The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

Even such uncivilized actions seem not only charming but strangely erotic when Mother performs them. The real things are apt to be deviant.

I have never liked breakfast and am not hungry before ten o’clock.

Mother’s recent illness, on the other hand, had really been nerve-racking and depressing. And yet, Mother’s only concern was for me.

Scoundrels like Naoji simply don’t die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people.

I thanked God from the bottom of my heart for my good fortune in having a mother so full of tenderness.

“It must be a terrible ordeal for you.” Mother’s tone was warmly understanding. It was her love which gave me the strength to make all the rest of the calls, this time without once weeping.

“I have something I’d like to talk over with you today.” “What is it? If it’s about your dying, no thanks.”

Poverty is nothing. As long as you love me, all I want is to spend my whole life by your side. But you love Naoji more than you love me, don’t you? I’ll go.

I am sure that the reason why I wept and stormed as if I had gone off my head was that the combination of physical exhaustion and my unhappiness had made me hate and resent everything.

Every morning I pray to your father’s spirit to make you happy.”

Those days, as I remember them now, were the last in which the dying embers of our happiness still glowed.

Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings.

To die by being sucked into an act of desperation ….no thanks. I had rather die by my own hand.

When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering. The world is out of joint.

Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.

“I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved,”

“Doesn’t it make any difference to you that I don’t love you?” He answered seriously, “It doesn’t matter for a woman. A woman can be vague.” “But a woman like myself cannot think of marriage without love. I am fully grown. Next year I will be thirty.” I was taken aback at my own words.

“You should never fall in love. Love will bring you unhappiness. If you must love, let it be when you are older, after you are thirty.”

“I never forget a syllable of praise addressed to me. I’m so glad you remembered.”

It isn’t that I dislike artists, but I can’t stand anyone who puts on those ponderous airs of a man of character.”

See the faint lines that have etched themselves on both sides of my mouth. Behold the wrinkles of the malheur du siècle. I am sure that my face will express my feeling to you more clearly than any words.

I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts.

I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world.

To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one per cent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine per cent is just living in waiting.

Thus every day, from morning to night, I wait in despair for something.

Won’t you shove aside the morality that blocks you?

the terrifying word “fatal.” I couldn’t believe it was the truth. I had the feeling that were Mother to die, my own flesh would melt away with her.

This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.

Mother said gently, “You must be worn out from the strain every day. Please hire a nurse for me.” I realized that she was more worried about my health than her own, and this made me feel all the more miserable.

discovered myself just as upset as I used to get then, only to be swept by nostalgia at the thought that this was the last time that Mother would ever guide me.

The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive—those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood.

“It must have been a terrible rush for you,”

Those were the last words that Mother spoke.

“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness—they’re heartbreaking. Whenever you can hear the gloomy sighs of woe from the four walls around you, you know that there’s not a chance of happiness existing just for you. What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger. There are too many pitiful people.—

I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow—

abasement, like so many Jews. I should have died sooner. But there was one thing: Mama’s love. When I thought of that I couldn’t die.

he has the right to die when he pleases, and yet as long as my mother remained alive, I felt that the right to death would have to be left in abeyance, for to exercise it would have meant killing her too.

I am better off dead. I haven’t the capacity to stay alive.

I am, it would seem, a man who can only love one woman.

I realized that now I had no choice but to die in this house in the country. Even so, when I told myself that you would be the one to find my body and imagined how alarmed this would make you, I felt so hesitant about killing myself that I could not possibly have gone through with it.

Everyone is leaving me.

It seems that you too have abandoned me. No, it seems rather as though you are gradually forgetting me.

Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.