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A review by oofym
The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Was it a good idea to read two Osamu Dazai books back to back? No and yes. Did I enjoy my time with them? No and yes.
That really sums up my feelings on Dazai as an author. I love his prose, the flow of his writing and his ability to put on paper concepts I've struggled to articulate; its engrossing and impressive. But the way he's able to write about alienation, suffering and depression is almost too good. It gets me in a mood that I'm not that fond of, and by the end of his stories I'm telling myself to never pick up anything else by him purely for my own mental health. I suppose Dazai is to men what Sylvia Plath is to women. Although really, I think suffering crosses most gender distinctions, its a universal language.
But on to the actual story of "The setting sun". This is a story about change, revolution and finding a place for yourself in a world that doesn't seem to want you.
The narrative is set in post war Japan, the aristocracy has fallen, culture is changing at a breakneck speed and our protagonist Kazuko is trying to find some sort of meaning in her life, all the while everything around her is collapsing. Her family is broken and in disarray; Her father is dead, her mother has fallen ill, her family home has been sold off, her brother is intent on self-destruction and she herself has had a stillborn birth and lacks a partner or friends. Wow so fun!
This struggle, to find a place in a changing world is the epitome of "The setting sun."
That really sums up my feelings on Dazai as an author. I love his prose, the flow of his writing and his ability to put on paper concepts I've struggled to articulate; its engrossing and impressive. But the way he's able to write about alienation, suffering and depression is almost too good. It gets me in a mood that I'm not that fond of, and by the end of his stories I'm telling myself to never pick up anything else by him purely for my own mental health. I suppose Dazai is to men what Sylvia Plath is to women. Although really, I think suffering crosses most gender distinctions, its a universal language.
But on to the actual story of "The setting sun". This is a story about change, revolution and finding a place for yourself in a world that doesn't seem to want you.
The narrative is set in post war Japan, the aristocracy has fallen, culture is changing at a breakneck speed and our protagonist Kazuko is trying to find some sort of meaning in her life, all the while everything around her is collapsing. Her family is broken and in disarray; Her father is dead, her mother has fallen ill, her family home has been sold off, her brother is intent on self-destruction and she herself has had a stillborn birth and lacks a partner or friends. Wow so fun!
This struggle, to find a place in a changing world is the epitome of "The setting sun."
"Victims, Victims of a transitional period...That is what we both certainly are."
I'm incredibly tempted to attach the next half a page of that quote, because Dazai's writing really shines in it. But I'm trying to prevent myself from making this review too long-winded.
The way Kazuko and her brother relentlessly try to find solutions to their problems is so heartbreaking, you can literally see these characters being slowly killed by their own malaise, or as the French might call it "Ennui".
Kazuko's attempt to find her own personal revolution and method of change is simultaneously so poetic and erratic. She decides she must have a child, and through that desire she falls in love with really the only man she knows besides her brother. But well, he's already married.
"Perhaps if I had met you long, long ago, when you and I were both still single, we might have married, and I should have been spared my present sufferings, but I have resigned myself to the fact that I shall never be able to marry you. For me to attempt to push aside your wife would be like an act of brute force and I would hate myself for it."
Falling in love with someone else, but life's circumstances preventing it, or even being simply just too late. It's a thought I hate to realise even exists.
Kazuko's downward trajectory throughout the story ripped me up, you can tell she's a good woman, but the influence of the world around her is slowly corrupting her, and by the end of the story she has pushed aside the man's wife with brute force, she's realised revolution requires someone being hurt. But this isn't a fun revolution, it's not an action packed journey. There's a peculiar air of stolidness to her crisis, a melancholy to her spiral. As her brother puts it:
"I have a poison that kills without pain."
Or as she herself says:
"To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension."
In the end, the world destroys Kazuko, so she tries to destroy something in return, in the hope that destruction begets life.
If No longer human was a visceral cry for help; an exhaustive scream at the world. Then The setting sun is more like a quiet whimper, and i feel that sometimes there's more artistry in a whimper than in a scream.
If No longer human was a visceral cry for help; an exhaustive scream at the world. Then The setting sun is more like a quiet whimper, and i feel that sometimes there's more artistry in a whimper than in a scream.