Why Dazai?

Shizuko finds out that Osamu is reading No Longer Human, Dazai’s last work.

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Shizuko: Dazai? Why Dazai?

Osamu: Everyone’s reading him.

Shizuko: For what? He was so negative. All he talked about was dying. He’s dead.

Osamu: I can relate to his ideas. When he writes something like “The cold half pint of milk I drank each morning was the only thing that gave me a certain peculiar sense of the joy in life.” Dark, yes, but funny too.

Shizuko: Are you sure you’re not just identifying with him because you live only a hundred meters from where he drowned?

Osamu: Geography’s a factor, mm. But mainly I feel my life has no depth, no direction.

 

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Voice-over

Young people identifying with Dazai Osamu? That one so driven to self-destruction could write so clearly and powerfully. And influence a generation fifty years later.

Have Japanese young people lost their sense of mission?  Where has their sense of purpose in life gone? Can a limping economy and rising unemployment cripple the national identity?

Ironical that the Tamagawa Josui is scarcely a foot deep much of the time.

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