united9jackson 's review for:

The Real Osamu Dazai: A Life in Twenty Stories by Osamu Dazai

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Firstly I just want to acknowledge that there definitely is some misogyny here as others have pointed out, stuff that has particularly not aged very well. However (and this is not a justification for it but perhaps just a reason for its inclusion), most of it is definitely a product of Japanese society at the time of writing. The only extreme exception I can think of to this is the final short story, "Crackling Mountain", which is pretty explicitly saying women have always done evil to men. The way it was written, though, makes it hard to tell if its a) satire, b) a product of a jaded middle-aged close-to-suicide Osamu Dazai, or c) genuine full-blooded misogyny. I think in particular the fact that this is included in a collection exploring his intimate feelings about his several shinju (lover's double suicide) attempts supports hypothesis b) more closely. There is definitely some misogyny in there, but more prevalent in those particular stories at least to me is his self-hatred and belief that the world and his lover are better off without him anyway. I think it's a multifaceted issue without a clear answer and I think disliking this book for the misogynistic attitude is a completely valid opinion, but I personally really appreciated the collection for other reasons.

What I got out of this collection is a very naked look at Osamu Dazai's psyche. His extremely transparent stories about mental health struggles and anxiety and depression really resonated with me and my own struggles and thousands of other people that have enjoyed his works. Perhaps too often and especially with this author one admires the spectacle and idea of the person's life rather than his works and their merit, but I'd argue in this case that the two are so closely intertwined that romanticizing the tragedy of it all is a bleak and one-dimensional outlook on how plainly he lays out his mind to the reader within these. As a medium for understanding a person this collection is brilliantly put together and his semi-autobiographical stories are definitely the highlight, at least for me. The latter half of the book, with its adapted fairy tales and "Crackling Mountain" and some of these other social commentary pieces, largely fall flat for me unless I choose to interpret them in terms of a jaded outlook one might expect from someone of privilege that is also burdened mental health issues he's faced.

Anyway, I basically abandoned star ratings on this site anyway so the tl;dr is that I enjoyed it quite a bit but respect and understand some of the issues other people have pointed out as of late and some of the comments in "Crackling Mountain" above all (though there were a couple of other isolated comments throughout) I definitely found to be in poor taste. Would recommend overall