A review by dianapharah
The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

emotional reflective sad
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

"There was something wrong about these people. But perhaps, just as it is true of my love, they could not go on living except in the way they do. If it is true that man, once born into the world, must somehow live out his life, perhaps the appearance that people make in order to go through with it, even if it is as ugly as their appearance, should not be despised. To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension."


3.75 — The first Dazai I've read where the narrator is a woman. I know some find his writing to be sexist and misogynistic, but I disagree. In my opinion, he portrayed the mother-daughter and sister-brother dynamics with authenticity and genuine regard, and his characterization of Kazuko felt multidimensional.

An ailing mother, an addict brother; a dying aristocracy, a plagued army. The Setting Sun is a story of love and revolutions, one most apparently within Kazuko and another more thematically within Japanese society post-WWII. The smaller-scale revolution is one in which Kazuko seizes her own life separate of social standing and against propriety, not content with remaining as a "leaf that rots without falling". Her actions at times left a sour taste in my mouth, all the more illustrating Dazai's point about the lengths people go to just to get through the days and live. Though these lengths to dampen pain and suffering are sometimes ugly and perhaps even immoral, the tragic fact is that, in their eyes, these are still the lesser of evils when measured against the harsh brunt of a life undampened. While not honorable in content, it is nevertheless commendable on a human level that Kazuko unabashedly dares to pursue her desires so as to ease the burden of existence.

"Perhaps by depravity he actually meant tenderness."


And, as always, beautiful prose. Raw, unmasked, and stripped bare.

"It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue. I am wanting. It has been all I could do to stay alive up to now."