13/06/2013

Dazai Osamu

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Dazai Osamu 太宰治

(June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948)

a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan.


Dazai was born Shūji Tsushima (津島修治, Tsushima Shūji),
the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. His father was a member of the House of Peers and was thus often away from home, and his mother was chronically ill after having given birth to 11 children, so he was brought up mostly by the servants.

Tsushima was sent to Aomori Prefectural Aomori High School and Hirosaki for higher school. An excellent student and an able writer even then, he edited student publications and contributed some of his own works. His life only started to change when his idol writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa committed suicide in 1927.

Postwar career
In the immediate post-war period, Dazai reached the height of his popularity.

He depicted a dissolute life in postwar Tokyo in Viyon no Tsuma (Villon's Wife, 1947). The narrator is the wife of a poet, who has abandoned her. She takes a job for a tavern keeper from whom her husband has stolen money. Her determination to survive is tested by hardships, rape and her husband's self-delusion, but her will is not broken.

In July 1947 Dazai's best-known work, Shayo (The Setting Sun, translated 1956) depicting the decline of the Japanese nobility after World War II was published, propelling the already popular writer into a celebrity. This work was based on the diary of Shizuko Ōta (太田静子). Ōta was one of the fans of Dazai's works and first met him in about 1941. She bore him a daughter Haruko (治子) in 1947.

Always a heavy drinker, he became an alcoholic; he had already fathered a child out of wedlock with a fan, and his health was also rapidly deteriorating. At this time Dazai met Tomie Yamazaki (山崎富栄), a beautician and war widow who had lost her husband after 10 days of married life. Dazai effectively abandoned his wife and children and moved in with Tomie, writing his quasi-autobiography Ningen Shikkaku (人間失格, No Longer Human, 1948, translated. 1958) at the hot-spring resort Atami.

Ningen Shikkaku deals with a character hurtling headlong towards self-destruction, all the while despairing of the seeming impossibility of changing the course of his life. The novel is told in a brutally honest manner, devoid of all sentimentality. The book is one of the classics of Japanese literature and has been translated into several foreign languages.
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !


quote
Shayokan - Osamu Dazai Memorial Hall  斜陽館

A magnificent house built by Dazai’s father, Genemon Tsushima, in 1907 (two years before Dazai was born). Constructed in a semi-Western style with a half-hipped roof, the entire house (including a rice granary) is built with Aomori cypress wood and characterized by its massive architectural style.



Designated as an important national cultural property, it is also a valuable wooden structure built during the Meiji period. A favorite cloak worn by Dazai, his writing utensils, handwritten manuscripts and letters are displayed in the exhibition room within the rice granary, where video programs are also shown. This memorial hall provides a rare opportunity for visitors to learn about Dazai during his childhood years.

source : dazai.or.jp/en/spots


「斜陽」「富嶽百景」「走れメロス」「津軽」「斜陽」「人間失格」

Dazai committed suicide on June 13, 1948.

Ootoo Ki 桜桃忌 (おうとうき) (Cherry and Peach Day)
Dazai-Ki 太宰忌(だざいき) Dazai Memorial Day
observance kigo for mid-summer

. WKD Saijiki : Memorial Days of Famous People .


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Dazai bentoo だざい弁当 / 太宰弁当 lunchbox a la Dazai

sold at at the train station
Goshokawahara station Aomori 青森県五所川原市

Includes all the local dishes which the author had loved, especially thin bamboo shoots (nemagaridake 根曲がり竹), Herring and scallops boiled in soy sauce and many other delicacies.




. WASHOKU - dishes from Aomori prefecture .

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太宰忌や雨のしらべは唄のやう
Dazaiki ya ame no shirabe wa uta no yoo

Dazai Memorial Day -
the melody of the rain
is almost like a song


Uemura Sengyo 上村占魚
(1920 - 1996) Haiku Poet from Kumamoto


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桜桃忌からりと晴れてしまひけり
Ootooki karari to harete shimai keri

Dazai Memorial Day
all of a sudden
the weather clears up


Katayama Yumiko 片山由美子
(1952 - ) Haiku Poetess from Chiba

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