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The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene (Translator)

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 1,017 ratings · 57 reviews

Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society.

Paperback, 175 pages

Published January 17th 1968 by New Directions (first published 1947)

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Apr 19, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: enjoy the unknown

Recommended to Mariel by: military fashion show

Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun gave me a foriegn sort of feeling inside, like I felt different, not in a something is about to happen way, exactly. Different when you're yourself playing at being someone else? I wish I could match my heartbeat with its pulse and my impulses as I lapsed into its rhythm. I was creeped out. I was in awe. The best I can do is that it was the kind of foriegness that Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy had. I mean, it isn't a fantasy in the genre sense of the word. But...more Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun gave me a foriegn sort of feeling inside, like I felt different, not in a something is about to happen way, exactly. Different when you're yourself playing at being someone else? I wish I could match my heartbeat with its pulse and my impulses as I lapsed into its rhythm. I was creeped out. I was in awe. The best I can do is that it was the kind of foriegness that Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy had. I mean, it isn't a fantasy in the genre sense of the word. But it kinda is in my emotions. The images firing up in my mind's eyes are exactly that: a fantasy. A fantasy of victims, love, suicide, of living as dreaming in nightmares and hopes (childish hopes? I'll be able to tell the difference when I grow up). Throwing yourself on the fires fantasy. What else is there to do? Start a revolution. Emotional fantasy! Can't you just say that, Mariel? I know all about talking myself into shit too, same as Kazuko and her brother Naoji. (Is it any wonder that I kept thinking about Gormenghast? Decay, figurehead costume jewelry stage lights artistocracy, smoke and mirrors depression and love... What's real? Suicide as acting out... Perpetual teenagers... Ellipsis thoughts...)

The book jacket says that Kazuko is "a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class". Well, what class was left? They don't have any money. I think it is more embracing those fantasy feelings inside that make you feel like something could happen in those moments when you try to know yourself (keep yourself?). She met her brother's drinking buddy, a writer Mr. Uehara, six years before.

"One day six years ago a faint pale rainbow formed in my breast. It was not love or passion, but the colors of the rainbow have deepened and intensified as time has gone by. Never once have I lost it from sight. The rainbow that spans the sky when it clears after a shower soon fades away, but the rainbow in a person's heart does not seem to disappear that way. Please ask him. I wonder what he really thinks of me. I wonder if he has thought of me as of a rainbow in the sky after a shower. And has it already faded away? If it has, I must erase my own rainbow. But unless I first erase my life, the rainbow in my breast will not fade away."

I'm inclined to believe it is one of those loves that could as easily have not happened at all as it had started. That's kinda why I liked it. I could be basing that on my own "loves" that were a lot of talking myself into and build ups grown out of wanting something to be there. Blindnesses... Because of that, I can picture the rainbow and feel its shape. It is colorless because it is blind.

"At this moment, as I stood on the verge of tears, the words "realism" and "romanticism" welled up within me. I have no sense of realism. And that this very fact might be what permits me to go on living sends cold chills through my whole body."
Yes, playing...

Twelve years have passed and I have yet to progress a step beyond the Sarashina Diary stage. What in the world have I been doing all this time? I have never felt myself drawn toward revolution, and I have not even known love. The older and wiser heads of the world have always described revolution and love to us as the two most foolish and loathsome of human activities. Before the war, even during the war, we were convinced of it. Since the defeat, however, we no longer trust the older and wiser heads and have come to feel that the opposite of whatever they say is the truth about life. Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precisely because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off on us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution."

"I want to believe"

"I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can't go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling with no one, neither hating nor betraying anyone. In the world to come there will be no room for such people. The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive- those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood."
Kazuko's relationship with her depressed mother seems to be a mirror image of my own with my mom, like exact opposites in feeling as flip sides. My side has worms and Kazuko's side has snakes (like the snake omens her mama fears, maybe). Kazuko values the beautiful uselessness of her mother (the natural aristocrat), craves her love, admires the defeat as she resolves to not do what the "victims" (her mother, brother and love Mr. Uehara) all give into (giving up, rather). It was kinda creepy feeling to me that she worshipped her mother as if she were a doll or on a stage screen instead of someone to depend on.

When the room became faintly light, I stared at the face of the man sleeping beside me. It was the face of a man soon to die. It was an exhausted face. The face of a victim. A precious victim."

"The revolution is far from taking place. It needs more, many more valuable, unfortunate victims. In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim."
What use is the figures and ideals? Start a revolution without a Jesus love. Victims. Huh. I love Kazuko for doing something, no matter where the love came from (throwing herself blindness, girlish fantasies, whatever). Staying the same as helplessness is only as glamorous as staring at a picture. You can't take it with you. My point, I guess, is that her mama never fought for anything. Kazuko may have loved the victims but I love the revolution. They'll leave you alone every time, those victims.

Little girls forever... What is that foriegn feeling, anyway?(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Jan 25, 2010 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars

An analysis of sickness and love in the grip of large scale sickness and destruction. An analysis without recourse to logical analysis - like poetry.

"A science which is postulated on the assumption that human beings are avaricious through all eternity is utterly devoid of point (whether in problems of distribution or any other aspect) to a person who is not avaricious."

This winningly naive thought by the main character, upon reading a book on economics in the wake of WWII, her first foray into s...more

14 likes · like · see review

Jun 22, 2011 AC rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japan, novels-japanese-writers

I'm not sure what to say about this - I can see that it was an important book -- there are moments of lyrical beauty in it - But it is very hard to adjudge a book written in Japanese when read by an English only speaker.... On the other hand, the angst of the writer and the character -- Dazai himself committed suicide -- is.... it is no longer a very revolutionary act. Death is not a very revolutionary act. It is clinical... and while it may have shocked the bourgeois sentiments of the 19th cent...more

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Jan 12, 2013 umberto rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japan

I found reading “The Setting Sun” by Osamu Dazai a bit disappointing, especially in its second half around one fourth, since its readers have been overwhelmed by his seemingly destructive obsession. So the more we read farther, the more we feel guiltily embittered. This might be another genre worth studying/doing research for advanced degrees in good and great universities worldwide. I’m not sure if this literary symptom is related to any existing literary theory or any field of psychology/psych...more I found reading “The Setting Sun” by Osamu Dazai a bit disappointing, especially in its second half around one fourth, since its readers have been overwhelmed by his seemingly destructive obsession. So the more we read farther, the more we feel guiltily embittered. This might be another genre worth studying/doing research for advanced degrees in good and great universities worldwide. I’m not sure if this literary symptom is related to any existing literary theory or any field of psychology/psychiatry and if there is, this should be an emerging issue on why we should study for more in-depth understanding so that we can find how to cope with this semi-dangerous idea, learn to look at the bright side and find practical solutions for the readers in general to apply, keep going, be busy and be useful to their communities as much as possible. However, there are a few points worth sharing with my Goodreads friends as follows.

First, I think its English title is sarcastically interesting because it is the opposite of “The Rising Sun” as normally used in Japan before World War II. The influence from this novel has formed the idea of “people of the setting sun – the declining aristocracy” (back cover) as narrated and portrayed by Dazai to signify his opinion on the Japanese people suffered from the war.

Second, I liked this dialog between Mother and Kazuko, the lady protagonist because of its masterly-written sentences and, I think, his readers would find it hard not to be emotionally moved and thus cannot help weeping in sympathy:
…
“Really? In that case, your mother is good for ninety!”
“Yes,” I said, a little perplexed. Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young. Mother is beautiful. But I want her to live a long time. I was at a loss what to say. “You are being difficult,” I protested. My lower lip began to tremble, and tears brimmed over. (p. 10)

Third, be careful while reading each chapter since Dazai has applied his flashback technique as informed in the introduction (p. xv). For instance, Chapters One-Five, obviously narrated by Kazuko, Chapter Six, ambiguously mixed-narrative by Kazuko and her brother (?), Naoji, and Chapter Seven, Naoji’s written journal (I preferred this term to ‘testament’ as translated there).

Finally, this novel is readable in its first three fourths but, after that, its readers should read it wisely and leave it at that.
(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Dec 02, 2011 Meghan Fidler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

1 like · like · see review

Dec 06, 2011 Jeremy added it

Shelves: japanese-literature

So bleak. Dazai writes about the dissolution of a single aristocratic Japanese family, and he does a great job of showing the sad, helpless position that lower aristocrats of any nationality usually find themselves in. They're lost between a quickly disintegrating past and future that has no real interest in or place for them. Suicide comes up a lot in this book. Yet it never felt shocking or surprising. It seems inevitable that they will all end up compromised, broken, and dead. What did surpri...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Clint rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I was always kind of hesitant to read anything by Osamu Dazai because I had the impression that he was kind of emo. I still think you can't have multiple suicide failures if you're serious about it, and this guy did, and was famous for it. I also had the impression that he was really into Christianity (not as a religion but as a supply of symbols) and western writers, especially French, and that he was one of those Asians absolutely desperate to appear as un-"Asian" as possible. I was kind of wr...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 12, 2009 Jacquelyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first time I've read anything by Osamu Dazai. Apparently, Dazai was a tragic figure - he became addicted to morphine and made several suicide attempts before he succeeded in 1948. The translator's notes say that he was considered one of the great chroniclers of contempory Japanese life. The story is about the decline of the aristocracy after the war. The images that Dazai brings to the reader are startling in their hue and weight - the mother who sips her soup from the end of the spo...more

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 24, 2009 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Second time through this perfect book, the first being a dozen years ago. The Keene introduction does a good job of highlighting some of the things I enjoy most about Japanese writing and characterization:

"At the same time, she remains unmistakably Japanese in her relations with the people around her and in her quick emotional responses to the moments of intensity in her life. Because family confidences are almost impossible (except on the rare occasions when the repressions of Japanese life are...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jul 06, 2012 Quis Ut rated it 4 of 5 stars

The cultural turmoil of post-war japan makes for a novel that remains relevant to 21st century humans of any modern society. The prose at first comes off as sparse but eventually blossoms into blissfully succinct branches of thought expressed with impeccable economy. Not a single word is wasted or conspicuously absent. Once you get accustomed to the flow of that narrative, the real tragedy begins. It's very short; one could get through it in a day.

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 31, 2011 David Haws rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-fiction

I can see how the novel needs to be done in the first person, and why the narrator needs to be a woman (and I like the allusion to Zarathustra) but is the decline of an aristocracy all that interesting? I watched K-20 (怪人二十面相・伝) the other night, which depicts Japan at the same time but having avoided WWII and the collapse of its hereditary aristocracy—and it was more interesting if only because it presented a novelty.

Why are we so partial to our own DNA? Clearly, great men and women rise to the...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Jolon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature

I need to quit reading these. Cried myself sick and thought of life's futility, love, and gentleness. Dazai was a brilliant author, and he communicates his soul so effectively that his every work seems to justify his suicide in the most beautiful terms until it is understandable and attractive. "The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive- those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood."

This is unhealthy literature for anyone who feels down or questions the validity of liv...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Biondy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english, from-to-read, japanese-literature, drama, family, romance

Judul: The Setting Sun (斜陽--Shayō)
Penulis: Osamu Dazai
Penerjemah: Donald Keene
Penerbit: Tuttle Publishing, Berkeley Books
Tebal: 175 halaman
Terbit: 1981

Berlatarkan Jepang setelah Perang Dunia II, "The Setting Sun" bercerita tentang Kazuko, anak perempuan tertua dari sebuah keluarga aristokrat yang kehilangan hartanya akibat perang. Kazuko dan ibunya pindah ke daerah pinggiran setelah perang selesai dan mulai menjalani kehidupan dengan bekerja di ladang dan memperoleh makanan lewat pembagian jata...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Chris Cabrera rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first novel I've read by Osamu Dazai, one of Japan' most important post-war novelists.

I won't lie and say it wasn't a difficult read. It isn't a long novel so I'd like to sit down and really analyze a lot of what he's written here.
It was hard to get into at first too. A lot of the beginning felt like it dragged one a bit too heavily.

The translation also seemed a bit aged and I think "The Setting Sun" could definitely deserve a new translation: especially considering the current on...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Becca Loo rated it 3 of 5 stars

such a quiet novel. undeniably good, but oh so tragic. the book is mostly about Kazuko the daughter of an aristocratic family that realizes the truth about class once her station changes after the war. she is put to work doing manual labor for awhile. her brother goes off to fight in the war and then gone missing for most of the book is presumed dead. Kazuko and her mother sell their big house to move to the country as money runs out. Kazuko struggles with being poor but some of the books best m...more such a quiet novel. undeniably good, but oh so tragic. the book is mostly about Kazuko the daughter of an aristocratic family that realizes the truth about class once her station changes after the war. she is put to work doing manual labor for awhile. her brother goes off to fight in the war and then gone missing for most of the book is presumed dead. Kazuko and her mother sell their big house to move to the country as money runs out. Kazuko struggles with being poor but some of the books best moments are spent in adjusting to their new house. in true Japanese style neither of the women complain much but their subtle communication speaks volumes. hints of the old aristocracy play themselves out in the elaborate daily manners of eating simple gruel. after a few months of country living Kazuko adjusts and even starts to enjoy light farming. then they get word that Naoji, brother/son, has not died in the war and will be sent home immediately. before the war Naoji had been addicted to painkillers so much that he racked up quite a debt to the town pharmacist which Kazuko would help pay by smuggling money given to her by her husband. the entire book is soaked in this strange family dynamic fueled by guilt and ideas of nobility. when Naoji returns to the country house their mother suggests Kazuko get a job. Naoji is drinking away much of their money and more is needed. there is little hope for Kazuko finding a job in their small town so her mother suggests her leaving somewhere to be a governess. of course, this hurts Kazuko very much and after a flurry of tears and hurtful words the idea is scrapped. eventually, under the stress of worrying about the future of the family the mother slowly dies. at this point the book probably should have ended, instead it lumbers on to become more strange and tragic then anything i could have guessed. i won't explain the rest because it's mostly convoluted and what really matters about this book is the way it looms over you big and heavy yet sheer as silk. there is peace and sadness, truth and the understanding for deception, beauty and death, and an unmistakable feeling that in time all things crumble and return to the stones they started as. vague as all that sounds i enjoyed the slow pace after the orson scott card debacle and if you're not in a hurry then maybe you will too.(less)

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Jul 15, 2011 Taka rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: japan_jul07-aug10, japanese_lit

"Humans are born to love and revolt"--

J-Lit Binge #7: The Setting Sun

He floored me yet again. The story is based on Chekov's The Cherry Orchard in that it's about an aristocratic family falling into ruin. It's deceptively simple yet extremely powerful.

It tells of a mother who dies of TB, her daughter who wants to have a child of a drunken and conceited novelist her brother used to admire, and her brother who leads a decadent life and gradually destroys himself with drugs, alcohol, and women.

The...more

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Jul 23, 2009 Gertrude & Victoria rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-library

In the same fashion as his predecessors, Natsume Soseki (Kokoro) and Tanizaki Junichiro (Naomi), Dazai provides an insightful historical account in The Setting Sun, as much as he draws a story of intense emotional appeal. All three of these prominent novelists have written, so deftly, about a Japan in a period of great uncertainty amid rapid change. This change can be interpreted as a period of natural transition or one of unpredictable upheaval. Dazai's story is set in post-war Japan and recoun...more

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Jul 19, 2009 Kimley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century, japanese-lit

In the days, weeks and months following 9/11 I had a really difficult time getting a grasp on reality. I pretty much walked around the city in a daze for quite a while not knowing what to make of any of it. I frankly still don't know what to make of any of it...

So I can't even imagine what it must have been like for not just the Japanese but for everyone to go from a pre-nukes world to witnessing the near annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This is the story of one aristocratic family in Japa...more

13 likes · like · see review

May 04, 2011 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Of course I freaked out for all the knitting passages where she unravels a dusty rose scarf her mother had knit for her and starts a sweater... I loved the first half or so of the book. Loved anything with the mother, and the main narrator, but had a lot of trouble with the male characters. And the ending kind of blew it for me. By then I didn't care what happened to them. But beautiful writing at times, and great pace. Plants and animals and food were great, too.

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Jul 28, 2011 Zenu rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book about the 'victims of moral transition' as Osamu Dazai puts it himself was an enigma when I had only a dozen pages left. I couldn't tell what to make of it - it's either too good and I'll keep thinking about it for a couple of days or to bad to bother. It falls eventually in one piece by the end of the novel and I think it's good one. It reveals the hypocrisy of 'all people are the same' with humor and tenderness.

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Jan 21, 2009 Andrew added it

Shelves: japanese-fiction

It's unfortunate that Dazai doesn't get widely read in this country, because this is some amazing shit. If Japan had a Rimbaud, it would be this dude. While it's an often bleak story of aristocratic life at loggerheads with the modern age, it's an unbelievably touching portrait of a family, akin to many of the Japanese films of the postwar era.

1 like · like · see review

Jun 03, 2012 sanaz rated it 4 of 5 stars

If I had read this a couple of years earlier I was not able to understand how great it was. The ending, actually the sense of salvation that I experienced in the end of this immense tale of sadness and suffering and perishing was unbelievable. Of course I experienced salvation exactly because of the road I have paved in my life until now and how I see life right now: I know what is pain and how it aches to be a human!

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Aug 04, 2012 Robin Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book from mid-20th century Japan (translated) is a remarkable study of simple prose, depicting a "modern" woman's search for self and fulfillment. Distinctly Japanese, the cadence is exotic, language sparse and clean. An interesting piece that one might have to read several times in order to catch all of the nuances.

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Jan 26, 2012 Aaron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Overall, the book was good. I feel this translation wasn't the best. The writing came off as really dry and just kinda laid like a dead dog on the page. Reading only one other book of his (No Longer Human), I can see how his writing can be translated this way, but I feel with The Setting Sun, the translator missed the mark. Unlike No Longer Human, this one had a "happy ending." WIll mos def be reading Run Melos.

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Sep 30, 2011 Daniel Burton-Rose rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: japan

Kazuko's abrupt reading of Rosa Luxemburg and advocacy of Christianity and socialist revolution struck me as poorly integrated with the depiction of dispossessed aristocracy, but this in itself says something about disenchanted artists in the immediate post-war period.

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Feb 17, 2012 Theia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: not-recommended, fiction, japanese

Slabă, subțire, cu sclipiri de idee pe alocuri.
Scriitură naivă, aproape adolescentină, nu convinge, pare superficială.
Structurată dezordonat. Nici reprezentativă pentru cultura Japoniei nu e. Scriitorul plutește deasupra unor teme arhidiscutate, fără a le arăta fețe noi, fără a trezi interes, fără putere a ideii sau scrierii. Îi lipsește pasiunea și puterea cuvintelor/expresiilor.

Tema principală sau, mai degrabă, „ancadramentul” lucrării este confuzia identitară a Japoniei postbelice (personaj...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Oliver rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those with patience and an interest in Japanese literature

Super depressing, slow, and quiet. Of course, these aren't knocks when you're dealing with the aesthetics of Japanese lit. Contrasting that description, there's a surprising amount of what I'd call melodrama woven in, which kept me from getting as much out of it as I could have.

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Sep 28, 2009 Veronika KaoruSaionji rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is from perspective (in ich-forma) of young noble woman from poverished noble family. Her brother is alcoholic, her mother is ill and she is desperate... Very sad novel.
I love short stories by Dazai, but I don´t like this novel.

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Jan 23, 2013 Chilly SavageMelon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese, beat-and-beat-related

Similar feel as No Longer Human, but a bit more of a story and from a female perspective. Japanese beat/existential feel - not for everyone, but rewarding for fans of such things looking to dig deeper. A quick and solid read.

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Aug 21, 2007 Astrid Reza rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-book-shelf

Family in a lyrical way is sad. In Dazai’s terms quiet depressive. The whole narration is in a very sad nearly cold tone of manners. This book tale about an aristocrat Japanese family seeing their lives falls into pieces after the war. I fall in love deeply with Kazuko character shown in her desperate letters to Uehara. A blend of desperation, love and the beauty of sadness in her do make her portrait rather sensuous. And yes, this novel is quite depressing in making people want to kill themselv...more

1 like · like · see review

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About Osamu Dazai

His real name is Shuuji Tsushima. Although his father wanted him to be a politician, he insisted on being an author. When he applied to the Tokyo University French Literature Department, he was 20 years old. For most of his lifetime, he was a drug addict, an alcoholic and a sufferer of tubercolosis.

His last book Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human)(1948) is an authobiography. It documents his childh...more

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Quotes from The Setting Sun

“Last year nothing happened
The year before nothing happened
And the year before that nothing
happened.” — 38 people liked it

“To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.” — 13 people liked it

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