A Shameful Life: (Ningen Shikkaku)
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Osamu Dazai (1909-48) retains an enormous following today. He is as famous for his darkly introspective novels as for the light-hearted children's stories that are a staple of many Japanese textbooks. His novel Shayo has been published in English as The Setting Sun. Son of a wealthy family in northern Japan, Dazai was a top student who showed an early penchant for literary writing. He led a troubled, unstable life and suffered from drug abuse and alcoholism; he attempted suicide and had numerous affairs, even as his literary fame grew. A Shameful Life is said to be a close approximation of his lifestyle and struggles. The protagonist in the novel survives, but shortly after publication of A Shameful Life, Dazai and his lover drowned themselves in the Tamagawa Canal in western Tokyo.
Mark Gibeau is a literary translator and scholar of postwar Japanese literature. His previous translations include fiction by Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirô Tanizaki, Shûgorô Yamamoto, Sakumi Tayama, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Sakyô Komatsu among others. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University, Canberra.
Recipient of the William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation
"Dazai is the ultimate bad boy of Japanese literature and Ningen Shikkaku is his supreme masterpiece, a novel that still shocks today with its brutal honesty and unflinching, strangely thrilling pessimism. Nothing remotely like it had been seen in Japanese literature before."
-The Japan Times
"A refreshing and interesting reconstruction of this Japanese classic... 70 years on, Gibeau's translation shows that this captivating novel is still as relevant and powerful as it was on the day of its initial release."
--The Japan Society UK Review
"Powerful... a fascinating psychological portrait, of someone trying (or rather, constantly failing) to come to terms with a self they find unbearable."
--The Complete Review
"An all-new translation of Osamu Dazai's bleak masterwork brings fresh clarity and immediacy to a staple of modern Japanese literature."
--Ganriki.org
Oba Yozo, the central character and anti-hero of Dazai Osamu's Ningen Shikkaku, is as familiar to Japanese readers as Holden Caulfield is to English readers. The Catcher in the Rye still sells a million copies per year... Catcher, however, pales beside Ningen as a literary achievement."
--Asian Review of Books
"Dazai's novel is unrelentingly bleak.... but the joylessness here is unique, yet still strangely readable. It's a grim portrait of post-war ennui and failure of nerve."
--The Pacific Rim Review of Books
"5/5 Osamu Dazai is one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. He became even more of a cult-like figure when he committed suicide with his supposed lover in 1948. What we get is his last, and most autobiographical, work. One in which you ask yourself whether you are really reading a piece of fiction or something that the author wanted the world to know before he committed suicide."
--Manhattan Book Review
"Dazai's book is a challenging, important part of Japanese culture."
--Japan Visitor
"Dazai's reputation has not waned a bit in seventy years. Reading Mark Gibeau's brilliant translation will show you why."
--Roger Pulvers, award-winning translator, film director, and author of LIV
"This new translation brings fresh skill and sensitivity to the task of interpreting one of modern Japanese literature's most endearing classics. It gives us Dazai in all his quirky hilarity and pathos, and deepens our understanding of this complex and brilliant writer."
--Dr. Meredith McKinney, award winning translator of Sei Shôocirc;nagon's The Pillow Book
"Certain novels evoke such a vivid sense of a character that it almost hurts to reach the end. This nuanced, engaging translation of Dazai Osamu's masterpiece A Shameful Life is just such a work: subtle and complex, it pulls the reader in and refuses to let go. Indeed, Mark Gibeau's helpful afterword left me wanting to turn right back to the first page and dig into the book again. A Shameful Life has that kind of power: it is Dazai at his finest."
--Michael Emmerich, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at UC
