Schoolgirl (Modern Japanese Classics)

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This work was based on the diary of Shizuko Ōta ( 太田静子), an admirer of Dazai's works who first met him in 1941. This novella describes an average day of, you guessed it, a schoolgirl, and while the unnamed girl follows mundane routines and chores, the stream-of-consciousness opens up her inner world. Schoolgirl is a significant piece of postwar literature in that it questions and problematizes some serious intellectual issues on power, gender and national identity, yet it manages to do so in a completely accessible way.

Novella which first appeared in the April 1939 issue of Bungakukai; also the title of a collection of stories in which it appears. In college, Dazai met activist Eizo Kudo, and made a monthly financial contribution of ¥10 to the Communist Party.Youth is a volatile landscape of emotions and opinions, often vacillating between extremes while wishing you could just find your own sense of self and stability amidst all the tumult. Dazai's father, Gen'emon, a younger son of the Matsuki family, which due to "its exceedingly 'feudal' tradition" had no use for sons other than the eldest son and heir, was adopted into the Tsushima family to marry the eldest daughter, Tane; he became involved in politics due to his position as one of the four wealthiest landowners in the prefecture, and was offered membership into the House of Peers.

I felt ashamed about the earlier resentment I had harbored towards Mother when Imaida had been here.

Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Published in 1939, the novella that launched Dazai's career portrays pre-war Japan, but already foreshadows what's to come: The protagonist ponders that having a power that tells you what to do is a form of relief, as it takes away the pressure of decision-making and moral orientation. In her mind, she is struggling with the loss of childhood and the transition into the world of adolscents, and while she mourns the loss of her father, she ponders concepts like morality, authenticity, human cruelty and responsibility. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. I am in no way a late 1930s Japanese schoolgirl, but even though most aspects of our lives are different we still shared some similar thought processes and personal quirks.

As I begin to realize from various experiences in my life just how enormous our instincts are and how powerless we are against the force that drives us, sometimes I think I might lose my mind. As the story progresses, the girl reveals her desires from petty wishes to more substantial dreams, shares her frustrations from minor irritations to deepest grief, and exhibits a growing maturity in how she approaches her life. While the book contains culturally and period specific details and discourse, it manages to have a universal and timeless appeal that speaks to the modern reader just as directly as it would have in the 30s. This is a very moving and occasionally chilling portrait of depression and volatile interior world of someone struggling to not have their mindscape tumble into the void, but Dazai’s prose and playfulness keeps it progressing in a way that find rhythm even in chaos.His narrator prefers not to think about her gender (“[my] body had no connection to my mind,” she complains, “it developed on its own accord”), and instead, busies herself with abstract thoughts about the nature of life. It is also the name of an ability in the anime Bungo Stray Dogs, used by a character named after Dazai himself.

The narrator’s conclusions about the nature of womanhood are the result of speculation, not intimacy. She is a girl on the brink of adulthood, intelligent and sincere and a little bit selfish, and not without her share of troubles and worry. Auto-biographical details slip into the story and he uses the narrator’s impulsive graspings for understanding about the world to hone in on criticisms of society without addressing them head on. She (the teacher) went on and on, explaining to us about patriotism, but wasn’t that pretty obvious? One of the things that makes Dazai's works so potent is the sense of authenticity with which his characters are imbued.

I did struggle to understand parts of it but that’s because I lack knowledge of Japanese culture and history. The narrator is in the process of discovering herself and Dazai's chronicle of her shifting emotional states is masterful. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Alternatively, these moments of cruelty and disgust may simply be projection of her own frustration over not being good enough. She goes on to touch upon seemingly mundane topics such as her dogs, movies she likes, her teacher, and the garden around her house.