dazai Osamu's novel of 1948, finished shortly before his own death, is among the most widely read…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.走れメロス
by 太宰治
A young shepherd named Melos, condemned by a tyrant king, is given three days to go home for his sister's wedding while his friend Selinuntius waits in his place as hostage. Dazai Osamu's short story of 1940, adapted from Schiller's ballad, follows his race back through flood…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.