Japanese literature at the end of the twentieth century always gives people a delicate and long sense of melancholy. It's like a luxurious kimono left to dry indoors for a long time in a rainy weather. It looks gorgeous and exquisite, but when you wear it, you feel cold against your body. After the Second World War, Japan was overgrown with wild trees. The sequelae of the war caused by militarism began to cause people to have violent shocks from top to bottom, such as political chaos, the reshaping of three outlooks, and even the operating rules of the entire society. . He began to be confused about the future, began to have doubts about the ideas he had always adhered to, began to abandon himself in the ruins, and took pleasure in the whirlpool of pain.
As the saying goes, "When a country fails to prosper, poets will prosper." The Japanese literary world was turbulent at that time, and the collision of ideas was embodied in the writings and became articles. Kawabata Yasunari, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Mishima Yukio, Sakaguchi Ango, and Dazai Osamu are names that are still known today and have left a profound mark on Japanese and even world literary circles.
What I want to talk about this time is Osamu Dazai, a representative of the "rogue faction" who is very familiar but very unfamiliar. The origin of my interest in Dazai is actually Shun Oguri. Because I like Oguri Shun more, I started to pay attention to the movie "Disqualified from the World: Dazai Osamu and Three Women" starring him very early, which artistically showed Dazai Osamu's last period of life before committing suicide by drowning in the river. After that, I started to read a series of Dazai’s works, and I couldn’t help but marvel at them. Different from the stereotyped labels on him - mourning, decadence, net suppressing clouds, the core of his works is very diverse, as if they are flowers blooming proudly in the ruins. There is an implicit sense of despair and pessimism between the lines in his words. Unyielding and fighting.
Osamu Dazai only lived to be 39 years old, and he was trapped in the whirlpool of alcohol, women, and lung disease throughout his life. He had two wives, more than three mistresses, and countless admirers. He gave birth to a daughter with one of his mistresses, Shizuko Ota, and committed suicide with his last mistress, Furei Yamazaki. However, he wrote to his wife in his suicide note: "Michiko, I love you more than anyone else."
The life of a writer is certainly legendary, but let’s focus on the work itself and talk about it casually from a few works.
The first work I read by Osamu Dazai was the novella "The Setting Sun". The special thing about this novel is that when it was written, it was suspected of drawing on "Diary of the Setting Sun" written by his lover Shizuko Ohta. What's more, Dazai seems to have integrated anecdotes between the two into the novel, on the edge of love and hate. Let literature and art sublimate from the struggle of life. The two's illegitimate daughter also admitted in her later years that it was true that her father borrowed from her mother's manuscripts.
Putting aside "nothing", from an article level alone, "The Setting Sun" is a work full of rebellion and struggle. The protagonists of the novel are Shizuko, Shizuko's mother, Shizuko's younger brother Naoji, Shizuko's love interest and Naoji's teacher, the novelist Uehara. The first half of the novel deals with the death of the mother. The background of the novel is Japan after World War II, and the mother is the last "noble lady" in the old Japanese era. She behaves elegantly and abides by etiquette. From eating and dressing to walking and talking, she reveals the aura of nobility, which makes her behavior The careless and unruly Jingzi felt extremely respected. However, such an elegant mother fell seriously ill and died after suffering. In essence, the role of "mother" represents the epitome of Japan's post-war mainstream society. After suffering defeat, Japan's mainstream thinking changed from radicalism and advocating sacrifice and martial arts to exploring democracy and freedom. This huge change has left many people at a loss as to what to do. Just like Whitebeard's line in "One Piece", "I am a remnant of the old era, and there is no ship that can carry me in the new era." Under the torrent of the times when everything is renewed, the old aristocracy will eventually decline and die. This is an irreversible law of the times. It is not only driven by external forces, but also spontaneous self-destruction. The aristocratic life is certainly aspirational, and the aristocratic class is also respected. However, just like the exquisite collection in the window, this kind of beauty that is incompatible with the current status quo can only pass away in people's memories and lamentations, and becomes the target of crusade under the new trend of thought. , common people’s after-dinner conversations, and Japan’s own memories of its lost glory.
Eventually, Kazuko became pregnant with Uehara's child and decided to raise it alone. This is the fruit of the vigorous revolution and her new spiritual pillar. This story of Kazuko is actually quite similar to the real story of Dazai and his lover Shizuko Ohta. Ota Shizuko is also a person who regards love as a revolution, and achieves the goal of revolution by boldly pursuing unethical feelings. After she became pregnant with Dazai Osamu's child, she even took the word "ji" in Dazai's name as the name of their daughter, so that she could carve a deep mark on her love.
Death is a kind of struggle, and "living like the sun", isn't it also a kind of resistance? Dazai Osamu's world has never been one color. Even though it is sad and decadent, it is also a colorful black.
Dazai Osamu's dissolute and disorderly life, his sensual self-destruction, and his rejection of his own bad qualities have made him extremely fragile and sensitive to his own identity, and cannot tolerate others having any opinions about him. He is extremely aggressive and Exclusive, rather like "rogue". But he was also full of pathos and compassion for the proletarian people. Many of his works reflected the conditions of the lower class people in the market at that time, just like the "holy son". Later I will talk about some of Dazai Osamu's short stories, as well as my favorite work "Twentieth Century Flag Bearer".
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