The Final Years (9784805317525)

"Osamu Dazai wrote, better than almost anyone, about the thin line between isolation and belonging." —The Atlantic

The acclaimed Japanese writer Osamu Dazai, often described as the "bad boy" of Japanese literature, is enjoying a cultural moment. Known today in the West primarily as a novelist, Dazai first made his name in Japan through shocking short stories that experimented with radically unconventional styles and deeply personal subject matter, often autobiographical and drawn from his own struggles with suicide, addiction and depression.

The Final Years (Bannen in Japanese) was Dazai's first book, published in 1936 and later described by him as a kind of "suicide note" to the world, though more than a decade would pass before his death in 1948. The stories draw on his personal struggles—fraught family relationships, sordid love affairs, infidelities, and his many addictions—with great humor and empathy. These enduring concerns continue to resonate with contemporary readers.

This collection of fifteen stories includes many of Dazai's most famous works, several appearing in English here for the first time:

• Recollections: A semi-autobiographical piece in which the narrator recalls incidents from his childhood, including struggles to please a domineering father, self-disgust at his own appearance, and unrequited love for a household maid that his brother is also in love with.
• The Flowers of Buffoonery: A young man enters a suicide pact with his lover, but survives while she dies; a direct reflection of events that Dazai himself experienced..
• Undine: A fable about a girl living alone with her father, a poor charcoal gatherer. After an argument, she runs away and throws herself into a waterfall, where she is transformed into a carp and drawn deeper into the waters below.
• The Pillow Book of a Creep: The intimate musings of a depressed writer struggling with debt and an unhappy marriage.

The introduction by translators James Garza and Irena Hayter explores the autobiographical roots of Dazai's writings, his repeated suicide attempts, and the ways in which these stories remain strikingly modern in their psychological insight.


About the Author:
Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was the pen name of Shuji Tsushima, the tenth of eleven children born to a wealthy landowner and politician in the far north of Japan. Dazai studied French literature at the University of Tokyo, but never received a degree. He first attracted attention in 1933 when magazines began to publish his work. Between 1930 and 1937, he made three suicide attempts, a subject he deals with in many of his short stories. Despite his troubled life and rebellious spirit, Dazai wrote in simple and colloquial style, conveying his personal torments through literature. Dazai's life ended early in a double suicide with a married lover.

James Garza is a poet and literary translator whose work has appeared in Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation and Poetry, among other places. He holds a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from the University of Leeds. A past winner of the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation, he has also served as a judge for the John Dryden Translation Competition. He is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.

Irena Hayter is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. Her work on the literature and cultural politics of the interwar years in Japan has appeared in journals such as Japan Forum, Japanese Language and Literature, and positions: asia critique, among others. She's the co-editor of Tenko: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan (Routledge 2021). She is completing a monograph on women, urban spectacle and cinema in imperial Japan.