A 75th-anniversary edition of the classic Japanese novel of alienation and the search for meaning and connection in the modern world, in its first new English translation in more than sixty years--for fans of Salinger, Camus, Sartre, Hesse, and the hit anime series Bungo Stray Dogs, which features a character based on No Longer Human's author, Osamu Dazai A Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Edition Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of one of Japan's most important writers. It has come to "echo the sentiments of youth" (The Mainichi Daily News) from post-war Japan to the postmodern society of technology. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual's alienation from society.

No Longer Human: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Dazai, Osamu

Genre Fiction

Penguin Classics

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

Peter Owen Publishers

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories features eleven outstanding works by Osama Dazai, widely regarded as one of the twentieth-century Japan's most gifted writers and a master teller of tales. Dazai experimented with a wide variety of short story styles and brought to each a sophisticated sense of humor, a broad empathy for the human condition, and a tremendous literary talent. The eleven stories in this collection present the most fully rounded portrait available of a tragic, multifaceted genius of modern Japanese letters.

Literary

Tuttle Pub

A Late Chrysanthemum (Tut Books)

Shimaki Kensaku

HAYASHI, Fumiko

Shiga, Naoya

Yasunari, Kawabata

Kobo, Abe

Ozaki Shiro

Charles E.Tuttle Company

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories features eleven outstanding works by Osama Dazai, widely regarded as one of the twentieth-century Japan's most gifted writers and a master teller of tales. Dazai experimented with a wide variety of short story styles and brought to each a sophisticated sense of humor, a broad empathy for the human condition, and a tremendous literary talent. The eleven stories in this collection present the most fully rounded portrait available of a tragic, multifaceted genius of modern Japanese letters.

Crackling Mountain & Other Stories

Features 11 outstanding works by Osamu Dazai, widely regarded as one of 20th century Japan's most gifted writers and a master teller of tales.  Dazai experimented with a wide variety of short story styles and brought to each a sophisticated sense of humor, a broad empathy for the human condition, and a tremendous literary talent.  This book showcases a range of his styles from the poignant childhood recollections of "Memories", to the samurai buffoonery of "A Poor Man's Got His Pride", to reworked folk classics such as the title story. By turns hilarious, ironic, introspective, mystical and sarcastic, the eleven stories present the most fully rounded portrait available of a tragic, multifaceted genius of modern Japanese letters.

O′Brien, James

Essays & Correspondence

Tuttle+publishing

This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.

The Setting Sun (New Directions Book)

New Directions

The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

No Longer Human

Contemporary

Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer HumanEarly Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. "Everything's gone," the father explains to his daughter: "Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up," "Yeah, they all burned up," she said, still smiling. 
"One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: "Goodbye," he hisses through his teeth, "Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click." 
And the final story is "Villon's Wife," a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that "There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive."

Early Light (Storybook ND Series)

"Art dies the moment it acquires authority." So said Japan's quintessential rebel writer Osamu Dazai, who, disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment, from the nation's obsolete aristocracy to its posturing, warmongering generals, went his own way, even when that meant his death--and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform, he declared his individuality to the world--in all its self-involved, self-conscious, and self-hating glory. "Art," he wrote, "is 'I.'" In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai's life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare, in his works, the painful, impossible contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life--fit in and do as you are told--as well as the possibility, however desperate, of defiance. Long out of print, these stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, and The Flowers of Buffoonery.&nbsp;

Self-Portraits: Stories

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dazai, Osamu. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dazai, Osamu

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dazai, Osamu. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

No Longer Human: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

A Late Chrysanthemum (Tut Books)

Crackling Mountain & Other Stories

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories

The Setting Sun (New Directions Book)

No Longer Human

Early Light (Storybook ND Series)

Self-Portraits: Stories