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Title: The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai ISBN: 0-8112-0032-9 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 1968 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great work in its own right
Comment: Simply an excellent book. One can not read this book and not marvel and Dazai's superb skill as a story-teller. Some consider The Setting Sun to be a "lesser work" than No Longer Human. Sure, whatever. The Setting Sun stands on its own, and is very much a worthwhile read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Gently slowed me down.
Comment: Dazai's style is so different from that of western writers that I at first felt annoyed with his style. Having read Dower's Embracing Defeat and seeing the anime Grave of the Fireflies, I started to develop an appreciaiton of the state of post World War II Japan. The common Japanese were zombified and trying to make sense of the new order. The far left was becoming appealing as were various cults.
Dazai tells the story of a 30 year old woman from the upper class who has lost everything. She moves with her ailing mother and opium addicted brother to the country side where she falls in love with a novelist who is a friend of here brothers and married.
The pace of the story and lack of a final climax frustrated me at times, but the challenge of adjusting to the novel made a more intimate impression on me.
Rating: 5
Summary: Dazai at His Best
Comment: The Setting Sun is no longer an unknown novel for the Western reader, but one should keep in mind that Shayou is, even today, one of the most popular Japanese novels. Basically a portrait of a society in an acute need for change, The Setting Sun is both a reflection of Dazai's period of Marxist activism and, probably, the most interesting illustration of the 'shishousetsu' (the I novel). Just like those in No Longer Human (Ningen shikkaku), the characters in The Setting Sun are Dazai's images of hiw own self. Kazuko, the revolted self, the one waiting for the revolution and for the violent change of the society, decided to defide the rules (she will choose to have a baby, even if not married - a perfectly normal thing nowadays, but not in the Japanese society, back in the 40's), Naoji, her brother, the defeated self, who will choose the suicide, exactly as Dazai himself will do and, of course, Uehara, the writer, the type of the Dazaisesque artist. A novel about a family (meant to represent the whole society, in the light of Lenin's idea about the family being 'the basic cell of the society' - after all, Dazai must have read some of Lenin's works while activ in the communist underground movement, in the 30's) which comes to its extinction. A masterpiece on Dazai's idea of revolte and revolution.
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Title: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai ISBN: 0811204812 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 1973 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath by Kenzaburo Oe ISBN: 0802151841 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Key (Vintage International) by Junichiro Tanizaki, Howard Hibbett ISBN: 0679730230 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka ISBN: 0804813795 Publisher: Tuttle Publishing Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe ISBN: 0679733787 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 April, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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