The Japanese novelist’s dark-hearted comedies are at once unhinged and brilliant. Osamu Dazai, 1924. Where to begin the story? It’s tempting to start at the end—on the morning of Osamu Dazai’s 39th ...

Matthew Magnus Lundeen is a writer, critic, and aspiring cinephile trying way too hard and simultaneously not enough. He writes anime features for Game Rant when he isn't trying to write fiction.

The author Osamu Dazai committed suicide — several times. The first was on a cold December night in 1929, just before his school exams. But the overdose of sleeping pills he took was not enough; he ...

Imagine that a writer today, in a thinly disguised self-portrait, revealed that he had slept with countless prostitutes, had casually hooked up with and abandoned numerous women, frittered away his ...

Osamu Dazai, trans. from the Japanese by Sam Bett. New Directions, $14.95 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-0-8112-3454-2 This beguiling novella from Dazai (1909–1948) revisits the protagonist from the ...