A review by sdwoodchuck
The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

5.0

 Kazuko (the narrator) and her mother are members of an aristocratic family now impoverished and forced out of their home after the end of the war, during which her older brother Naoji was MIA and presumed dead. Kazuko’s focus wanders from her mother’s failing health (which might be a curse brought on by angry snakes, or might be tuberculosis) to her own growing understanding of the world around her, and trying to find her place in a drastically changed social landscape where there’s very little use for a woman raised to have no skills or societal value beyond wealth that has abandoned her.

I’m starting to get the sense that this Dazai fella was not a happy person. Once again we have a brilliantly detailed internal life of a character facing a miserable ordeal brought on by a society crumbling faster than it can rebuild. There’s so much here that feels desperate and untethered, such an incredible eye for the suffering of others and the way that people simply get left behind by a changing social structure. I liked this one even more than No Longer Human.