No One Knows

Fourteen tales selected from the breadth of Dazai’s fabled career, some never before seen in English

"Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self-described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe. "

"Dazai’s work will either pull you out of a deep depression or crack your rose-colored glasses; there is no in-between."

"Dazai is thoroughly contemporary in his depiction of the older generation’s casual exploitation of the young for its own ends."

"Ultimately, it is not individuals Dazai seemed to dislike but the constraints on personal and societal freedom that force people into falsehood. His characters despise that people can’t be honest, and that they themselves can’t either learn to be false or have the courage to break away."

"The stories—or 'soliloquies,' as the author called them—are all from the point of view of ordinary female characters. Often the women are tormented by their physical appearance…other stories are united by a sense of social alienation. World War II rages in the background of some of these pieces but the drama is always minor and the gaze always turned inward. The women’s hatred of social hypocrisy and accompanying feelings of shame anticipate J.D. Salinger, Leonard Cohen and even Sally Rooney. You can see why the zoomers go for it. "

"This dazzling collection from Dazai comprises all the 'soliloquies' he wrote from the perspectives of women. Taken together, they convey a startling breadth of emotion... On the exterior, most of the women characters are silent and submissive presences—dutiful wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers. The juxtaposition between how the world sees them and how they see the world lends an urgent sense of revolt to their freewheeling monologues. Dazai's spectacular collection sings with resounding truths."

The author of the global bestseller No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan. He committed suicide by drowning in Tokyo’s Tamagawa Aqueduct. Ralph McCarthy has lived in Japan for almost two decades. He is the translator of two collections of stories by Osamu Dazai, “Self Portraits” and “Blue Bamboo,” and of Ryu Murakami’s novel 69.