A Shameful Life Read online

  TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD

  Readers of a translation naturally come to the text with a perspective and leave it with an experience very different from those of native speakers who read the work in its original language. Affecting any translation of Japanese into English, in addition to the not inconsiderable linguistic gap separating the two languages, there are the obvious differences in culture and context. Dazai’s writings in general, and A Shameful Life (Ningen shikkaku, 1948) in particular, are perhaps more deeply affected by these differences than many other novels.

  This is not to say that Dazai’s writing cannot be enjoyed without knowledge of Japanese, without knowledge of prewar, wartime, and postwar Japan, or without knowledge of Dazai himself. On the contrary, even as the original stands quite firmly on its own two feet, so, too, do I hope that the translation is sufficient unto itself and that a reader knowing nothing of Japan whatsoever can still take something meaningful away from it. Indeed, the ability to approach the novel tabula rasa is, in this case, an experience that few Japanese readers can enjoy. Even those who are not enthusiastic consumers of literature will know something of Dazai’s life and exploits, for he is nearly as infamous in Japan as he is famous. The purpose of this Afterword, then, is to fill in some of those gaps in awareness and to provide non-Japanese readers with a better understanding of the context in which the novel was written and in which it was—and continues to be—read in Japan today. If you have skipped to this Afterword before reading the novel and would like to approach it first without preconceptions—or with different preconceptions—you would do well to start it now, returning here only after you are done.

  In order to better understand Dazai’s work, it is important to understand the complex relationship between his writings and the genre of the “I-novel” or, in Japanese, the shishōsetsu or watakushi-shōsetsu. The I-novel emerged as a dominant force in Japanese letters during the early twentieth century, and only a very few Japanese writers of the time managed to resist its lure entirely, whether they were devoted practitioners of the form or not.1 The I-novel was typically contrasted to the honkaku shōsetsu—the “authentic novel,” the ideal manifestation of which one Japanese critic located in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.2 A great deal of ink was expended by critics and authors at the time in debate over which of the two forms embodied the true essence of literary expression.

  Nakamura Murao, a proponent of the authentic novel, defined it as a strictly objective, third-person novel that “does not express the author’s state of mind or feelings but instead represents his attitude toward life through the depiction of certain characters and their lives.”3 The authentic novel is one in which the figure of the author is actively concealed and its “. . . interest and significance . . . does not lie in who wrote it but in ‘what is written.’”4

  In contrast, the I-novel was seen by many as meaningful “. . . only insofar as it illuminates the life [of the author].”5 Disparaging voices such as Nakamura’s aside, the I-novel had no shortage of enthusiastic adherents, and for many years the bulk of the Japanese literary establishment considered it to be the epitome of “pure” literary expression. “Authentic” novels with their focus on plot-driven narratives (such as Tolstoy’s) were dismissed as “vulgar” fiction.6 According to novelist, playwright, and poet Kume Masao (1891–1952), only the I-novel, with its relentless introspection, constituted the “. . . root, the true path, and the essence” of art.7

  The I-novel and the authentic novel, then, differed not only in content—one focused on the life of the author and the other on “attitudes toward life”—they also differed significantly in form. Concerned with representing the thoughts, feelings, and anxieties of the author/narrator/protagonist with the greatest possible fidelity, I-novel narratives were not overly concerned with plot development or with showing how a character transforms or overcomes a particular problem. I-novels have, in terms of plot at least, no obvious direction or “purpose.” In this the I-novel differs not only from the authentic novel but also from more conventional autobiography. As Phyllis Lyons notes in her excellent study on Dazai, his writings differ from autobiography in that he does not “. . . explain why something happened and what its effects were . . . but only shows that things happen.”8 The same could be said of most I-novels. They are concerned not with the “why,” or even the “how,” so much as they are with the “what.” The resultant text, with its lack of a clearly defined, linear plot, can often be disorienting to the unfamiliar reader.

  Writers of the I-novel often employed a “confessional” form of writing to depict and define the self with unflinching honesty, regardless of the harm it might do them. One of the foremost practitioners of the art, Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943), was willing to sacrifice not only himself at the altar of pure literature but his niece as well when he detailed his affair with her in his novel New Life (Shinsei, 1918–19). Though Tōson was roundly criticized for his moral failings as well as the perceived crudity of trying to exploit the situation, the element of confession—though usually far less dramatic—was key to many I-novels. Not to lure in readers with salacious stories, or at least not primarily to lure in readers, but rather to achieve a “realistic” portrayal of the author/narrator/protagonist. No clear picture of the mind and self of the author could emerge unless everything—including the unsavory—was put on display. More than the mode of narration, Kume Masao states, it was the way “the author exposes himself most directly” that defined the I-novel.9

  Much of Dazai’s writing can be said to fall into the camp of the I-novel, and that is one reason talking about Dazai can be so complicated. That is, much of what we know about the man, we know from his own writings. Furthermore, we know that these writings are not always strictly accurate. In her book The Saga of Dazai Osamu, Lyons addresses this dilemma by defining Dazai himself as a literary character, as a persona created, developed, and defined through and across his own writings. Of Dazai’s story “Recollections” (Omoide, 1933), Lyons says it is “. . . a biography, but that of a literary character that Dazai made of himself.”10 Viewed from this perspective, then, the question of factual accuracy is “. . . not only meaningless, . . . but is irrelevant.”11 That is, Tsushima Shūji—for whom Dazai Osamu was a pen name—created the public, literary persona of Dazai Osamu and then proceeded to write the story, or the saga, of that literary persona’s life. This saga would necessarily diverge from the lived reality of Tsushima Shūji as experiences are shaped into a coherent narrative.

  The purpose of Dazai’s writings is to “tell the tale,” as Lyons puts it, and to give life to the literary character of “Dazai Osamu,” not simply to record the bald facts of that life. Yet the facts are not irrelevant, either. Interrogated for his participation in illegal communist activities, investigated for aiding a suicide, attempting suicide multiple times, embroiled in vitriolic “debates” with leading literary figures, addicted to alcohol and opiates, and pursuing affairs with various mistresses, Dazai generated scandals that put him very much in the public eye. His writings are thus necessarily engaged with the facts of his life even when they “misrepresent” them. So well known are elements of Dazai’s life that even when his writings diverge from fact, they effectively end up highlighting those facts. At such times a reader familiar with Dazai’s exploits cannot help but stop and think, “But that’s not what really happened.” Dazai, too, would have been keenly aware of this, and this tension between “fact” and “fiction” is, I believe, a crucial component of A Shameful Life.

  In Ningen shikkaku, whose title I have translated as “A Shameful Life” but which might be more literally rendered as “a failed human” or as “a disqualified human,” Dazai creates a work that, with a remarkable degree of mastery, manages to blend the form, feel, and content of the confessional I-novel with the narrative structure and character development of more conventional fiction. Dazai draws on events from his own life but manipulates, alters, and distills them as he pours them into the vessel
that is his protagonist, Ōba Yōzō.

  ***

  Tsushima Shūji, who adopted the pen name Dazai Osamu (among others), was born on June 19, 1909, in the small town of Kanagi-mura, now called Goshogawara, on the Tsugaru Peninsula at the northern tip of Japan’s main island, Honshū. He was the second youngest of seven sons and four daughters born to father Gen’emon and mother Tane. Gen’emon, as the head of one of the most prominent landowning families in Aomori Prefecture, also served as a representative in local and national parliaments, beginning a tradition of political service among the Tsushima family that continues to this day with Shūji’s grandson, Tsushima Jun, serving his third term in the House of Representatives at the time of this writing.

  As scholars have frequently noted, and as he himself frequently describes in his writings, Shūji had something of a confusing childhood. His mother, Tane, was often ill, and for the first few years of his life he was raised primarily by his aunt, Kiye, and her maid, Take. Both left when Shūji was six, Kiye to live with her newly married daughter and Take, newly married herself, to live with her husband. This sudden loss quite understandably left Shūji feeling abandoned, alone, and confused.

  A bright child, Shūji began to show signs of literary talent in middle school where, like Yōzō in A Shameful Life, he penned stories designed to entertain his peers. One of his works, a story entitled, “Hanako-san,” reputedly made his classmates laugh so hard that tears ran down their faces.12

  Unlike the events that befall Yōzō in A Shameful Life, however, Shūji’s father dies and his dour eldest brother, Bunji (1898–1973), takes over as head of household in 1923, the same year that Shūji enters middle school. When he goes on to Hirosaki Higher School (roughly equivalent to college in the new educational system), Shūji begins to study gidayū, a form of narrative chanting that accompanies jōruri (traditional Japanese puppet theater). He also awakens to the pleasures of drink and dissipation and begins an ill-fated affair with a geisha, Koyama Hatsuyo (1912–44). He continues to pursue his writing, founding and editing a coterie literary magazine, Saibō bungei (“Cell Literature”). It is during this time that he becomes acquainted with, and involved in, illegal communist activities. In 1929, in his third year at Hirosaki Higher School, Shūji makes his first known attempt at suicide, using the same sleeping medicine, Carmotine, that Yōzō’s ill-mannered servant “accidentally” replaces with a laxative at the end of the novel.

  The year 1930 is a busy one for Shūji. He enters the French Literature Department at Tokyo Imperial University despite not speaking a word of the language. He meets Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993), a writer whom Shūji had long admired and the man who would become his literary mentor. He also becomes increasingly involved in illegal political activities. Amid all of this, he helps Hatsuyo escape from her contract and brings her to live with him in Tokyo. Shūji’s pursuit of a geisha was, of course, a terrible scandal for a household as prominent as the Tsushimas’—it is almost as embarrassing as his ties to communism. Shūji’s elder brother Bunji has already become a prominent local politician in his own right, and he tries, to no avail, to persuade Shūji to give the girl up. In the end it is decided that she will stay with him. Shūji continues to receive a generous stipend while he continues his education. In exchange, all other ties between Shūji and his family are severed. Apparently pushed to his limits, Shūji tries to kill himself for the second time. Echoing the story of Tsuneko, in late November of 1930 Shūji attempts suicide with Tanabe Shimeko (1912–30), a waitress he’s only just met at a Ginza café. As in the novel, Shimeko dies but Shūji is saved.

  After escaping potential prosecution for abetting a suicide—no doubt thanks to his family’s intervention—and recovering from the attempt, Shūji marries Hatsuyo, and the two set up house in a small apartment, reminiscent of Yōzō and Yoshiko and their tiny apartment in Tsukiji. This is not a happy beginning marked by domestic bliss, however, and Dazai describes it as “. . . a shameless, imbecilic time. I scarcely showed up at school at all, of course, I abhorred all effort, and spent my time lying around watching H[atsuyo] indifferently. It was crazy. I did nothing.”13 Unlike Yōzō, Shūji has an involvement in leftist activities that is no mere joke, at least not in terms of the consequences. Nor is he as skillful as Yōzō at evading the notice of the police. Shūji and Hatsuyo are forced to move house, renting apartments under assumed names, as the police search for them. In 1932 he is twice summoned by authorities for questioning about his links to illegal political activities, though he is released both times. It is also around this time that his image of Hatsuyo is irreparably shattered. Just as Yōzō despairs when Yoshiko’s “pure and innocent trust” is transformed overnight into “filthy, yellow sewage,” he discovers that Hatsuyo is not the “pure,” inexperienced girl he thought he’d married.

  After another suicide attempt in 1935, a failed hanging, Shūji falls seriously ill with appendicitis and not long thereafter becomes addicted to the oxycodeine-based painkiller Pavinal, first prescribed to treat pain related to post-operative complications. His mental and physical health, never good, deteriorate further, and in late 1936 he is admitted to a mental hospital for a month to break his addiction to the drug. While he is hospitalized, Hatsuyo has an affair with one of Shūji’s friends. When Shūji discovers this in 1937, he and Hatsuyo go to a hot spring and attempt double suicide using Carmotine. The attempt fails, and the couple separate shortly thereafter.

  The following year, mentor Ibuse Masuji introduces Shūji to Ishihara Michiko (1912–97) and in January of 1939 they marry. Not unlike Yōzō’s life immediately after his marriage to Yoshiko, this marks a productive and relatively optimistic time in Shūji’s life. His renown grows, his stories are published more widely, and he begins to accumulate prizes and awards. It is also at this time that he pens his most widely read and beloved work, “Hashire melosu” (“Run, Melos!,” 1940). Shūji’s lung ailment exempts him from active service during the war, and he manages to achieve something of a rapprochement with his family in Aomori, beginning with two visits to see his mother, who is ill and dies shortly after the second visit in 1942. He makes additional visits in 1944, when he is commissioned to write a “travel diary”—published in November of 1944 as Tsugaru, and again in 1945, when he and his family evacuate to Aomori to escape the bombings that are devastating most of Japan’s urban centers.

  Shūji does not move back to Tokyo until late 1946, and shortly afterward his life once again takes a decided turn for the worse. He is drinking heavily, coughing blood as a result of his tuberculosis, and has become embroiled in affairs with two different women—fathering a child with one of them and ultimately committing suicide with the other. It is also a time when he writes his two most famous and most enduring novels, The Setting Sun (Shayō, 1947) and A Shameful Life (Ningen shikkaku, 1948).

  It is not surprising that critics have seen in these two grim novels a reflection of the despair that gripped Japan in the aftermath of its defeat in 1945. Its economy and urban centers have been demolished or, in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, completely obliterated. Millions of Japanese citizens killed and died for naught. John Dower identifies this condition of kyodatsu or “exhaustion and despair,” a condition that accompanied the overall “psychic collapse” of the nation’s people after its defeat.14 Of course, in A Shameful Life the only mention of the war appears in the Epilogue when—in a scene that would’ve been very familiar to urban readers at the time—the “discoverer” of the journals heads to Funabashi both to meet a friend and to forage for scarce food to feed his family. However, the bleak despair felt by the protagonist, the hopelessness and the deep distrust of everything and everyone that colors every aspect of the narrative, would likely have resonated particularly strongly with the postwar Japanese readership.

  On June 13 Shūji and one of his lovers, Yamazaki Tomie (1919–48) jump into a nearby river, leaving unfinished his last work, Good Bye (Guddo-bai, 1948)—a comical story in which a man tries to break with his m
any mistresses. Their bodies aren’t recovered until June 19, what would have been Shūji’s thirty-ninth birthday. The complete version of A Shameful Life appears in print a little over a month later.

  ***

  As one might expect, critics and scholars have sought answers for Shūji’s death in Dazai’s literature. “Why did he die? The key to solving this riddle is doubtless to be found concealed in his writings from ‘Recollections’ to A Shameful Life,” one scholar writes.15 Lyons sees Dazai’s writings as an extended suicide note. With the completion of A Shameful Life, she says, that note had come to an end. “There were no words for the next step. The suicide note was done. The period had finally been struck.”16

  There is, of course, no way to know for certain why Tsushima Shūji killed himself. The only person who might have been able to answer that question is dead. Clearly he was in ill-health, mentally and physically, and he had painted himself into something of a corner with various escapades in his personal life, though this was nothing new. Shūji had, after all, been involved in one scandal or another for much of his adult life. Did he truly kill himself because he had completed the “saga” of that literary persona, Dazai Osamu? After A Shameful Life, was there really nothing left to be said?

  As noted earlier, Tsushima Shūji and Dazai Osamu are similar, yet distinct, beings. The latter can be seen as the “literary persona” partly lived and partly created by Tsushima Shūji. It is difficult, if not impossible, to draw a clear line demarcating the two as much of what we know (or think we know) about Shūji comes to us through the medium of his writings. As we see in the brief biography above, Yōzō, too, differs from Dazai, who, in turn, differs from Shūji. Despite the differences between them, it is a rare reader who can resist the impulse to try to “reverse engineer” the novel, discovering in Yoshiko composites of Hatsuyo and Michiko, finding Shigeko in Tsuneko, noting the similarities in upbringing, family, and so on. The intimate tone of the narrative and the form and conventions of the “I-novel” conspire to encourage such a reading.