人間失格
By 太宰治
Cover: Self-Portrait (c. 1915), oil painting by Kuroda Seiki (1866–1924) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1924)
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 confessions in modern Japanese literature.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.