WRITER

Osamu Dazai

1909 - 1948

Photo of Osamu Dazai

Icon of person Osamu Dazai

Shūji Tsushima (津島 修治, Tsushima Shūji, 19 June 1909 – 13 June 1948), known by his pen name Osamu Dazai (太宰 治, Dazai Osamu), was a Japanese novelist and author. A number of his most popular works, such as The Setting Sun (斜陽, Shayō) and No Longer Human (人間失格, Ningen Shikkaku), are considered modern-day classics. His influences include Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Murasaki Shikibu and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Osamu Dazai has received more than 3,476,274 page views. His biography is available in 52 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 48 in 2019). Osamu Dazai is the 179th most popular writer (up from 197th in 2019), the 19th most popular biography from Japan and the 6th most popular Japanese Writer.

Osamu Dazai is most famous for his novel "No Longer Human."

Memorability Metrics

  • 3.5M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 73.15

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 52

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 7.31

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.35

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The setting sun
1956
No longer human
Fiction
A young man describes his torment as he struggles to reconcile the diverse influences of Western culture and the traditions of his own Japanese heritage
19584 / 5
Return to Tsugaru
Business & Economics
1985
Dazai Osamu zenshū
1955
Self portraits
1991
Ningen shikkaku
Husbands
1967
No Longer Human
Fiction, Near and far eastern fiction (fictional works by one author), Literature
Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world . . . suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, . . . but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.
1948
The setting sun
Fiction, Near and far eastern fiction (fictional works by one author)
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effectives of war and the translation from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazzi died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book had made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
1956
No Longer Human
1973
Return to Tsugaru
Travel, Japanese Authors, Biography
1985
Dazai Osamu shū
1959
Self portraits
Fiction, Social life and customs, Translations into English
1991

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Osamu Dazai ranks 179 out of 7,302. Before him are François-René de Chateaubriand, Wisława Szymborska, Taras Shevchenko, Luigi Pirandello, Svetlana Alexievich, and J. D. Salinger. After him are André Breton, Nizami Ganjavi, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Constantine VII, and Tove Jansson.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1909, Osamu Dazai ranks 5. Before him are Stepan Bandera, Nicholas Winton, Eugène Ionesco, and Francis Bacon. After him are Simone Weil, Juliana of the Netherlands, Peter Drucker, Victor Borge, U Thant, Kwame Nkrumah, and Rita Levi-Montalcini. Among people deceased in 1948, Osamu Dazai ranks 4. Before him are Mahatma Gandhi, Sergei Eisenstein, and Mileva Marić. After him are Edvard Beneš, Franz Lehár, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, Hideki Tojo, Walther von Brauchitsch, Edgar de Wahl, Antonin Artaud, and Folke Bernadotte.

Others Born in 1909

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Others Deceased in 1948

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Osamu Dazai ranks 19 out of 6,245. Before him are Naruhito (1960), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536), Emperor Taishō (1879), Isoroku Yamamoto (1884), Yoko Ono (1933), and Yasunari Kawabata (1899). After him are Murasaki Shikibu (973), Emperor Jimmu (-711), Shinzō Abe (1954), Koji Tanaka (1955), Osamu Tezuka (1928), and Hideki Tojo (1884).

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Among WRITERS In Japan

Among writers born in Japan, Osamu Dazai ranks 6. Before him are Miyamoto Musashi (1584), Matsuo Bashō (1644), Haruki Murakami (1949), Yukio Mishima (1925), and Yasunari Kawabata (1899). After him are Murasaki Shikibu (973), Kenzaburō Ōe (1935), Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892), Natsume Sōseki (1867), Kazuo Ishiguro (1954), and Kōbō Abe (1924).

Japanese born Writers

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