Michael’s Reviews > The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study with Translations > Status Update

Events in the Osamu Saga do not explain ‘why’ something happened and what its effects were (which, Dazai felt, is what autobiography does), but only shows ‘that’ things happen. Relieved of their explanatory burden, events allow Dazai to create a story, they do not force him into what he felt to be the restrictions of an essay. The stuff of autobiography is unique and limited; … fiction is inexhaustible.

“At ten, a democrat; at twenty, a communist; at thirty, a pure aesthete; at forty, a conservative.”

“The first lesson that turns a youth into an adult is that you cannot trust people. An adult is a youth betrayed.”
(from “Tsugaru”)

“…Dazai created a unified, many-chaptered narrative out of the confused and accidental events of his life and presented it as the life struggles of a strongly engaging character we call “Osamu,” as he himself did in some stories.”