Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Dazai Osamu

Early December

Date.

“Respectfully,
I am relieved to hear you have obtained the five hundred sheets of manuscript paper as requested.
I am deeply grateful for your continued patronage.
Moreover, in your esteemed letter, you even saw fit to offer someone like me your sincere and thoughtful advice—those words urging me not to flaunt my connections with literary insiders too brazenly.
Somehow, with a heavy thud—a feeling of being utterly crushed—that day found me riding my bicycle about while being made to think all day long.
The truth is, I had long harbored a vague premonition that you and Mr. Yoshida might one day subject me to such harsh words, which is why having that tender spot pierced so decisively left me reeling.
However, even as I say this, your esteemed letter brought me genuine pleasure to read.
And thus, regarding the matters you have kindly expressed concern about, I wish to report that I am already in the process of making corrections.
That this aforementioned premonition existed—I think you would at least nod in agreement to that much.
Be that as it may, I once again express my delight at having received your esteemed letter and trust you will understand all matters; moreover, I shall strive to ensure that you do not merely regard me with indifference but instead come to truly say you like me.
Please also convey my regards to Mr. Yoshida, and kindly arrange matters such that even when we meet, an unspoken understanding may pass between us so that I need not feel abashed; these are my humble requests.
Furthermore, you may already have heard of this matter, but according to what Mr. Akita of Heroic Literature Society stated, among the works by the so-called four newcomers from two months ago, yours received the most favorable reception, so it has been decided that you will be commissioned again next time.
Even though I am a merchant, I have strong likes and dislikes toward people, and when I hear good news about someone I like, it makes me as happy as if it were my own.
I wrote this letter both to share my aforementioned joy—because I am fond of you—and because, should Mr. Akita’s news be unfamiliar to your ears, I thought this information might prove of some use in your work.
And though I did consider that your integrity might take offense at my approach, given that my feelings are pure, I concluded that should this anger you, the fault would lie with your anger itself—hence my resolve to convey this news.
However, what I wish you to consider is this: when I speak of people I dislike, I do not refer to those who never purchase manuscript paper from my shop, but rather to individuals within the literary world who possess hearts devoid of artistry.
At the very least, I have added not the slightest utilitarian consideration in this.
At the very least, I wish you would accept this much from me.—There is still more, so much more I want to say, but fearing my clumsy prose might lead you to misunderstand, and given my circumstances—being one who must toil again tomorrow—I shall stop here for now and save the rest for a rainy day when work is suspended, when I may speak at leisure.
I should add that while I heard about Mr. Akita’s matter from the Fukumiya family, if it were to become known that I wrote this letter to you—not only would it be mortifying to be perceived as having engaged in unnecessary gossip, but I would also feel somewhat responsible toward Mr. Akita—so I ask that you keep this strictly between us.
However, in the course of conversation, I may end up casually mentioning to two or three of our client writers something like, 'I hear Dazai-san’s work received the most favorable reception,' that’s all."

And regarding such matters as well, I fully grasp your implicit rebuke that I should cease critiquing writers' characters—yet I must voice my defense.
This very reason compels me to declare there remains still—still—so much more I must express.
I shall commit it to writing in time.
Please do take care of your health.
Though my words falter and my intent lies imperfectly conveyed, I beg your patient deciphering.

November 28th, late at night, 2 o'clock.
He apologized for this rudeness—remaining prone beneath the covers while listening to the sleeping breaths of a fifteen-year-old on one side and an eight-year-old with an infant on the other.
Tadokoro Yoshinori.
“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”

“Respectfully,
I had the pleasure of reading your esteemed essay published in Historical Literature.
Though Ueda and others have been friends of mine since our First High days, he remains a thoroughly disagreeable man.
Yet it appears Yoshida Kiyoshi has been muttering support for Ueda and his ilk in the November issue. If you would be so kind—even anonymously—might I trouble you to pen a few words regarding this matter?
As I am presently editing the December issue, nothing would please me more than to receive your contribution within the next day or two.
I earnestly entreat you to grant this request.
November 29th.
Kurihara Goro.
Mr. Dazai Osamu.
I shall maintain absolute secrecy.
‘Should you deign to write under your true name, my gratitude would know no bounds.’”

“Respectfully,
I have indeed received the proofs for Blind Manuscript.
Your considerate gesture leaves me overwhelmed with gratitude.
With proofreading soon to be finalized, I find myself occupied with numerous tasks.
In due course.
In haste.
Sōma Junji.”

Date.

“Lately, you’ve started acting oddly high and mighty.
“You should feel ashamed.”

(A line break.) "Don't go measuring yourself against those nobodies now."
"There's something turtle-like about you—that neck craning from pond rocks."
(A line break.) "Notify me when the manuscript payment clears."
"Seems I'm anticipating it more than you are."
(A line break.) "Two or three paltry story commissions, and already the illustrious Dazai Osamu trembles?"

“You’ve managed to avoid ever tasting the joy of being an unknown person, haven’t you.”

Yoshida Kiyoshi.

To Dazai Osamu.

“D'Annunzio lived silently by the lakeside for thirteen years.”
“It’s a beautiful thing.”

“In some book critiquing you, there was talk of ‘the art of arrogance’ or such.”
“The critic claimed your work becomes more compelling when stripped of that quality—and so forth.”
“I disagree.”
“To me, Dazai Osamu can’t help resembling a crybaby.”
“That’s precisely why I love Dazai Osamu.”
“If this counts as verbal abuse—my gratitude.”
This crybaby nevertheless stood rock-like—
Spray-drenched, teeth gritted—
“Been ages since we met.—He is not what he was. Huh?”

Setagaya, Hayashi Hyotaro.
“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”

Date.

“Regarding your short story collection, I believe we may be able to present you with at least some portion of the proof copies before year’s end.”
“Your kindness pierces me to the core with gratitude.”
“Yet I grow anxious that I might betray this very kindness.”
“With that, I shall confine myself to urgent matters.”
“[Preamble omitted.] [Closing omitted.]”
Takoori Shigeru, Ōmori Shobō.
“Dazai Academic Brother.”

“I have been reading Ryokuro’s works lately. The other day at home, I read the Meiji Emperor Collection published by the Ministry of Education.”
Wanting to read works of purest lineage within the Japanese nation at least once, I first read the writings of successive generations of the Imperial Family.
As a result, I am coming to the conclusion that we must wholly reject the opinions on Japanese artistic lineage put forth by vulgar academics since the Meiji era.
“You always sharpen your brush tip when writing.”
For this first letter I sent you, I cut my brush tip with scissors.
Of course, these were not censor’s scissors.
“Moreover, you know of Dasu-Man.”
“It is not Deru-Man.”
“Therefore, in your works, I perform no arithmetic upon Man.”
“Is not confidence as pleasant as building castles in the air?”
Precisely for this reason—you sharpening brush tips and I using scissors—at that very moment without hesitation, I declared that I too understood people.
They say the carpenter who built Hōryū-ji’s pagoda could not believe its construction possible until the day they removed the scaffolding.
Yet I consider this entirely unrelated to confidence.
Not only that—they say even after completion, when they removed the scaffolding and the tower collapsed, he still went mad.
The one who knows these artificial extremes in artistic experience must be you.
Therefore, I humbly submit that your very attempt to express even facial expressions remains this era’s sole worthy pride.
“I heard you drink and smoke despite your illness.”
“In that case, take pride even in performing ablutions each dawn and dusk.”
“Because such spirit remains uncultivated, Japanese new literature still bears no masterpieces.”
“You must hold your head ever higher.”

Nagano Kimiyo.
“Dazai Osamu.”

Even when he felt the slightest flicker of interest, he would let out a loud laugh to confirm it. Even when a single tear welled up at the corner of his eye from some trivial memory, he would dash before the mirror as if on cue and gaze admiringly upon his own figure, wretched with grief. Even when receiving minor scratches from some insignificant woman’s jealousy, he would swell with pride as if struck by a blade of resentment; even faced with a mere twenty-thousand-franc debt, he would boastfully declare things like, “Ah, how tragic the fate of a genius tormented by a million-franc burden!” He was a grand idler, a brooding schemer, an ostentatious tragic soul. The blue sun of indolence that perpetually shone upon him had evaporated and gnawed away half the talent heaven had bestowed. Even among such “half-great men” as could often be found in the dreadful lives of Paris or Kōenji, Japan, Samuel was particularly a man who wrote “failed masterpieces.” He was a pathological, fantastical figure who caused poetry to shine within his character rather than through his creations.

“O unseen Dazai.”
“Forgive my impertinence.”
“It seems you’ve leapt to conclusions.”
“You—intending to grasp Baudelaire—chased Monsieur’s fictional characters until your eyes bled.”
“I am blossom and florist, wound and blade, striking palm and stricken cheek, limb and torture wheel, condemned and executioner.”
“This will not suffice.”
“Small wonder they label you ‘the novelist who became his own character’—behind their fans’ fluttering screens, master writers trade knowing smirks, their ranks ever swelling.”
“I’ve entrusted everything to you, old man.”
“Hmhm, hmhmhm.”
“As you’re well aware.”
“Laughter is forbidden!”
“I am Kanemori Shigeshirō, thirty-five years old.”
“I have a wife—spare me your mockery.”
“What precisely is happening here?”
“Fool.”

“Dear Sir,

I sincerely rejoice to hear of your continued good health.

Now then, we humbly request your esteemed contribution to this publication regarding the topic listed below. Profoundly apologizing for imposing upon your busy schedule, we earnestly entreat you to accept this request upon reviewing the enumerated terms.

1. Deadline: December 15.
2. Length: Ten sheets of 400-character manuscript paper.
3. Theme: A conte concerning spring ghosts.

Token remuneration: eight yen per sheet. We humbly request your compliance.

Being inexperienced, I fear there may be numerous improprieties; I humbly beg your gracious forgiveness and kind acceptance.

December 9.

Ōsaka Salon Editorial Department, Takahashi Yasujiro.

Furthermore, as samples for the illustrations, I have enclosed flower-and-bird paintings by three master painters. Should you deign to select and provide general instructions regarding the designs, it would be my utmost honor.”

Date.

“Omitted formalities.
I beseech your forgiveness.
I am sending newspaper clippings herewith.
Why I had cut out and kept such things remained unclear even to myself.
Tonight I purchased a French-made electric lamp—crimson and green silk shade patterned with nearly a hundred gamboling frogs—for just over twelve yen.
Having adorned my study desk with it, I felt moved to read after ages, sat formally before the desk, first tidied its drawers. When dice emerged, I rolled them two or three times—no, precisely three times—across the desktop. Then discovered a bamboo ear pick with fluffy white feathers attached, cleaned my ear canals, flipped through a pocket notebook containing lyrics to twenty-odd jazz songs, hummed them softly, and upon finishing, flicked a lone peanut from the drawer’s corner into my mouth.
I am such a sorrowful man.
What emerged then were these enclosed clippings.
I sense they might prove useful to you somehow.
I wish to die only after beholding your white-haired visage.
This autumn I read your novel.
Strange to say—I read that novel at a friend’s place, drank sake, then found myself bawling uncontrollably, wailed aloud all the way home, buried my head beneath the futon, and slept like stone.
Come morning I’d forgotten everything, but tonight these clippings made me recall you anew.
Though even I scarce grasp why—I send them regardless.—‘Chronic Morphine Addiction.
Painless Fundamental Treatment: Invention Completed.
Indications: Chronic opium, morphine, Pavinal, Pantopon, Narcopon, scopolamine, cocaine, heroin, Panopin, Adalin et al. addictions.
Master Shiraishi Kunitaro’s Creation: Neo-Bontagin.
Literature gratis.’—‘Vaudeville backdrops require but ten sheets or so.”

Countryside.
Outside the wall.
Seashore.
Riverside.
Mountainside.
Shrine front.
Impoverished home.
Tatami room.
Western-style houses and such—these could be used for any kyogen play.
Thus the tokonoma alcove's hanging scroll perpetually displayed cranes against a rising sun.
"Police stations, hospitals, offices, reception rooms—all managed with one Western-style backdrop, et cetera." —"The Idiot Laughter Club founded under Mr. Chaplin's presidency."
Mentioning any of thirty listed matters meant immediate expulsion.
Forty years old.
Fifty years old.
Sixty years old.
White hair.
Aged wife.
Debt.
Work.
Ideology of sons and daughters.

Manchukuo.
“Etc.”—The remaining two are advertisements for Kodansha books.
“I hear you’re publishing a short story collection soon—steal this advertisement copy.”
“Please read it. Hmm?”
“Brilliant stuff, isn’t it?”
“(What nonsense are you spouting?”
“You haven’t heard a word from the start.) Don’t lower your guard with me.”
“I even know about the black-edged nail on your right foot’s little toe.”
These five-leaf clippings—you had secretly stashed them away in a red document box.
“Well?”
“No no, don’t strain yourself tearing it.”
“Do you know me?”
“You couldn’t possibly.”
“I am a twenty-nine-year-old doctor.”
“The inventor of Neo-Bontagin! Moreover an eternal literary youth—none other than Master Shiraishi Kunitaro!”
“(Not remotely amusing, even to myself.”
“Getting laughs is such grueling work.) That was my joke,” Shiraishi added, “but do visit anytime.”
“Though I appear a perfect fool, in practical society they say I’m quite the operator.”
“Send me a letter and I’ll strive to assist within my power.”
“You should boast of your talents far more vigorously.”

Shiba Ward Akabane-cho 1-chome,

Great Master Dazai Osamu.
“With certain conviction rooted in reality itself—not an ounce of affectation—I can address you as ‘Great Master’.”
“Though I understand this title once served as mockery for fools through history’s lens—how splendidly those vulgar connotations have evaporated! This humble mind deems such progress most auspicious indeed.”

“Brother Osamu.”
“Your reputation grows splendidly.”
“When I asked the cultural affairs staff about having you write an essay, they generously insisted instead that you absolutely must do it.”
“They want something from a newcomer’s perspective.”
“Seven or eight pages.”
“Serialized over two or three days.”
“Write it in the apt-date theme.”
“Deadline’s noon the day after tomorrow.”
“Two yen fifty sen per manuscript sheet.”
“Write something good.”
“I’ll visit you soon.”
“I’ll provide material—why not attempt a political novel?”
“Still beyond your reach?”

Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun Company Political Department, Koizumi Kuniroku.

“With utmost respect,
I humbly entreat you to read through this impudent letter from one with whom you have no acquaintance.
This humble one, among Japanese, has found that the writings of Uchimura Kanzō as a religionist, Okakura Tenshin as an artist, and Inoue Tetsujirō as an educator—these three figures and others—resemble literature yet are not true literature, and though I have devoted myself to Western books, I recently discovered Your Excellency’s writings and discerned within them a silvery-scale vigor unparalleled in this world, truly poised by a hair’s breadth between peril and sublimity, concealing an elusive, noble beauty. Having since become one who reads your works with devotion, I have now heard rumors of Your Excellency’s collected works *The Twilight Years* being published. Though it may trouble you, might I inquire which pieces are compiled by the publisher? Furthermore, I humbly entreat you to deign to bestow upon me your own reflections regarding these works.
Humbly entreating your reply; two three-sen stamps.
One postcard.
Enclosed herewith.
Formal letters, postcards—I humbly entreat you to inscribe them according to your kind discretion.
Furthermore, should stamps or postcards prove unnecessary, I humbly entreat you to return them as they are.
Mr. Dazai Osamu.
Kiyose Tsuguharu.”

Second postscript.
"As this area lies near Narita-san Shinshō-ji Temple and Sanrizuka, should Your Excellency deign to visit, I would be most honored to provide guidance."

Date.

“If you were to stop putting on these stingy poses even just among us friends, would you somehow be at a loss? Well now—this letter of unparalleled imbecilic obstinacy, I’ve just taken a peek at it. Dazai! What now? 『I forgive.』—what’s that supposed to mean? Idiot!” He snorted, crumpled it in both hands, and threw it out the window—only for it to catch on a paulownia branch, I suppose. “I am a man superior to you; you live by what you yourself call the 'Ballad of a Captive,' while I live by more legitimate aspirations. I don’t know how clever this thing you call literature might be, but its limits are plain as day, aren’t they? Your literature is nothing more than the buffoonery of a monkey-faced jester, isn’t it? I’ve always thought this. You are nothing more than a single noble at best. But I am consciously aware that I am a king.” I felt nothing more than having received an incomprehensible letter from someone beneath me. I have not falsified my emotions in writing. Read it carefully. My station is divine. Yours is nothing more than a human-conferred rank. “Words like ‘forgive’—such theatrical lines—are not something someone like you can use on me. You have made a miscalculation about your own station so grave it defies all reason. But you’re still young, there’s much you don’t understand, and since I too had such a time in my life, that’s all there is to keeping silent.”

“Regarding the prose of your recent letter, I’ve tried various interpretations, but your exaggerated conceit in declaring ‘just this once’ is unforgivable.”
“I’d firmly resolved to ignore you outright, but just today when I sat at my work desk, I suddenly felt like writing a reply and ended up penning this.”
“Truth be told, I’d always found it distasteful to exchange drinks with youngsters in their twenties.”
“You’re about twenty-nine years and ten months old.”
“You can’t even host a single geisha.”
“You can’t even play one game of go.”
“A clean strike.”
“I’ll spar with you anytime—but you don’t measure up to Satō Haruo.”
“For that man, I wrote an essay on Haruo.”
“Yet with you, I must always reveal my true self when speaking—otherwise there’s no substance to the exchange.”
“You’re exactly like Nagasawa Denroku—well, not quite that bad—but still fail to recognize my worth.”
“You’ve never once struck my vital point.”
“Kurata Hyakuzō? Yamamoto Yūzō?”
“When someone mentions ‘religion,’ can you only muster such trifling associations?”
“I thought I glimpsed your das Gemeine—that vulgar core.”
“Yet I wasn’t even angry.”
“So explain this ‘forgiveness’ nonsense.”
“I even wondered if that was your twisted way of pleading ‘Forgive me.’”

Then, much later while walking down some road, I finally grasped something of an insight.
Yet this was nothing more than my gradual unveiling of true form.
That night revealed to me—this paragon of benevolence—one unequivocal flaw.
What you could not forgive—that must indeed be counted among my defects.
"I shall live as the sun." Kneel at my feet and confess what you deemed unforgivable.
"In such moments you turn obstinate as crude artifice itself—insisting left is right without cause—yet now speak gently and truthfully of all matters."
"No one hears this."
"For the first time in your life."
"Neither falsehood nor prisoner's plaint."
"Attempt honest appeal with proper words."
"You tumble through delusions."
"Deign to wield me as solar fire."
"I may rightfully make this missive my final."
"I detest stubborn fools."
"That merits only silent dismissal."
"That reeks of provinciality."
"What did you find beyond pardon? Speak without shame. Discard restraint."
"You harbor love for me."
"What say you?"
"Spare me this 'forgiveness' prattle—like some comely widow's affectation."

“I intend not to go to Ōmoto-kyō in Funabashi anymore unless you devote yourself to serving me.”
“We, two or three friends—day in and day out, how we have devoted ourselves to you!”
“How much have we endured and yielded for you?”
“How much of our strained finances have we been spending?”
“Today, I want to let you know the true nature of those things.”
“The moment you find out, you’ll throw yourself onto the back-alley train tracks.”
“Otherwise, you will shed tears and kiss my muddy feet.”
“If even you still possessed a shred of sincerity!”
“Yoshida Kiyoshi.”

Mid-December

Date.

“Respectfully,
“Pardon my tardiness.
“Having promptly read *The Flower of Buffoonery*, I found it most intriguing.
“Of course, I hereby award it a passing grade.
“It speaks not a single truth.
However, if one listens for a while, there are times when unexpected treasures may be found.
“Within their pretentious words, there are moments when one can feel an honest resonance so startling it takes one’s breath away.” I believe this passage—which forms the keynote of the work—can be transcribed verbatim to serve as the critical appraisal of this piece.
I rejoice that it emits even a faint, sorrowful fluorescence of truth.
After all, truth is likely something that can only be spoken of in this manner.
In praying overmuch for the ailing author’s well-being, Master Yōsai hereby presents a special missive.
Kindly pass this along.

Late night on the tenth—no, rather, the morning of the eleventh, around two o'clock, presumably.
Fukashima Tarō.
“To Mr. Yoshida Kiyoshi of Kenpoku.”

“Well?”
“You’ll trust this now.”
“Now I’ve ended up in a frantic rush writing thank-you letters.”
“Behind the sun lies the moon—so you too should send a thank-you letter in advance.”

Yoshida Kiyoshi.

“To the Happy Patient.”

“Respectfully,
I am deeply sorry to trouble you during your busy schedule, but we humbly request the esteemed manuscript listed below for the literary section of our newspaper’s New Year’s issue and ask for your kind consideration.

1. A letter to one's senior.
2. Three and a half sheets.
3. Over two yen per sheet.
4. The fifteenth of this month.
Though this may prove burdensome, I earnestly entreat you to kindly notify us of your availability by return post using the enclosed postcard.
Musashino Newspaper Company Literary Department, Uchisaiwaichō, Kōjimachi Ward, Tokyo City: Nagasawa Denroku.
"To Mr. Dazai Osamu, Private."

Date.

“Thank you for the postcard.
I earnestly request your contribution for the New Year’s issue.
If you have time, I would like you to write ten pages or more.

(Line break.) I met Mr. Koizumi the other day; he was as lively as ever. That man’s wild affection was truly heartwarming.
I want to elevate that man even further.

(Line break.) Starting tomorrow, I will be walking through the famine-stricken areas of both Nishitsugaru and Kitatsugaru districts for some time.
The state of the villages in Aomori Prefecture this year is nothing short of tragic.
Lives that can hardly be considered decent form lines and exist in clusters.

(Line break.) Your elder brother stood as the flower of the prefectural assembly. These days he came to possess increasingly the dignified bearing befitting an important figure of Aomori Prefecture. He cut quite an impressive figure. He grew capable of handling matters like receiving guests. Should he continue developing this way, it likely would not be long before he became an upstanding individual demonstrating exceptional competence in societal contributions. At twenty-five: town mayor and board chairman. At twenty-nine: prefectural assembly member. Whether in masculine demeanor or intellectual capacity—and moreover being an exceedingly studious man— My foolish younger brother Mr. Dazai Osamu—I could only surmise how trying this must prove for you. Truly.

The third day, late at night.

Fine snow sifted down.

Hokuō Shimpō-sha Editorial Department, Tsujita Kichitarō.

“Dazai-kun who loves thistle flowers.”

“Mr. Dazai,
“This is a crisis!
“Today on my way home from school, I stopped by a bookstore and stood reading for about an hour—things have taken a disheartening turn.
“I checked Kōdansha Club’s New Year’s supplement—the National Wealth Ranking—and both our houses have completely vanished from it.
“This is awful.
“Your house at 1.5 million, mine at 1 million.
“Until last year, they were indeed around that mark.
“Every year I’d peek at that list and feel reassured even when Father kept saying ‘No money!’ But this time alone—it seems real.
“Let’s devise a countermeasure.”
Trouble.
Trouble.
Shimizu Chūji.
“Mr. Dazai—is it?”

Date.

“Omitting formalities,
This may sound odd, but don’t you need money?
With a limit of 280 yen, I want to place an ad in the Tokyo Asahi News’s miscellaneous notices column: ‘Munch munch munch Pontan crackers for 100 yen (or even 200 yen—as much as required).’
I want a drink.
If you place a small ad with ‘Imokutene,’ I’ll send the money that very day.
Five years ago, we were both Imperial University students.
You lay on the bench beneath the wisteria trellis, wearing a contented expression as you napped.
My name is Kame yo Kame yo.”

Date.

“Today I read your strangely uneasy letter.”
“I consider it your oversight to have drunk beer when there was concern about developing a fever.”
“I believe it was I who taught you to drink, but if by any chance you were to fail because of alcohol, I would feel terribly guilty—as though it were my responsibility.”
“You must stop drinking until you are completely healthy.”
“Of course, I have no right to tell others anything about alcohol.”
“I am merely urging your prudence.”
“I hear your remittance’s been cut—why not tighten your belt by exactly that much?”
“There’s nothing as freely stretchable and shrinkable as one’s livelihood.”
“It’s extremely simple.”
“Since your manuscripts are finally starting to sell, it is of critical importance that you refrain from scribbling them haphazardly—instead carefully stockpiling your work to submit to major magazines.”
“You might suddenly feel lonely because you care so much about public opinion.”
“If you’re not resolute, you’ll self-destruct.”
“When spring comes, relocating to southern Bōshū and recuperating while observing fishermen’s lives might not be a bad idea.”
“Eventually—once I’ve reached a stopping point in my work—I’d like to visit you together with Kayanō-kun.”
“Since we haven’t met for some time—I don’t know how Kayanō-kun is doing.”
“Today—currently working through the night—ending with an abbreviation.”

Mr. Tsushima Shūji.
Mr. Hayakawa.”

Date.

“I received your esteemed manuscript yesterday.”
“The other day, I couldn’t quite discern the reason behind your postcard, but upon reading yesterday’s manuscript, everything became clear.”
“Regarding my recent request, I apologize if my attitude seemed improper.”
“The truth is, that letter was written during an extremely busy period when I had to divide work with company colleagues to draft nearly twenty letters—for both senior writers and newcomers—leaving no opportunity to compose a personal correspondence specifically for you.”
“Not mentioning manuscript fees would be unethical; hence I make it a practice to address them with everyone.”
“To our mutual friend Kikuchi Chiaki-kun whom I petitioned alongside you, and to all others as well, I merely sent identical missives.”
“I ought to have written you a specially personal letter, but as previously stated, time for such courtesies was wanting.”
“I never imagined that request letter might wound your feelings—nor could there exist anyone foolish enough to make such entreaties with malice.”
“I can only conclude you’ve grown excessively sensitive.”
“If you truly consider us friends, then you above all shouldn’t need to contort such trifles into malevolent designs.”
“Admittedly, should I indeed harbor in daily life the contemptible attitude you so fiercely decry (though rest assured I’ve never shown you such demeanor, and as noted earlier, that letter sprang from no such intent), then I must engage in profound self-reflection—nay, am already doing so—and reconsider my very way of being.”
“Were you a true artist, you’d easily grasp which party lives more wretchedly: he who pens such requests, or he who receives them.”
“In any event, since that manuscript stems entirely from your misapprehension—much to my regret—would you consent to rewrite it? Should you refuse outright, I’ll desist; but quarreling over these misinterpretations and baseless suspicions repels me.”
“You appear convinced I disparaged you—regardless, your manuscript’s extreme contempt left me nearly sleepless last night.”
“I implore you to dispel all misunderstanding regarding that earlier letter of mine.”
“And I require the manuscript rewritten.”
“This I entreat.”
“Though you raged fiercely over that matter—a product of your own misconstruction—were I to take offense at every slight, my days would dissolve into endless fury beyond tallying.”
“Just as you strive to live fully, so too do I strain toward plenitude.”
“When next we meet, let us speak of futures—yours and mine alike.”

“I want to visit your sickbed once to discuss various matters, but I’m dreadfully busy and somewhat neurasthenic—utterly worn out myself.”
“I believe I’ll be able to visit you properly once New Year comes around.”
“I met with both Nagano and Yoshida the other night.”
“Please refrain from exciting your nerves; I want you to tend to your health and devote yourself to your work.”
“Having written this by pilfering company leisure time, there are likely many points where my meaning falls short—but I await your swift reply.”
Musashino Shimbunsha, Culture Section, Nagasawa Denroku.

Mr. Dazai Osamu.
P.S. If you would kindly rewrite the manuscript, the 25th would suffice.
Please include a photograph as well.
I apologize for these numerous inconveniences, but I trust you'll oblige.
"My apologies for this hasty scrawl."

“Lately, every night without fail, I’ve been having nothing but eerie dreams about Brother Dazai.”
“There’s been no change in your situation, I suppose?”
“I swear.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“Is there something troubling you?”
“Before you do anything—I beg you—whisper to me first.”
“Let’s go on a trip together.”
“Whether it’s Shanghai or Nanyang—let’s go wherever you like.”
“If it’s a place you’re fond of—Tsugaru being the sole exception—then no matter which corner of the world it may be, I too will eventually come to love that land.”
“Not even this much is in doubt.”
“I’ll earn the travel expenses myself.”
“If you wish to take a solo journey, I shall not accompany you.”
“You haven’t done anything yet, right?”
“You’re still okay, right?”
“Now, please give me your clear reply.”

Kuroda Shigeharu.

“Dazai Osamu, My Esteemed Senior.”

“I have respectfully read your esteemed letter.
“Nothing brings me greater joy than hearing of your improving health.
“Since returning from Tosa, I’ve been buried under work and unable to visit you—though I suppose your recovery renders this neglect forgivable.
“Today finds me scrambling to meet the 15th’s deadline for my novel.
“That your New Romanticism piece earned Mr. Fukunuma’s praise—and has stirred your motivation—brings me double delight.
“Everything resolves itself when one possesses confidence.
“Both literary society and the world at large—they’re all matters of confidence alone—this truth has struck me profoundly.
“What fosters such confidence? The caliber of one’s own work.
“A circular logic.
“Thus victory belongs to those who believe.
“The infant at my modest home has apparently been christened Daisuke.
“A name my wife bestowed during my travels—one that grates on my sensibilities.
“Yet since she’s already proclaimed it throughout the neighborhood, I must swallow my objections.
“The rest omitted with bowed head.”

Take good care.

I hear Kayanō has returned from his trip.

Hayakawa Shunji.
“Tsushima-kun.”

Date.

“I was told not to send a reply, yet here I am writing one.”

1. Regarding the novel.
I didn’t need to be told—I already felt I’d acted rashly.
Though I’d agreed intending to pay off the junk dealer, I decided to cancel this arrangement for now.
Along with this letter, I wrote a postcard about postponing matters.
It was scheduled for next year anyway, so I’d thought I could manage by then—but doubts began creeping in about whether I’d truly become competent in time.
For *Shinsakka*, I plan to serialize this new piece I’ve written—about a hundred pages.
That magazine seems determined to keep me an unknown writer forever.
"It’s titled *Tsukiyo no Hana*."
Even if they call it shoddy work, promote this one instead.
Playing the cheerleader is the easiest role there is, after all.
2. That our friendship gets viewed through tinted lenses—isn’t that inevitable?
I’ve only met this Nakahata fellow once, yet society would have you believe I’m scheming to find fault with you.
Rumors of me making snide remarks about you reach even my ears.
Then people offer their unsolicited advice.
But what does it matter?
If anything, I find it amusing how we’re cast as rivals.
Gossip comparing Poe to Lenin—Poe badmouthing Lenin as some schemer—now that’s entertaining.
More than anything, I refuse to posture as your friend while throwing my weight around.
What delighted me about your letter was discovering that secret well-wisher within its lines.
If you’re a god, then I too am a god.

If you are a reed—then I am a reed. Thirdly, wasn't your letter somewhat sentimental? This was because tears came to my eyes as I read it. To attribute that to my sentimentality would be ill-advised. I blushed like a girl who'd received a love letter. Fourthly: If this were a reply to your letter, tear it up. I had meant it as a request. Just one thing—promote my latest novel. Fifthly: Yesterday an unpleasant visitor came and said, "Dazai Osamu did well." I answered brusquely. "He is someone we put forward"—today I found myself reconsidering this deeply. Couldn't this become the root of some rumor?—I wondered. Perhaps I should have simply said, "Yes." Or maybe, "He is a splendid writer"? I lament that I can no longer speak of you as freely as before. Even if neither you nor I mind, should the listener be a fool, it concerns both our names. Dazai Osamu has grown slightly too grand—that's the trouble. In that case, I must go measure myself against him. I'll keep rowing.

6. Have you read Nagasawa's novel?
"The one called *Mystery Literature*."
That sort of cheap exhibition of friendship—I want no part of it.
It might be honest, but shouldn't literature be more twisted than that?
My expectations of Nagasawa have diminished.
This too counts among life's sorrows.
7. Though I wish to see Nagasawa myself, I refrain from meeting him.
When sentimentality takes me, I fantasize about creating a magazine with just us two—no outsiders needed.
How might you view this notion? Could a world containing only you and me not be the most exquisite?
8. Don't overexert yourself.
You uttered something foolish.
There exists no scenario where you perish before the rest.
They must await us.
Until that day arrives, we must maintain our health for at least a decade more.
Patience proves essential.
Calluses have formed on my fingers.

9. It seems the time has come when Dazai Osamu will vigorously promote someone like me.
As for someone like me, I’m smugly pleased with myself.
“When someone like this is among us, everyone benefits.” This time, I’m plotting to say this to someone (when the most unpleasant guest comes).
“They’ll probably spread rumors about me ‘riding on the tiger’s coattails’ or some such.”
Then I’ll counterattack with, “Are you saying he isn’t a tiger?”

“And who says I’m not a fox?” 10. *Jun bu kan shuang yanse, bu yu si wu chou*—A fine verse.
So stay well, and as for taking up the pen to request you promote me—it is as above.

Hayashi Hyotaro.

"To Mr. Dazai Osamu."

“Gather at Mekura Sōshi.” (Telegram)

“I have read Mekura Sōshi.
Of that magazine’s contents, I read only those eight pages.
You must stand unbroken even should illness penetrate your bones’ marrow.
These are my most heartfelt words to you.
Today I am exhausted—so utterly exhausted—that writing comes with difficulty, yet within this weariness I felt compelled to send you this brief note.
For New Year’s I shall return to Sakurai in Yamato Province.
Nagano Kimiyo.”

“You must not blush when surrounded by your readers.”
“Stop hiding your face.”
“To survive in this world—”
“Now regarding Mekura Sōshi—though undeniably obscure—it attained a summit, bearing the countenance of a masterpiece.”
“You must henceforth discipline yourself to accept compliments graciously.”
“Yoshida.”

“Forgive my impertinence in writing to you for the first time.”
“Thanks to your support, our magazine Haru-goromo has reached its eighth issue.”
“Though I haven’t written at all to the other contributors lately and cannot know their feelings, what I must convey concerns my meager work in Haru-goromo’s eighth issue—which must have already reached your hands.”
“If it holds no interest for you, please read no further.”
“I created that piece last October, just before my injury.”
“Now I find myself utterly ashamed of it—unable even to look upon those pages.”
“I would treasure even a single postcard from you, Mr. Dazai.”
“These days I visit a certain girl’s house nearly every evening, engaging in idle chatter until returning around one o’clock.”
“Though not particularly enamored, I recently made a serious proposal—and was accepted.”
“Walking home afterward, I burst into laughter mid-stride—no—I cannot explain what possessed me.”
“I always wish to remain earnest.”
“The longing overwhelms me—to return to Tokyo and lose myself completely in literature.”
“If this continues, I begin to think death would prove more advantageous.”
“I want no one’s half-hearted concern—not Tokyo friends, not my mother, not even you.”
“Please write.”
“Better yet—let us meet.”
“A lie.”
Nakae Taneichi.
“Mr. Dazai.”

Date.

“Dear Sir,

Since then, I have been remiss.

Last Tuesday (?), wanting to see how you were doing, I was about to set out for Funabashi when your postcard arrived, prompting me to cancel.

The night before last, Nagano Kimiyo suddenly came to me, having received a letter cutting ties from you—that night she stayed awake until morning. I too was greatly worried, but just now, through a postcard from Nagano, I learned that you had managed to reconcile before long, and I was immensely relieved.

Nagano’s postcard states: ‘I earnestly request you convey my sincere feelings—that I continue to regard Mr. Dazai Osamu with assurance as a friend of ten years.’ Though I do not know what caused this, I pray your bond of friendship may grow ever stronger.

A rarity like Nagano Kimiyo has become as scarce as a desert flower these days; I earnestly entreat that your fine friendship may continue.

Now, please inform me of how your physical condition has been since then.

I try not to visit too often and be a bother, resolving to at least write letters occasionally—but when I take up my brush, I end up thinking: ‘Ah, what a hassle—might as well just go!’

Letters are truly tedious things—I’ve never been good at them.

Time and again, I find myself aghast at what I’ve written.

A recent verse:
Self-Mockery.
The loneliness of a mouth with chipped teeth—
a crescent moon.

“After all, I think I’d like to come to your place within four or five days—what do you say?”
In haste.
Kuroda Shigeharu.

“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”

Date.

“Regarding your inquired manuscript—I had received it five or six days prior.
“I humbly entreat you not to resent my delayed gratitude and discourtesy until today.
“A minor commotion arose concerning said manuscript.
“Mr. Dazai—I shall support you steadfastly.
“I too am a youth of this season.
“Now I lay all bare.
“Two reporters from our journal declare they’ll duel you.
“‘The manuscript mocks us.’
“‘They dismiss it as provincial magazine fodder.’
“‘While breath remains in us, we shan’t permit its publication.’
“‘Insolent upstarts overreaching—such was the tremendous uproar.’
“Having formulated plans, I meant to observe matters for days before thanking you for the contribution while detailing this incident’s course—yet unexpectedly this dawn, bypassing all courtesy to me as chief editor, they returned your manuscript by registered post. Now stands a matter of honor between myself and those two self-righteous souls.
“Severe punishment shall follow—though this apology constitutes but a ten-thousandth fraction owed—I implore you accept our sincerity via airmail preceding even that registered return: forehead dripping sweat, wiping greasy perspiration, prostrating myself thus.
“Moreover—though considering sending modest recompense—fearing greater offense, now with stammering tongue and stumbling gait, knees bent sevenfold into eightfold contortions—I offer abject apology while pledging future restitution.
Raged against vulgarity.
Felt guilt toward you.
Characters themselves ran amok—now spindly grains scurrying thin-thick-thin—now bull-sized boulders crashing down—this wretched scrawl left even me aghast.
From our inaugural issue—such mishaps bode darkest ill—the thought brings tears.
Have you not noticed how all now speak an octave higher?
Myself—naturally—and all around me—everything.”

Osaka Salon Editorial Department, Takahashi Yasujiro.
“Mr. Dazai.”

“Omitted formalities.
My apologies for the discourtesy.
The esteemed manuscript has been sent via separate registered mail today.
It had recently come to light that my former colleague Mr. Takahashi Yasujiro—whose illness had taken a turn for the worse—had been fraudulently using our editorial department’s name to send outrageous letters to Mr. Dazai and three other established and emerging writers.
Takahashi-kun was indeed thirty years old.
The autumn before last, on the day of the company-wide picnic, he had not drunk the alcohol he usually favored—his face pale—but instead clenched a susuki grass plume between his teeth and lumbered to block a colleague’s path before others, narrowing his eyes to sweep his gaze up and down—from the person’s face to chest, chest to legs, legs to shoes—as though licking every inch.
On the return journey, bathed in the setting sun, an interminable monologue began as he walked about shouldering a magnificent maple branch dripping like fresh blood, thrusting his lower abdomen conspicuously forward while sauntering along and saying, ‘You mustn’t tell anyone—Mr. Fujimura, you see, spent over three hundred yen to have his entire back tattooed.’
His entire back was covered with swimming goldfish.
No—wait—it wasn’t goldfish—over a thousand tadpoles were swarming there.
If one looks good in a top hat, they’re no writer from the start.
I will start wearing Chinese clothes from this autumn.
I want to wear white tabi socks.
Wearing white tabi socks and eating oshiruko makes me want to cry.
Sixty percent of people who die from eating fugu are suicides, you know.
You’ll keep this secret for me, right?
Mr. Fujimura’s registered name is Kōchiyama Sōshun.’
Takahashi’s breath had tickled my earlobe so much that I was quite troubled as he leaned his face that close to secretly impart such an enormous secret—but Mr. Takahashi had originally been a literary youth.
It was six or seven years ago: at the time, this habitually earnest person—still in his twenties then—having been told by the editor-in-chief to deftly secure the promised manuscript of nearly one hundred pages from Mr. Fujimura and Mr. Shimazaki (who had secluded themselves deep in the mountains of Shinano, devoting themselves wholly to creation while quietly living day by day; their work from this period being certified as masterpieces representing those literary masters’ late careers), especially since there was now risk of rival magazines snatching it away—had anticipated that in the mountain depths, alone with a literary master in a bamboo-pillared thatched hut across the hearth, he would be granted an all-night conversation. This expectation made him grow tense enough for his face to pale slightly; to his colleagues’ boisterous cheers, he responded by tightening his lips and nodding deeply each time to demonstrate his resolve.
When he slammed his own body against the revolving door with a loud clang and departed straight ahead, there was something in that lanky retreating figure that could not be laughed away.
On the morning of the fourth day, he returned to the company dejectedly and soaked through.”

He’d been outmaneuvered.
According to his account, it was literally a single step’s difference—after breakfast at the inn, he had dropped a pickled plum into hot bancha tea and spent time blowing on it to cool before drinking, which caused a five-minute delay that proved fatal. All sixteen staff members, including two service attendants, expressed their collective sympathy.
I too once nearly faced dismissal merely for retying my shoelaces, allowing rivals from other firms to overtake me.
Takahashi-kun was promptly summoned by the editor-in-chief and subjected to a three-hour reprimand delivered while standing rigidly at attention—during which he allegedly resolved five, then six times to murder the man on the spot.
In the end came collapse, accompanied by torrential nosebleeds.
Though we had made no prior arrangement, by the next day every employee except the two attendants arrived bearing prepared letters of resignation.
And so we huddled resentfully in the dim hallway outside the editor’s office—I particularly found it unbearable, and when lured by the stifled weeping of a colleague beside me, burst into loud, unrestrained tears.

That singularly sublime emotion from that time remains a treasure one might experience but once in a lifetime, I should think.
Ah, I find I've done nothing but record trivialities.
"Please forgive me."
From then on, Mr. Takahashi came to loathe as venomous creatures not merely writers but every soul bearing even the faintest reputation as a moral paragon—occasionally deploying satirical verses (the sort spouting lies grand enough to warrant being called 'sensei') as filler in magazines. Yet he never once uttered even the 'To' syllable from Mr. Fujimura's name, though he'd once revered him so ardently.
Some profound incident must have occurred.
Last spring, his health having deteriorated beyond salvage, he had now formally resigned from the company.
About a hundred days prior, I visited his home sickroom.
Moonlight pooled in every hollow of his bed until I fancied one might scoop it up by the handful.
Takahashi had shaved both eyebrows clean away.
His face—as austerely beautiful as a Noh mask—glistened like burnished metal beneath the moonlight's caress.
Terror beyond naming set my knees clattering so violently that I croaked out demands to switch on the lights.
At that instant, an expression akin to a three-year-old's pout flickered across Takahashi's face and vanished faster than it appeared.
"Do I seem quite mad?" he lisped in that wheedling nasal tone of his before dissolving into a smile so regal it froze the blood.

I called a doctor and had him admitted to a psychiatric hospital the following day.
Takahashi quietly—so to speak—steadily descended into madness.
I consider it a madness of profound depth.
Ah.

He spoke of your novel as Japan's finest, reading it over and over with reverence—claiming he had trained himself to recite your work *Romanesque* from memory—and yet. Tales of noble lovers from antiquity, recollections of your most cherished travels, or accounts of your own chaste romances—in letters addressed to Takahashi-kun on his sickbed, we earnestly request four pages by month's end. Osaka Salon Editorial Department, Haruta Kazuo. "Mr. Dazai Osamu."

“I read your postcard.”
“Is this nothing but cruel mockery?”
“You fundamentally misunderstand truth.”
“I find it contemptible.”
“Yoshida Kiyoshi.”

“Esteemed Sir,”

Year’s end—not even frayed rope enough to hang oneself.
I too must scramble through all eight directions, needing funds equal to what our esteemed elder instructed.
Let us split the rockface and advance.
Death remains ever possible.
Occasionally deign to consider your junior’s words.
Nagano Kimiyo.”

“Thank you for your recent letter.
I received your telegram.
What do you intend to do about the manuscript?
I think it best you proceed as you see fit.
We can wait until around the 25th or 26th for the deadline.
My current whereabouts remain uncertain (I plan to seek an apartment nearby shortly), so kindly direct all correspondence to the company address.
Once my residence is settled, I shall notify you.
Apologies for limiting this to essentials.

Musashino Newspaper Company Arts Department, Nagasawa Denroku.”

Date.

“Mr. Dazai.”
“We’ve finally been splendidly taken in by those righteous do-gooders, haven’t we?”
“Had I warned you properly from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened—but magazines everywhere seem to operate this way—they strictly forbid giving special treatment to any single writer, and moreover, this company crawls with executive-attached spies—a situation that will persist—so you must take care around soft-hearted individuals.”
“Do not behave recklessly.”
“I don’t know what apologies Haruta offered, but he’s been crowing these past few days about making you rewrite your work—because of that alone I’ve had to shrink myself—it’s become truly dismal.”
“Mr. Dazai—you’re no better either.”
“Whatever honeyed words Haruta may have spun, there was no need to give that sentimental letter to Haruta.”
“This is disgraceful.”
“Engage in deep reflection.”
“I had properly prepared eighty yen for you—but entrusting even ten yen to someone like Haruta is precarious.”
“Magazine reporters consider tormenting writers their divine calling—it’s an intractable problem.”
“There’s no use in me agonizing alone.”
“Mr. Dazai.”
“What is your opinion?”
“Doesn’t this humiliation make your blood boil?”
“I know nearly everything about your household.”
“Because I am your reader.”
“I even know how many moles dot your back.”
“Haruta and his kind haven’t read a single one of your novels.”
“Given our magazine’s nature—frequenting salons where your name surfaces—at such times Haruta transforms into some summer-field demon, gesticulating wildly as he fires vulgar adjectives unfit for print—twenty rounds per minute.”

“He’s quite the deviant.”
“You must henceforth strictly abstain from philandering.”
“Will this leave you destitute by year’s end?”
“I must decline any further favors from you.”
“I’ve diverted the eighty yen elsewhere.”
“Try to manage everything alone.”
“Such hardships will do you some good.”
“When thoroughly trapped, consult me.”
“Even in agony, even in disgrace—do not die.”
“Strange though it seems—after profound suffering comes profound joy.”
“This holds mathematical certainty.”
“I implore you to focus wholly on convalescence without impatience.”
“Come spring, I shall return to my Tokyo family home to venerate the year’s first sunrise.”
“I modestly anticipate our potential meeting then.”
“Forgive this bitter draught of salutary medicine.”
“The presumptive sole quinquagenarian capable of comprehending you—the peerless petty bourgeois—Takahashi Kyūhai.”
“Dazai Osamu, my esteemed senior.”

Late December

Date.

“Please forgive this sudden correspondence.”
“I am your spitting image.”
“No—it is not limited to just the two of us.”
“The loss of individuality and self-effacement among the youth can be observed as characteristics of this century.”

Below, you must peruse without fail.

(Line break.) I wait for the day I will be stabbed to death.

(Line break.) For a certain period, I was involved in a gloomy political movement within an underground cellar.
On a moonless night, I alone escaped.
The comrades left behind all lost their lives.
I am the child of a large landowner.

The anguish of an apostate?
What nonsense are you spouting.
Having betrayed them so artfully, did you think you could be forgiven now?
(Line break.) If you are a traitor, then act like one.
I believed in historical materialism.
Without relying on materialist dialectics, one could not grasp even the most trivial phenomena.
It had been my creed for ten years.
It had even become embodied.
Ten years later, there would still be no change.
Yet I did not want the hatred and backlash that workers and peasants directed toward us to be softened in the slightest.
I would permit no exceptions.
Because I loved their simple courage so profoundly, because I respected it so deeply, I could not utter a single word about the worldview I believed in.
From my rotten lips, speaking of tomorrow’s dawn was forbidden.
If you are a traitor, then act like one.
He spat out “Worthless craftsmen” through clenched teeth, sneered “Dirt-poor peasants” with contempt, and thus awaited the day he would be stabbed to death.
I repeat: I believed in the power of workers and peasants.

(Line break.) I wear flashy clothes.
I speak in a shrill tone.
I stand apart alone.
I make myself an easy target for shooting.
The pretense of arrogance absent from my heart must also be an act meant to accommodate the shooter.

(Line break.) It does not stem from self-destructive intent. To bury me is, in other words, a step toward construction. Anyone who doubts even this sincerity of mine is not human. (Line break.) I have always spoken the truth. As a result, people called me unreasonable. (Line break.) I swear. I have never acted solely for my own sake.

(Line break.) Don’t you find it lonely that your slight eccentricity—those distorted caricatures—are so highly prized these days?

It was a letter from a bosom friend.

I read that single postcard and went out to see the sea.
On the way, when I came alongside a wheat field where the stalks stood about an inch tall, tears suddenly clogged my nose and I burst into loud sobs.
As I walked weeping, I thought there were still people who understood me.
I was glad to be alive.
Please don't forget me.
I had forgotten you.

(Line break.) The pure frustration of that unseen bosom friend was transferred directly into my veins.
I returned home and spread out the manuscript paper.
"I am not a scoundrel." (Line break.) Be specific.
What trouble did I cause?

(Line break.) I have never failed to repay borrowed money.
I have never once accepted people’s hospitality without reason.
I have never broken a promise.
I have never engaged in private conversation with another’s woman.
I have never even spoken ill of a friend behind their back.

(Line break.) Last night, as I lay still in bed, whispering voices seeped through the walls from all directions.
Every last one was malicious talk about me.
Occasionally, I even heard the voice of my bosom friend.
I supposed you all couldn’t go on living unless you hurt me.
(Line break.) Hit me as much as you want.
Trample me as much as you want.
Sneer as much as you want.
In time, they would suddenly realize their folly, and the day would come when their faces flushed with shame.
I remained still, waiting for that time.
However, I was mistaken.
The petty bourgeois were such that the more I lowered my head, the more they bore down on me.
When I realized this, it was as if my spine had been shattered to the point where I could no longer rise again.

(Line break.) Lately, I have been dreaming of reconciliation with my family.
For nearly eight years now, I have not returned to my hometown.
I am not permitted to return.
It was because I engaged in political movements, because I attempted a love suicide, and because I took a lowly woman as my wife.
I was not shameless enough to have betrayed my comrades and still go on living.
I attempted a love suicide with a married woman who cared for me.
It was because I could not refuse her.
After that, I married my current wife.
It was simply that I had kept the promise made before marriage.
From nineteen until twenty-three—four years meeting her every Saturday—I never once engaged in intercourse.
But my family does not know me.
At times I catch whispers of rumors: how my sister married into another house weeps nightly resenting me for my two or three disgraceful acts that shame her before her in-laws; how my aged birth mother loses all dignity before my eldest brother who inherited our late father’s legacy, sitting as if upon needles because of me; how that eldest brother resigned—or tried resigning—from his provincial honors due to my existence; how all twenty-some kin pray desperately to God that I might revert to an ordinary man.
Yet I make no excuses.
Now more than ever, I want to believe in blood ties.
The joy of dreaming my eldest brother reads my novel!
Had Satō Haruo’s face not so resembled my late father’s, I might never have revisited that parlor.
(Line break.) Waking at midnight from family reconciliation dreams—fool that I am—I suddenly yearn for filial piety.
On such nights I’d splinter my thoughts—write Kikuchi Kan? Submit to Sunday Mainichi’s three-thousand-yen Popular Literature contest? Somehow seize the Akutagawa Prize?—but as dawn bleached the darkness, those efforts grew inexplicably foolish and hollow, leaving only “a life soon to die” feeling precious, so I’d greet then dismiss each day empty-handed.
But—(Line break.) Read a day, present a study.
Lay three days with cold, muse from sickbed.

After each two-hour journey, I would write a Basho-like travel diary.
And then novels that were neither interesting nor enjoyable—utterly devoid of anything—that were not true creative works.
This seems to be the current state of Japan’s literary world.
The multitudes of sufferers ignorant of suffering!

(Line break.) Until now, when speaking of myself, I may have been somewhat too bashful.

From that day forth, I would speak of myself as I was.
That was all.
(Line break.) To remain silent is to appear free of care, they say.
I despised words.
I had believed the color of my eyes sufficed.
However, such things held no sway in this foolish world.
When in pain, it seemed I had to shout “It’s painful!” as loudly as I could.
If I kept silent, before long people treated me like a horse.
(Line break.) I was now writing something irreversible.
People yearned for my shy former self.
However, that lament of yours was a lie.
Was it not the very nature of growth for one gain and one loss to follow in its wake?
I had to precisely master the habit of seeing things with a long-term perspective.
(Line break.) How pitiable, a name that would stand in vain.

(Line break.) When you fast, do not put on a sorrowful countenance like those hypocrites.
(Matthew 6:16.) Christ alone knew.
However, even the Pharisees could not help but acknowledge the suffering of the Son of God.
I, for a time, imitated the countenance of those hypocrites.

(Line break.) After countless hesitations, I have determined my stance.
Now that it has come to this, I have no choice but to solemnly narrate my own history of suffering.
Without faltering.
Without faltering.
(Two line breaks.) I too am gazing at the eternal woman beyond the horizon.
Until today, I have spoken only in fragments about that woman, keeping her hidden in my own heart.
But if my esteemed senior doesn't write it down soon—you know how a child wraps a snow rabbit in cotton and tucks it away in a desk drawer? It'll just melt away.
My children were reading a comic about Shokichi's failure—how he tried to save something for later enjoyment by tucking it in a desk drawer, but when he peeked inside, it had melted away leaving only two red Nandina berries like eyeballs. Beautiful memories are just like that, you know. They say you must write before passion fades—strike while the iron is hot.
I, however, pretended not to hear.
Feigning innocence, I spoke only of unrelated matters with apparent interest.
Not only rabbits—in my hometown, even beautiful women melt away.
On a blizzard night, I rescued a red-lipped girl who had collapsed at the entrance of my house. Being beautiful, quiet, and hardworking, we set up household together. As it gradually grew warmer, that lovely bride too grew thin and listless; her jade-like body somehow weakened, and the house turned dark.
Unable to bear his unease any longer, one day the master filled a basin with hot water, forced the bride to remove her kimono, and washed her back.
The bride sobbed quietly as she faced the kind master who was washing her back. "Even if I die—" she began to say, when a silken rustle sounded and her figure vanished.
In the basin floated only a cherry shell comb and hairpin.
A story of the snow woman who had melted away in hot water.
I continued my words: I think like arrowroot leaves unfurling—if this snow woman bride were to conceive and painfully bear a child, if that child were to grow and wander snow-covered fields yearning for its mother when winter comes—then I believe this story could utterly enchant every soul in the world.
When I concluded those words, behold—one among the people of the world, my senior too blushed and grew elated, the salon's atmosphere becoming utterly passionate, until before I knew it, I found myself narrating about the snow woman who would not melt even in my secretly hidden hot water, compelled by their inquiries.

——Age.

"I'm nineteen."
"It’s my cursed year."
"Women—something always happens this particular age."
"How strangely inevitable it feels."

“You’re rather slight of build, aren’t you?”

“True enough—but I might still make a proper mannequin lady.”

“——Meaning what?”

“Since everything is one size smaller, stretching the photograph would likely achieve perfect harmony.”

Both legs stretched supple like flower stems, and the skin was pleasantly cool.

“——What do you think?”

It’s not an exaggeration.
"When it comes to that person, I simply cannot tell a lie."

——Because I deceived them too cruelly.

——I’m surprised.

“But it’s absolutely true.”
“When I was twenty-one that winter—wearing my stiff obi sash—I went out to Ginza for fun. That night, a woman followed me back to my room and asked, ‘What’s your name?’”
“When she asked, there happened to be a copy of Uno Mio’s—you know, that person’s—collection lying there, so I answered, ‘Uno Mio.’”
“The woman seemed to think I was thirty-one or thirty-two—that I might be someone slightly famous,” I said as she let her shoulders slump with a sigh, “but I have never wished to be as famous as I was in that moment.”
“My throat was parched dry—I desired fame so fiercely it burned with black smoke.”
Speaking of Uno Mio—at one time he was the youngest in the literary world and wrote excellent novels.
From that night onward, except when wearing my student uniform, wherever I went, I had to persist as Uno Mio.
Once you take on the role of a fake, you become so anxious you can’t sleep at night—and yet you don’t abandon that counterfeit duty. Instead, you devote all your efforts to becoming a flawless imitation without a single chink.
It’s a strange thing.

“Interesting.”
“Proceed.”

“Had it been a woman met just once, even Uno Mio might have sufficed. But after meeting twice—three times—I grew constrained and writhed in solitary anguish.”
“The woman later appeared to peruse the arts columns—today carried your photograph.”
“It bears no resemblance.”
“Why must you contort your face so?”
“My friends laughed at me.”

“—So you were involved in some political movement back then? Is that what this refers to?”

“——Yes, that’s correct.”
“As for me, cultural movements didn’t suit my temperament—especially since I considered nothing more naively optimistic than proletarian novels—so I kept my distance from students and devoted myself solely to underground work.”
“Once, my high school friend was timidly seated at the far end of a meeting. They’d announced that all district leaders from this area would soon arrive—even the activists attending grew slightly excited, the room abuzz with commotion. My friend—there as a small sub-district representative—felt almost dreamlike. Then precisely on time came creaking footsteps on the stairs. A lanky man entered with a ‘Well now!’ At first his face shone too brightly to see clearly, but when I looked properly—that smirking man with gold-rimmed glasses was unmistakably me! He says even now he’ll never forget that joy.”
“They say his delight could’ve soared to heaven itself.”
“Of course at that moment, we merely exchanged a fleeting glance and pretended not to know each other.”
“When you’re embroiled in such movements—hunted daily—there’s no greater joy than unexpectedly finding an old comrade’s face among your own ranks.”

“—You never got caught, did you.”

“Because I’m a fool—that’s why I get caught. Though even if you were caught, there were ways to get out within a week or so. Before long, they started calling me a spy or whatnot—I grew sick of it and could think only of fleeing from my comrades. At that time, I was staying at the Imperial Hotel every night—still under the name of writer Uno Mio. I had business cards made too, then sent all telegrams, express letters, and phone calls addressed to Mr. Uno at the hotel under Genkō Tanomu myself.”

“You’ve done something rather unpleasant, haven’t you.”

Treating what should be a solemn life as a joke and toying with it must be what he finds unpleasant.
You are absolutely right—but had I not done such things back then, I would likely have killed myself for over thirty different reasons by now.

“But even then, you still went through with a love suicide, didn’t you.”

“Yes, the woman came to visit the Imperial Hotel—I gave five yen to the bellboy—and that night she stayed in my room.”
“Then late at night, I let slip that there was nowhere left for me to go but die—those words must have resonated with her heart—and she said, ‘I’ll die too.’”

“So when I called her ‘you,’ she answered ‘Let’s die’—that’s how it was.”
“She has become extremely quick to understand.”
“It seems it’s not just you all.”

——That seems to be the case.
My liberation movement could indeed be described as something for personal honor as a pioneer—while I was rapidly advancing through those ranks, it felt engaging and purposeful—but with spy theories emerging, I’d inevitably fall from grace soon enough; in any case, it had become unbearable.

“What became of the woman after that?”

——The woman died the day after that Imperial Hotel [incident].

――Ah, I see.

“That’s correct.
We drank poison and jumped into Kamakura’s sea.
I forgot to mention—this woman was quite the intellectual and remarkably skilled at drawing portraits.
Because her heart was noble, she painted a face countless layers more beautiful than her actual appearance, and moreover, the portrait exuded a desolation like an autumnal wind that rends the heart.
The painting captured the subject’s features with striking accuracy and was moreover noble in essence.
Ever since around New Year’s this year, I’ve developed this habit of crying—it’s become quite a problem.
Just the other day, I went to see a naniwa-bushi film called something like *Sado Love Story* and simply couldn’t hold back—I ended up bursting into loud sobs. The next morning, when I saw that film’s newspaper advertisement in the toilet, another sob welled up. My family grew suspicious, which turned into uproarious laughter, and now they’ve decided they’ll never take me to the cinema again.
It’s fine now.
I shall continue the story.
This is a story from ten years ago.
Why did I choose Kamakura back then? For a long time, this remained my unanswered question, but yesterday—just yesterday—it finally dawned on me.
When I was in elementary school, I once recited passages about Kamakura’s famous places at a school arts festival. For that occasion, I practiced relentlessly until I could nearly recite them by heart.
That passage about Shichirigahama’s rocky shore.
As a child, I must have yearned for that landscape—it became ingrained in me, lingering in my subconscious until manifesting in that Kamakura excursion—and considering this, I found my own self pitifully endearing.
After getting off at Kamakura, I ended up handing over all my money, wallet and all, to the woman. But when she peeked inside my ornate santoku wallet and said, ‘Oh? Just one bill?’—
‘Oh? Just one bill?’ she muttered under her breath, and I remain unable to forget how excruciatingly ashamed I felt—as though my very flesh were being sliced.
I, getting a bit flustered, declared, ‘I’m really twenty-six!’—though even that was still five years too many—but the woman said, ‘Just twenty-six?’
With that,” she opened her dark eyes wide in mock surprise, counted on her fingers, then laughed and said, “Terrible, terrible!” while shrinking her neck—but what did it mean? Though there’s no way to ask now, it still weighs heavily on my mind.”

“Did you jump in while it was still bright?”

“No.”
“Even so, I walked around the famous sights, bought candy to eat before Hachiman-sama, but ended up ruining two gold crowns on my right molars then—and still leaving them as they are now—though they throb dully from time to time.”

“It just occurred to me—Verlaine, you know? That man once sprinted to a church like a demon and declared, ‘Now I shall confess! I’ll lay bare everything!’ With tremendous fervor, he reportedly began his confession—‘Where is the confessor? Come now, I must speak!’—but the priest never so much as twitched his immaculate brows, keeping his eyes fixed on the fountain outside the window. Then, in the briefest pause of Verlaine’s tearful recitation of his endless criminal history, the priest suddenly interjected: ‘Have you ever coupled with beasts?’ Startled out of his wits, Verlaine tumbled into the corridor and fled for dear life. As for me—well, I’m simply no good at hearing confessions.”
“To put it in today’s fashionable terms, my heart is weak.”
“I’d sooner swallow even the grime beneath those brave confessors’ nails than [do otherwise], you know.”

――This isn’t a confession.
This isn’t romantic bravado.
Nor am I seeking salvation.
I am proclaiming the woman’s beauty.
That alone is my purpose.
Having come this far, I shall now recount everything to its end.
As we walked, the woman asked in a voice taut with resolve, “Won’t you go back?”
she whispered.
“I’ll become your mistress.”
“If you forbid me from stepping beyond our doorstep, I’ll stay hidden indoors.”
“I’ll dwell in shadows my whole life if need be.”
I snorted through my nostrils.
Incapable of comprehending human sincerity, driven solely to sate my pride—even if it required reducing ten thousand souls to dust while maintaining composure—I, a twenty-one-year-old monstrosity of self-regard, this spawn of vanity from marrow’s depth, had casually discarded her eternal jewel, that pearl tower, that peerless offering, into a roadside gutter without proper regard—and now found myself obsessing over whether my present form truly embodied such carefree elegance.

“Ha ha ha ha.”
“You’re rather eloquent tonight.”

—This is no laughing matter.
I found myself undertaking the most severe reflection in that regard—a strange reckoning of “the case where K.S. matters more than the violin.”
At the foot of Enoshima Bridge, I caught a glimpse of a private tram’s illustrated signboard—each character two shaku square in size proclaiming “Thirty minutes to Shinjuku, thirty-eight to Shibuya”—and promptly began crossing the bridge.
The clack-clack of wooden clogs pursued me; once they reached right behind me and slowed their pace—walking leisurely—I had made up my mind.
It’s all right now—the me until just now deserved to be scorned.

“You’re such an honest person.”

“That’s right, that’s right.”
“You’ve understood now, haven’t you?”
“After all, I’m glad I told you.”
“Please listen more—more.”

“Alright.”
“By all means, please do tell me.”

Bamboo and tea.

――Before jumping in, I first swallowed the poison.
I drank, then smiled; I would rather die with Father than be held by some princess or an enemy’s bristling beard.
“Quickly now—drink this poison and die,” she said.
Exchanging such banter with composed demeanor, we finished drinking and sat side by side on a broad flat rock, swinging our legs as we quietly waited for the drug to take effect.
I had to die now—utterly.
Having idled away these two days—yesterday and today—I had already severed the countless threads connecting me to that underground work.
The organization was again plunged into chaos beyond salvage—a ferocious turmoil surpassing fire or thunder.
Those scenes felt more certain to me than anything held in my hand.
The cap’s betrayal.
Flight.
To compound it all loomed the affair of Unno Michio’s impostor.
Had I been the sort of man who could confess to women—had I possessed that capacity at twenty-one—I surely would have avoided becoming so scarred.

Eventually, the woman undid her obi and—smoothly confessing all the while that this poppy-patterned sash was borrowed from a friend of hers, so she would leave it hanging here like this—neatly folded the sash and draped it over a tree behind them. Then, with a gentle, unhurried air, we conversed quietly before gazing at the flickering beacon of what appeared to be Jōgashima’s lighthouse.

What did we talk about?

I myself had already forgotten what we spoke of, but there I was, endlessly spouting lies about being so hopelessly adored by women—claiming this lineage of womanizing originated from my grandfather, who in his youth had a troupe of female tightrope walkers visit his village. All three performers, the moment Grandfather covered his face with a hood, became so entranced by his visage that—umbrellas in hand—they’d gasp, shout cues, peer down at him, then attempt their crossings only to go sliding down and thudding to the ground. The troupe leader lodged complaints until it escalated into a full-blown village brawl—or so my grand fabrication went. All while recalling Grandfather’s actual ruddy, utterly graceless square mug resembling an arhat statue, I nearly burst out laughing.

“The woman believed it,” she said. “So then—does that mean I’ll be resented by eight women?”

(Not a single one!) Ah, I’m happy.

“Victors,” she murmured in rapture, gazing up at the starry sky.

Suddenly, the poison took effect—the woman began emitting whistling sounds like a grass flute, vomiting watery matter while crying “It hurts! It hurts!” as she crawled about the rock. Not wanting to leave this filth behind when we died, I wiped it away with my coat sleeve until eventually the drug reached me too; slipping on the slick-wet rock, I became a pitch-black four-legged beast with a red-hot iron rod thrust five or six inches through its throat. Soon that demonic iron reached my chest, then my stomach—by which time there were only two moving carcasses, black beasts swaying as they walked.

Piled together and tumbling from the rock, drenched by a crashing wave—first drawn close, then in the next instant kicking fiercely at one another before abruptly separating—a voice weaker than a mosquito’s whimpered, “Unno-saaan.” It was not my name.

It was an event from ten years ago in December, around this very season.

“Indeed, indeed. Hey, Take.”
“Hmph.”

――Mr. Dazai.
“Don’t play dumb.”
“How will you conclude this story of mine?”
“Of course, this isn’t your own experience.”
“They’re all my own experiences.”
“But when I publish this, I have to consider the magazine too.”
“Compared to the confession of some nobody sardine head, it may not dazzle, but I’d still like to advertise this as an up-and-coming novelist—Mr. Dazai’s—confessional tale.”
“Please purchase this painstaking creation of mine.”
“As for reserve copies of the same text—there are three here with me.”
“Fifty yen for all three copies is a bargain.”
“Mr. Dazai.”
“Were you surprised?”
“It’s all lies.”
“Just wanted to give you a scare.”
“Were you surprised? Long ago, didn’t you tell me this story while drinking together?”
“Today’s Sunday rain—unbearably bored, no money, can’t even go to your place—so I blasted my weather complaints at you. How about that? Were you a bit startled?”
“With this, I might just make it as a novelist myself.”
“The initial essay was stolen from a Chinese bourgeois magazine, but scenes like the one on the rock were written by me.”
“That was a breathless masterpiece of prose.”
“I think I’ll spend an hour pondering whether to become a literary man or not.”

“Excuse me.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I’ll come this Sunday.”
“Apples have arrived from my place—please come get them.”

Shimizu Chūji.

“Dear Uncle.”

Date.

“Respectfully,”
I remain convinced there is no need to rush upon literature’s path.
Look to the heavens; clear your mind of distractions.
Bask in sunlight; act without impetuousness.
Health first—this I humbly hold paramount.
I earnestly entreat you to apply yourself with steady diligence.
Yesterday again, for your creative work—the story titled “A Relieving Tale”—which you graciously sent us, I offer profound gratitude.
We humbly request the honor of featuring it in our forthcoming issue and tender thanks accordingly.
Satirical Literary Editorial Department, Gorō, respectfully.”

Date.

"I am sending you this letter.
Though my pen hesitates for want of anything particular to report, I would be happy if you would read this.
I am deeply ashamed of my selfishness, but please forgive me.
I imagine your memory of this may have faded, but around February, we met at Monami in Shinjuku regarding the coterie magazine *Blue Whip*, and the manner of our parting that day felt deeply unsatisfactory—I have carried this lingering guilt ever since, leaving me alone in this wretched state of mind.
Though I resolved to someday send a letter of apology, my own weakness in isolation caused me to miss the chance. Lately, I had settled on waiting for the publication of your *Bannen* or such work as the occasion—but today, upon humbly reading your essay at the bookstore, I grew unaccountably sad and wished to speak to you.
Even so, somewhere deep inside, I remain jittery, and it troubles me.
That night, I descended the stairs with flustered, rough steps.
And even that flustered state seemed impure, which is mortifying—whenever I recall it, I shrink into myself.
That night, because Saitō-kun was told by you that he was being coy, his heart grew hollow and lonely, and just that alone had him already flustered.
When it was decided that I would leave, and they said they’d return the coterie fee I had paid in advance, I cried out inwardly, Five yen profit!
And then, when they had said something about it, and I answered that I had paid two yen and fifty sen each time in two installments, I felt shame at my own transparent cunning that diminished me, and a sense of self-abasement.
Not only that—the phrase five yen profit was nothing more than those very words floating up from your work *Retrograde*, which I had read two or three days prior, and there I stood dazedly before Shinjuku Station.
Without being able to clearly grasp the matters of that fierce meeting, I seemed to be considering how to handle my own situation without making a blunder.
In front of the station, I paced back and forth like a stray white dog for a while, considering whether to return to my lodging as I was, but grew lonely at the thought that this might mean parting from you all for good.
Even if I were to turn back to the venue now, I wandered for a long time, thinking that at best I’d be scolded—(Without sufficient consideration, do you mean to just become a burden?)—and that would be the likely outcome.
Relying on others, relying on the world, pretending to possess some hidden quality I lacked—that very coyness of mine, of all people, being pointed out by you pained me deeply.
Ah, please forgive me for writing such mopey things.
I used that night’s five yen most effectively, without a speck of waste.
As a lifelong memento, I still have not lost that memo from that time and have kept it pressed between the pages of *Blue Whip*.
3-sen stamps ×10: thirty sen."

Peanuts: ten sen.
Cherries: ten sen.
Minori: fifteen sen.
Camellia cuttings (two branches): fifteen sen.
Eye doctor: eighty sen.
Goethe and Kleist, Prolegomena, Utayoubi: three volumes, seventy sen.
Hyakume (approx. 375g) of duck meat: seventy sen.
Scallions: five sen.
Sapporo Black Beer: one bottle, thirty-five sen.
Lemon: fifteen sen.
Public bath: five sen.
For the first time in six years, it was abundant.
I didn’t use it all up; my pocket still held plenty.
For nearly a year after that, unable to forget the lingering shadow of Dazai Osamu—whom I had met two or three times—cast vividly in my mind, I continued dozens of times to skim through the cherished memories of our meetings.
I feel as though every word and phrase is carved into my heart.
It was last August that I memorized Chiba’s address from the bookstore and jotted it down.
I had not been able to put it to use until now, but...
“Dazai! Waiting at White Cross.”
“Dazai! Waiting at White Cross. Kuroda.” Had that been written on the university blackboard just the other day?
“Tsushima Shūji must report to the Rightist Affairs Office.” That notice had long been posted in the Faculty of Letters office.

I spoke of Dazai Osamu as if he were a friend and felt lonely.
Dazai Osamu did not receive the art award.
I swore to myself that I would never read the works of a man named Fujita Daikichi.
Though I rarely read others' writings, with *Clown's Flower* and *Das Gemeine*—it wasn't that I couldn't understand them, but rather found no satisfaction.
This was a novel driven by sheer will—"I'll write it! I'll write it!"
I had believed it to be the true prologue.
Yet as I waited for the real work to emerge any day now, I came to doubt whether those words—"each passing day was my twilight years"—held any truth.
He had ruined his health; in photographs he appeared emaciated and translucent.
And when Dazai Osamu grew famous, I felt I could no longer approach him.
I concluded that *Clown's Flower* lay beyond my comprehension.
The sorrow I felt toward Dazai Osamu—like that of a violin's lament—resided in his lyricism.
I maintain that this is where Dazai Osamu's essence lies.
Even if told this view is mistaken, I cannot bring myself to relinquish it.
Having abandoned lyricism's fields, he leaves wounds torn by thorns exposed to sunlight—their rawness pains me unbearably.
Though the novel writes that during February's Incident he spoke of women's nightgowns, I sense within the author himself an intensity matching those young officers'.
What tightens my chest isn't envy but anguish.
I have approached everything half-heartedly; these two years saw me complete barely a third of law studies—and even that inadequately.
Moreover, there was nothing else I could do.
From such amateurish sentiments, I only physically absorb Dazai Osamu's suffering while standing dumbstruck as bystander.
This half-heartedness nesting within me will likely persist forever.

I didn’t think my health was as bad as people believed, but I couldn’t take anything seriously.
If I were to get serious about something for even two or three days, I felt I might destroy myself.
I couldn’t get serious.
Given all that, of course I couldn’t accomplish anything—but even so, I was perfectly satisfied.
“Titled ‘On Humor,’” I could only recall your middle school speech through whispers of you being the top student at school and your mature gestures; yet many people spoke of Tsushima Shūji—the senior from Aomori Middle School—without knowing Dazai Osamu.
In front of Kitaya Bookstore in Shinmachi, Aomori, a middle school student had bowed to someone wearing a high school cap.
When you returned the greeting after all, though it was lonely that I knew while you did not, even so I felt somewhat satisfied just having been acknowledged by you.
I had to finish university this year, and although it was uncertain whether I could manage it, I had resolved to graduate.
When it came to literature, I couldn’t produce anything of substance; instead, I spent my days captivated by scenery and women.
I had sweated at the thought that if my novel Plate Painting had caught your eye in the girls’ magazine Futaba.
I had heard from someone named Iwakiri.
The passages about trachoma, cervical adenitis, X-curvature, and such—I had carried them everywhere with me simply because you said they were good.
There were times when I felt envious upon seeing words in New Romanticism that praised someone in a postscript-like manner in a coterie magazine (not prestigious).
I had no confidence in what I wrote.
Just this much already had me exhausted.
Every single day, I was exhausted.
I did nothing at all.

If I did nothing but rest, Sundays became joyless; even when I slept at night, it wasn’t the repose of a day concluded but rather the fatigue of tomorrow looming that I felt.
I spent my days hoping to regain health.
At present I was merely weak—there was no illness.
I pitied skin like an old man’s and bathed naked in milk at night.
Was there no path to regain my youth?
I thought this an extremely impolite letter.
I apologized that my writing style remained vague.
But I felt relieved.
Since I mustn’t let it become tomorrow morning when I could no longer send this, I resolved to dispatch it immediately.
When you had time, I hoped you might send me a letter.
I prayed you would take care of your health.
Respectfully yours,
Saito Takeo.
“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”

"I have received your letter."

"I must apologize for going against your request regarding the money, but I simply cannot manage it immediately.
The truth is, after running for prefectural assembly last year, I’ve been saddled with substantial monthly debt payments—it’s utterly suffocating.
During the election campaign, I received fifty yen from Mr. Koizumi Kuniroku.
Even this amount I’ve been wanting to repay promptly, yet find myself still unable to do so—such is my current state.
Being unable to scrape together even fifty yen is profoundly shameful, but even so, turning to further borrowing for this purpose is something I simply cannot bring myself to do.
I am endlessly sorry that you trusted our friendship enough to make this request.
However, since I detest dwelling on impossibilities, I resolved to write this letter at once.
Please don’t hold it against me.
Though I’ve kept distant from literary circles lately and haven’t closely followed your activities, I remain convinced of your capabilities and trust you’re engaged in work surpassing ordinary efforts.
I beg your gracious understanding and forgiveness regarding these circumstances.
Were it proper etiquette toward you, I might have consulted friends about securing the funds—but that would be discourteous... Written in haste,"

Tsujida Yoshitaro.

“Brother Dazai.”

“When one writes letters and tries to speak—it is you who exists.”
“Ah, my good friend!”
“Were I to make her my wife—she lacks sincerity; were I to take her as lover—she proves too insubstantial; were she to become my concubine—her manner turns coarse with a crow’s voice.”
Ah—insufficient!
Insufficient!

It was insufficient.
Moon!
Thou, celestial beauty!
The moon compelled contemplation.

“Yoshida Kiyoshi.”

Date.

“Mr. Dazai Osamu.

“I must apologize for repeatedly subjecting you to my dreadful penmanship; please forgive this impertinence.”
Firstly, from the desolation of our coterie magazine Harugoromo having become a complete mess; secondly, from my own staleness; and finally, because last night’s letter from a Harugoromo coterie member named Matsumura conveyed that you had deigned to hold goodwill toward one such as myself—to these reasons I added my innate audacity, and thus sent this presumptuous letter without regard for the trouble it might cause.
My friend Matsumura informed me that when Shiota Kajō, Seki Tatchii, and Ōshōji Kiyoyoshi—all three of them together—visited your home in Funabashi, they later recounted to him your opinions regarding my humble work; he then relayed these directly to me.
Furthermore, he conveyed your thoughtful gestures—that you had shared your impressions of my humble work in the December issue of New Romanticism, and that in your esteemed work published in the January issue of Shincho, you had a girl carry Harugoromo.
Immediately today, I went around five or six bookstores in town searching for the two magazines, but Shincho was sold out everywhere, and New Romanticism did not seem to have arrived yet.
I am not writing to express my gratitude to you.
“If I could settle matters simply by writing words of gratitude and remain in such a position, that would be refreshing.”
But to list nothing but these self-serving pleas—that there’s something I want you to hear, that I wish to seek your counsel, and that I need your help—is truly mortifying.
“You may have asked Kajō about my background and personal circumstances.”
“But Kajō—well, he’s a man who loves publicity… Though this isn’t meant as malice toward Kajō.”
This is my self-justification.
In my childhood, I was physically weak and fell unconscious two or three times from diphtheria and dysentery.
When I was eight, being given Kegeimura Rokusuke marked the beginning of my becoming a literary youth.
It seems my father had a mistress at that time.
The mother I love now was coerced by a man and eloped to Hakone.
My mother returned under the name Shinako.
When I first became aware of the world, my father had just managed to catch his breath after being a poor government clerk, but he contracted tuberculosis, and our entire family moved to Kamakura.
My father was, in his day, a historian who astonished the world.
At twenty-four, he became a newspaper president, dabbled in stocks, scoured historical texts in back alleys, and lived by his pen alone.
He apparently wrote novels as well.

He associated with Ōmachi Keigetsu and Fukumoto Nichinan—criticizing Keigetsu while ostentatiously flaunting his own erudition—while himself receiving patronage from a certain count, a certain gentleman, and a certain nobleman; ultimately ending his days as an ardent imperial loyalist, uncompromising bureaucrat, aloof purist, indefatigable historian devoted to study and inquiry, and hot-tempered father.
I was thirteen years old.
Two years before that, when I was in sixth grade, my homeroom teacher had been a monk from Kamakura’s Great Buddha Hall.
Under his influence, I ceased being a spoiled villa brat who indulged every whim and became an obstinately eccentric religionist and mystic.
I truly saw God manifest.
Meanwhile, my miniature book obsession reached pathological heights—the collected volumes of lengthy rakugo tales I’d amassed now surpassed my own height.
During composition class, I was regularly called upon to read aloud.
Titled “Newspaper,” a story I wrote about an evening edition peddler made my entire grade weep.
I even had haiku published in provincial papers.
Together with other fledgling dilettantes, I produced a circulated magazine.
At that time, my brother—then a high school student aspiring to become a poet—returned home before university entrance and admonished me about the flaws in my ornate formalism. He pressed Shiki’s *Tales from Bamboo Village Songs* upon me and made me compose free verse for *Akai Tori*.
A piece I wrote then called “Wave” drew fervent praise from Mr. Hakushu and was later selected for inclusion in Ars Publishing’s *Anthology of Japanese Children’s Verse*.
The year Father died, my brother took a teaching post at a certain middle school.
Though Father’s death resulted from tuberculosis, contributing factors may have included Grandfather—whom we’d brought from Tosa Province—perishing in the earthquake; Uncle hanging himself during an argument over fetching Grandfather; and Cousin’s madness that partly precipitated Uncle’s death.
Add to this the distress over my brother turning socialist.
In truth, after depositing me at middle school dormitory, Brother moved the whole family to Tokyo where he became secretary-general of the XX Union—only to be dismissed for instigating a school strike. Even after Mother and the others fled back to Kamakura, he persisted in intellectual activism from jail.
One comrade visited our home and swayed my sister and me—fresh from dormitory life—into devoted allegiance to Brother.
When March 15th Incident erupted, Brother underwent ideological conversion, married, saw relations between his wife and Mother sour, then left us behind to live in Tokyo with his spouse.
A humanist Marxist, sentimental literary youth, and mathematical incompetent—likely due to severe self-abuse—I found myself friendless at school. Utterly isolated yet joined by Sister, a neighboring W University student, my childhood confidant, and even Brother’s household, I sustained publication of our mimeographed magazine *Sketch* for two years.
Through Brother’s activism, Father’s fortune evaporated: our Kamakura villa was leased out; the family retreated to Tokyo; Brother’s household merged with ours.

I started playing tennis toward the end of middle school and spent a year marked by rapid growth—feeling as though I shot up two inches nightly—along with towering height, obesity, W Higher School, and self-abuse, before joining W University’s boat club. A year later I became a regular member; two years after that, I went to America as an athlete for the Tenth Olympic Games. At twenty, I stood six feet tall, weighed seventy-three kilograms, and had a ruddy complexion—the very image of youthful vigor. My rowing skills remained abysmal. I cowered before my seniors’ authority. The shipboard romance during my trans-Pacific voyage left me neurasthenic upon return, overwhelmed by endless welcome parties.

When I came home, my brother—who’d lost his sister-in-law the previous year—had rejoined our household as a Communist Party funding bureau member. Still enamored with him and clinging to Marxist theory, I stole tuition money from our sold Kamakura villa to fund his activities while forming an R.S. cell on campus. Seki Tatchii joined our ranks, his boarding house becoming our hideout. Around this time I met Shiota Kajō—a listless soul who’d attempted suicide.

Tatchii bungled an operation and got arrested. Though he resisted interrogation valiantly, I followed my brother’s earlier example of domestic abandonment: leaving behind my near-mad, hysterical mother to spend a week in flight. When I sneaked back to check our home, my sister caught me.

Deprived of tuition and expelled from school, I took an eighteen-yen monthly job at a photo factory through my brother-in-law’s connections. Mother and I crammed into a two-room tenement. Immediately I organized workers at my new workplace, becoming cell leader—after clocking out each day, I’d meet superiors in town cafes, exchanging secret documents with rigid expressions.

This lasted mere months.

Soon after came the Proletarian Incident. My brother fled, underwent ideological conversion, and resumed economic reporting—through his machinations, I reentered school. Post-conversion protocols meant two months in the clink for him; half a day sufficed for my minor role. During my factory days, I’d penned Mühlen-inspired fairy tales and Kataoka Teppei-style proletarian fiction for the company magazine.

There had been the exhilaration of buying The Brothers Karamazov for ten sen. The tale of the impoverished university student and particularly the growing distance with my brother after his marriage rekindled my childhood aspiration to become a novelist. Throughout that first year, I wrote nonsensical stories in feverish desperation and mailed them out indiscriminately. Whether from abruptly quitting sports or some other cause, people's faces would make tears stream down mine while raw saliva pooled in my mouth and a low fever burned through me. My body prickled everywhere as if covered in pine needles. When rejected by Art Doctor magazine, I wound a belt around my neck in despair. Just before Dostoevsky's popularity surged, I became obsessed with him, plagued Tatchii with pretentious literary theories, and likely repelled all my remaining friends through this affectation. My brother's new wife's younger brother Yamaguchi Sadao had been publishing a coterie magazine called Hana through Waseda's German literature department; through his connections late last year, I became a contributor and saw one work published in its pages. After growing disillusioned with Hana myself, I persuaded Yamaguchi to join me in plotting a new venture with his close friend Okada—first securing Kanzaki and Mori's approval before ascending to Kobikata to recruit Seki Tatchii through impassioned appeals. By strong-arming Tatchii into joining us, we gained Kajō and Kobe's participation too. Thus was born Harufuku—the name bestowed by Tatchii himself—as our new literary vessel. Tatchii leveraged his extensive connections to bring in Yamamura, Katsunishi and Toyono while Kajō maneuvered to include Mr. Imuta among our ranks. Gradually my rapport with Kajō deepened until he seemed to tolerate even my most grating tendencies. Between Harufuku's inaugural issue and its second number—from year's end through March—I threw myself into frantic job hunting until finally securing employment at my current firm through a friend of my maternal grandfather's intervention. From that point my fraternal relations deteriorated further until I resolved to sell my entire library and flee on wanderer's impulse—my brother now scorning my literary abandonment with fresh intensity since post-graduation dependence on him would prove impossible anyway. Considering Mother's grief precluded bohemian existence like Kanzaki's while curiosity about corporate life gnawed at me—after six weeks at the company they requested my transfer to Korea or Manchuria citing robust physique.

Growing sick of the cramped life with my mother and brother, and wanting to try a new life, I came to Korea.
I had a sense that Korea, rather than Manchuria, might become a novel—but this, much like becoming a company employee, stemmed less from my various opinions than from various inevitabilities.
“Youth’s ideologies are nothing but excuses for their own actions.” It was something like Professor H’s words.
I went last night up to this point to make excuses to the prostitute about not being able to buy her a shawl, spent a little time there, paid off the old woman’s three-yen debt, was pressured into promising to take her out at New Year’s… By the way, this month is December.
The tailor came and took away my treasured ten yen.
I still had one yen left—with this I went to the barber—then fifty sen remained, but I thought I might as well spend that too, not keeping a single coin past tonight, and thus foolishly planned to welcome Christmas.
I wrote up to this point from two o'clock last night after returning home until five.
Just now, I went to the barber with the company’s errand boy who shares my room.
I went to listen to Mr. Katō Totsudō’s radio program.
On the way back, with forty sen for sweets and a pack of Pigeon, I became completely broke.
I am currently reading Shestov’s *The Conquest of the Self-Evident* and *The Creation of Nothingness*.
He says: “Biographies generally tell everything yet exclude precisely what’s most important to us.” Rereading my earlier verbosity made me sick.
I thought about not sending this, but once written, it becomes separate from me. So I figured even this pretentious self-promotion could be seen as endearing—I intended to continue listing my self-loathing but will gloss it over with Shestov.
“Forgive me.”

Now, regarding my current life: company hours ran from nine-thirty in the morning until around six or seven in the evening.
My job involved some desk work, but I was fundamentally a sales representative.
I went around to car dealerships, company procurement departments, stores, and such, serving as a kind of solicitor.
Most of the time, I was turned away at the door, and I had to go around bowing and scraping—it was such a spineless affair, I couldn’t stand it.
That alone would have been tolerable, but the people at the regional branch offices—mostly married couples—engaged in petty meddling, backbiting, and sarcasm. Especially since they seemed determined not to let anyone poach their clients, they saddled me with nothing but menial tasks. And if I were to list all their complaints in one go, it amounted to this: a bunch of rotten women obsessed with sucking up to headquarters and fretting over their own job security.
They envied their colleagues' salaries, critiqued lifestyles, secretly griped about their own grievances—like disputes over business trip expense calculations—while deriding others as nouveau riche upstarts. The wives twisted their faces and sneered: "So-and-so’s always on business trips—why, we made thirty yen from just three days away!"
Then the other wife would say, "Well, even if we go on business trips, that’s just for the sake of the lower-ranking people."
But Mr. Section Chief always rode third-class on second-class travel expenses.
Cheapskate...
However，whenever Madams went on business trips—shoes wore out，clothes got torn，shirts got soiled… It was all such a nuisance.
Particularly since we were a small team, they talked about how good the familial atmosphere was—but that very fact made the competition fierce, with someone like me being consulted for opinions all day long. And given the nature of the business—client entertainment, holidays, Sunday shifts, overtime—there was no time to study.
It wore me out having to be so careful.
The monthly salary was sixty-five yen, and with a fifty percent bonus, the total pay amounted to ninety-seven yen and fifty sen.
Money’s true nature remained elusive; since I couldn’t get a handle on it, I kept losing out.
I’d accumulated quite a lot of debt.
I was surely past the age of badmouthing others and sympathizing with them—I’d stop.
The errand boy had already gone to bed.
I was at my wit’s end because he kept asking me about English constantly.
By the way, I had no language skills at all.
By the way, I was writing this from bed as well.

The errand boy was being noisy, so I decided to write after going to sleep.
Please forgive this radio-announcement style of letter.
To me, this approach feels more pure.
I shall transcribe Shestov: "The originality and significance of Chekhov's works lie here.
Take his comedy *The Seagull* as an example.
There, defying all literary principles, the work's foundation rests neither on mechanisms of passion nor inevitable progression of events, but on pure chance laid bare.
Reading this comedy gives the impression of scanning a newspaper filled with 'miscellaneous facts' haphazardly collected without order or composition.
'What reigns here is chance,' he writes, 'chance waging war against all general concepts.' As I copied this, the errand boy badgered me for tales—of Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shōnagon, *Nihon Ryōiki*—but as I spoke, he grew so terrified that his teeth clattered three times with audible force as he trembled.
Mr. Dazai.
Let us sleep now.
Please quit smirking and offering half-hearted applause—just teasing.
Today at work, they had us collect year-end party fees from every employee.
A drinking fest.
I'd been ordered to abstain due to my poor drinking habits, so for three tedious hours I stared at the white ceiling while listening to their inanities.
Afterwards, I visited clients, got treated to dinner by section chiefs, played karuta, and now write this at ten p.m., exhausted.
I detest letter-writing in this state.
A brief postscript:
My two-month absence stemmed from a drunken brawl with nine craftsmen—on October 29th, they slashed my arm with a razor.
The wound developed erysipelas, landing me in hospital for two months.
Imagine—sober men cutting a drunk dozing mid-fight! With my wretched luck and erysipelas agony... Mother mortgaged Father's last remaining house to a loan shark and sent money while feuding with Brother.

The company, claiming it was a non-work-related injury rather than an illness, withheld my November salary.
My colleagues began treating me like some street thug and sneering at me.
Well, let’s stop there.
I’ve started thinking I might as well tattoo cherry blossoms on my arm.
I’m not a child anymore.
The truth is, I wanted to write you because I’ve decided to quit literature.
Not for any grand ideological reason—just the daily grind of survival.
Living in Keijō as a salaryman never felt oppressive before, but after this incident, everything’s become unbearable.
Nowadays when I go to work, I barely have time to breathe.
Before getting hurt, I’d manage five or six hours of sleep—sometimes pulling all-nighters to read or scribble stories between office tasks—but I can’t keep that up anymore.
Mr. Dazai—I want to come back to Tokyo and live as a proper literary man.
Being chained to this desk job doesn’t broaden my horizons; if anything, it narrows them to paydays and supervisors’ scowls.
I’ve even forgotten the scraps of economics I memorized at university.
Losing my capacity for study always bothered me, but now it’s worse than ever.
It’s Tokyo literary life or death for me now.
Maybe become Kyōka apprenticed to Kōyō-san, or wait Dostoevsky-style on rice and water until my Belinsky appears—that’s what I need.
But knowing what a gutter rat I am, I wouldn’t care how low I sank in Tokyo—except Mother—I can’t do that to her.
And yet this place suffocates me.
Selfish? Incoherent? Extravagant? No doubt.
But if I spend one more month in this merchant’s purgatory, suicide or abandoning writing will be my only choices.

Or perhaps I might continue.
I did want to continue—but what I was writing felt unbearable.
My breath grew stifled.
I thought to put this trapped air into a balloon, let it soar through blue skies, and command my heart to surrender.
Yet I still wanted to change my life somehow.
I longed to hear your counsel on this matter.
I’m worthless.
Even if I returned to Tokyo, I could never subsist on literature alone.
Perhaps becoming a carnival barker or vagrant would grant me richer experiences—that might be better.
But Mother had sent four bridal candidate photos already, you see?
Now *Harufuku* offered no foothold either.
What became of that hundred-page novel I mailed in October?
Maybe tearing it up would be best.
Or should I chase contest prizes instead?
Silence might prove wiser still.
Yet Mr. Dazai Osamu—if possible—please send me words of encouragement.
Four more workdays would rot me utterly by the fifth.
Tonight I loathe letter-writing.
Tomorrow night and beyond will only deepen this revulsion.
Still I’ll spew these selfish fancies with desperate force.

“Give me a good scolding.”
Ah.
“Tell me to return to Tokyo.”
_Lies!_
“Please introduce me to my favorite writers: Mr. Ozaki Shiro, Mr. Yokomitsu Riichi, and Mr. Kobayashi Hideo.”
_Lies!_
I wanted to start writing my autobiography as I remembered it from this month onward.
But I despaired because *Harufuku* was in such shambles.
“Until *Harufuku* recovers, could you introduce me to a coterie magazine you know—one that might publish about fifty pages of my work monthly?”
“I’ll pay the coterie fees.”
_Don’t mind that!_
I could save up my works and aim to win a prize contest, but I hated how that felt like it depended too much on luck.
Moreover, you probably wouldn’t even read a manuscript with such messy handwriting.
And I, weak-willed and indecisive, couldn’t bear it when my unprinted works kept multiplying—so I ended up tearing them up from the very first one—
_Lies, lies._
None of it mattered.
If you had read this letter up to this point, I would have been grateful for that alone.
“Please send me a letter.”
“If you do, I’ll rewrite it again.”
“Please tear up and discard this letter.”
“Please, please forgive me.”

I wrote six identical copies of this letter and sent them to six writers. No matter what anyone says, you are a writer who possesses your own world. To put it plainly, I'm impudent and half-witted. I cannot ardently love your world. I don't think you're clever. Yet you bear the countenance of anxiety as modern intelligentsia. I won't write utter nonsense. You're as much an author of kibyōshi as you are a writer for Eureka. To you, The Beaten Fool amounts to nothing more than a scornful smirk. The paper-cutout lives you manipulate drip blood like Nanboku's grand Kabuki spectacles. I'll refrain from noisy prattle. That Valéry seemed vulgar was your impression after reading Retrograde and Das Gemeine. Yet here lies 'a fragment of lyricism about modern youth's lost springtime, a self-affirmation regarding the phantoms inhabiting our real environment.' But I am a dim wasteland stretching vast and desolate. Here and there sunlight must fall. Though verdant throughout, thick weeds sprout wild within me. Not knowing where to begin cutting back, I plunged recklessly wherever my feet led, walked only where passage allowed, and hereby report—so there! I am Usunoro. That's not it at all. Still, I want to become savage and unyielding.

No writer today possesses the world I ardently love. Dostoevsky remains my favorite. Please do not disdain the ordinariness of my tastes. This year—truly—I want to write something. But what meaning could there be in novels? In life? There is none. I write novels as one eats meals. Even Shestov, who so detested practical-mindedness, left behind his collected works. So perhaps it’s permissible to strain myself. I must have this habit of writing such nonsensical, brazen promotional letters to everyone whenever I receive correspondence from a famous person. No—in truth, only once before, when Mr. Kitagawa Fuyuhiko sent me a five-line postcard. Yet this is genuinely the first lengthy letter I’ve written since birth. I should sleep now. Perhaps read Shestov. Please—please—please send me a letter. Otherwise I’ll be unbearably bored. Damn this spoiled disposition! I don’t much care for the self that wrote this letter. What of you? Please append this to the paltry boasts of my youth.

When I was thirteen or fourteen—still a boy and terrible at drawing—Mr. Fukazawa Shōzō of the Imperial Art Exhibition (husband of Ms. Beniko) took a liking to me and suggested I take up art. That I was good at singing and skilled in poetry—what nonsense! This sort of grandstanding—I detest it. Though I hate others’ bragging too, here I’ve gone and written my own. Forgive me. Please don’t take offense—no, why would you even have cause to? I am a vulgar youth. But—no! Vulgar through and through. What an absurd demand! Write me back already! Farewell, farewell—craning my neck in anticipation. Wait! Someone yawned. Look there—"Ah! Ah! Ah!" they bellowed shamelessly, thrusting spindly arms skyward as if to pierce the ceiling, their gaping maw and gleaming teeth making them the very image of a horse. I’ve a scheme, Mr. Dazai Osamu. I find myself wanting to write endlessly about myself now. It would bring me immense joy if you’d read another twenty or thirty pages. First: that I’m utterly meaningless—even if Marx never condemned trading firms, brokers, advertisers, sales representatives as societal blights, I’ve resolved to despise my own trade.

Once, my supervisor lectured me to suppress my individuality.
Then individuality preached that we should kill the supervisor.
When collecting payments, meeting those truck shop owners who forced cupfuls of sake on me was at least amusing—but facing some cold bureaucrat with a loach-like mustache at his desk: “Any official business today?” “None.” “Very well, I’ll take my leave.” Or “Merchants wait outside.” Or haggling over fractions of a cent, making a hundred pilgrimages just to secure orders worth twenty or thirty yen...
No—I won’t complain.
When I considered it carefully, nothing felt more terrifying and loathsome than how likes and dislikes get decided first, with logic trailing behind.
“Do you like it?”
“Do you dislike it?”
A moment passed—now I dislike it.
Thus I realized: the world’s words merely manipulate human emotions.
I sensed I’d soon need a mask myself.
Mérimée’s mask would suit best, perhaps.
I resolved never to prattle about likes and dislikes again.
Though I’d said “I like it” because I did, now that I’d come to dislike it, I couldn’t say “I dislike it.”
Troubled me—bound by responsibility to a girl I’d grown to dislike, yet unable to propose parting.
Striving to like what you dislike proves impossible.
Must I love while still disliking?
I want to say nothing.
I hate too many people.
“Ah! You—and you—and you bastard! How dare you all keep shamelessly living while I suffer so!”

“None of your recent postcards contains a single thing worth seeing.
“You’ve grown appallingly spineless, all honeyed words and flattering looks.
“I find this profoundly regrettable.
“Yoshida.”

Date.

“A word.”

(Empty line.) I was made to realize that I too am a mud-caked fox who failed to transform into Byron; growing disgusted with this charade, I wrote a breakup letter to my lover.

My life is all lies and falsehoods; I no longer believe in anything, and have fallen into a pit of despair (banks too—enough). From this day forward, I do not acknowledge your literature. Farewell. Please send me your photograph. Is the garish bloom of buffoonery murderous literature? (Banks—I won’t have them. But…)—no, just a quick warm-up. Mr. Dazai, it seems you’ve taken the bait. There’s a reaction. If you feel any interest in me, please read through to the end. As I am still a twenty-year-old youth, I am painfully grateful that you would spare your precious time for me. (If you dare scoff at these words of sincerity into which I’ve poured my very life—I will truly stab you to death. Ah, what a foolish thing I said.) First, allow me to introduce myself—to what degree I am a youth. Around fifteen or sixteen years old, I was enthralled by Mr. Satō Haruo and Mr. Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. At seventeen, I became enthralled with Marx and Lenin. (Staking my life.) …Yet when I turned eighteen, I reverted back to 'Akutagawa' and became enthralled with Mr. Tsuji Jun. (Dazai—what a spineless wretch you are.) Are you listening, Daruma? Turn this way—what say you to “I too am a lonely autumn evening”? Please help me. Please do not throw this into the wastebasket.

"I'll make it entertaining.) Through Akutagawa's works, I came to revere Anatole France (honorifics unnecessary), Baudelaire, and E.A. Poe."
"Then I abandoned literature altogether—roamed streets lit by magic lanterns, dabbled in this and that—until becoming what I am now."
"Though aware language study is essential for writing, I neglect even Japanese while avoiding foreign tongues—(Boring you yet?"
"(Just a little longer—bear with me.) Thus I've idled my days away."
"I consider my existence mere blind impulse, yet ask if life itself isn't just that—blind impulse."
"(An autumn night weakens resolve through self-interrogation.)"
"(That verse comes from an old man two centuries past.) For one barely twenty, this resignation seems excessive."
"...What constitutes Shestovian anxiety? I couldn't say."
"Having read Gide's *Strait Is the Gate* only as an innocent love story—grasping merely sincerity's value... Well, I remain shallow-learned and talentless."
"With this I bid farewell."
"I've committed inexcusable rudeness."
"My proper station suddenly became clear tonight."
"Pseudo-classical epistolary style? I'll churn out reams if required."
"Borrowed robes—even five-crested formal kimono—I wear with perfect composure."
"You understand."
"So let me sing—(Pathetic notion.) No—let me write instead."

Dear Sir,
This humble one, having been recommended by a female friend, read *Blind Miscellany* and then *Das Gemeine*, whereupon I have forthwith become a Dazai Osamu fan; kindly recognize this as a fan letter.
I have subscribed to the October issue of *New Romanticism* and was allowed to read *The Thinking Reed*.
The pinnacle of intellect, as per Baba’s words… I… no—there is naught to say.
"If one were a movie fan, it would be proper to request a bromide autograph at this juncture; and though this humble one too would desire something akin to a 'sign' from Master Dazai Osamu, would that be permissible?"
I humbly inquire.
I deeply apologize for the discourtesy of writing such a letter on what resembles manuscript paper.
Respectfully yours.
December 22.

Mr. Dazai Osamu:
"My name might be Nadeshiko, or Yūgao, or Azami—or something like that. P.S.: In this letter, I felt self-loathing over what I’d left unsaid or perhaps said too much, sensing within it those words from *Das Gemeine*—'a jumbled signboard.'"
(No—that had been a foolish thing to say.) Mr. Dazai, this wouldn’t do.
When had I ever formed a female friendship in the first place?
They were all lies.
I needed no signature.
This matter of being your—no—it was becoming complicated.
No reply was necessary.
I wanted none of such things.
How absurd.
That our writer had emerged was a joyous thing.
"Please live," I wrote, "even through pain."
Behind you swarmed a hundred thousand voiceless spirits—lost souls of self-destruction.
It gladdened me that we’d fielded our champion in Japanese literary history.
I rejoiced at this writer who’d given voice to us cloud-like phantoms.
(Tears flowed—flowed—beyond control.) We hundred thousand youths: whether we could endure real society’s crucible became a solemn experiment conducted silently through your very flesh.
Having written this, I—still mired in boyhood—sensed “the peril of freezing” through letters exchanged with you who embodied “high-altitude air, intense air.”
With truly reverent bearing, I resolved to flee you through this single missive alone.
Blind spider—show mercy to this sparrow.
Of course I vowed to read your works more devotedly than any—one final word.

——Twilight has begun to fall upon you… You toyed with lightning.
You gazed too deeply at the sun.
This would be unbearable… (Line break.) Do these words apply to the author of *Blind Miscellany*? —From Strindberg’s *To Damascus*.
And—ah—I’ve written in such an affected style.
I’ll write no more—yet Master Dazai Osamu.
I want to come flying to your doorstep and speak in darkness.
If you write for Kaizo I’ll buy Kaizo; if you write for Chuko I’ll buy Chuko.
And I’ll keep that three-yen debt unpaid.
Respectfully.

“I am a woman.”

“Respectfully in reply.
I pray you will exercise prudence and self-care.
To rouse a lofty spirit and perfect your elder brother’s innate talent constitutes the divine calling bestowed upon you by heaven and man—you must realize this.
Do not waste tears on idle dreams. Strive to complete fifty solemn pages.
The five hundred yen shall soon become yours.
With eighty yen, a new mantle; with two hundred yen, a new set of clothes, hakama, and white tabi—a deluxe edition of congratulations at two hundred eighty yen.
Early morning, I humbly await you at the gate.
Mr. Dazai Osamu:
Fukazawa Taro.”

“Respectfully,
I have neglected to write since then, but I trust you are in good health?
I humbly inquire.
For the past two or three days, I have been receiving frequent postcards and telegrams requesting that I send twenty yen as manuscript fees to Dazai-kun, but the company could only pay six yen and fifty sen (for two and a half pages), and as I currently have no money, I have at last managed to borrow just ten yen from a friend today.
Having had you rewrite it four times—I am truly sorry for the imposition—I am sending you a total of fifteen yen.
With New Year’s Eve approaching, yet you will blithely spend it all regardless, I ask that you keep hold of it on your end and distribute it as you see fit.
I wanted to send you more, but with my own hectic circumstances, I simply couldn’t manage it.
Bungeibu, Musashino Newspaper Company, Uchisaiwaicho, Kojimachi Ward, Nagasawa Denroku.
“Mr. Dazai Osamu, Madam.”

Date.

"In the harsh winter midnight of December, I leapt up and recorded."

1. I am not base.
2. Yet I created this alone.
3. Someone is watching.
4. "I've become utterly destitute, you know." 5. This wasn't how it should have been.
6. Serpent-Bodied Kiyohime.
7. "That glimpse of you began my ruin." 8. Is Dazai asleep now or awake?
9. "What wasted talent!" 10. An athletic physique.
11. Hardships shall temper you into jade.
(Plodding on—the procession of thoughts, myriad hues and forms—) While grasping one strand to record, thirtyfold fortyfold—a hundred thousand words escape.
S.

Date.

“Omitted.”
I had been reassured, thinking you were finally convalescing properly, but through rumors I hear you’ve lately been seeking fleeting respite through drug injections.
I find this deeply questionable.
Regarding the terrors that follow such injections—as I trust you’re already acquainted—I’ll refrain from reiterating them now.
Yet this demands a resolve akin to renouncing one’s beloved—I implore you to resolutely abandon it.
The Buddhist sutras’ “unyielding diligence” refers precisely to this species of resolution, I believe.
Truthfully, I wished to visit and explain in person, but as you’re a householder and no child, I trust you’ll heed these words by letter—hence my writing.
Might I suggest retreating to some temperate locale or hot spring for quiet contemplation?
I offer this counsel out of grandmotherly concern: consult your brother in Aomori and have matters properly settled.
I imagine you’ve already arranged hot spring lodgings by now.
Should you relocate there, I’d appreciate word of your condition.
I should like to call on you with someone like Kitazawa-kun and lodge at a nearby inn awhile.
Please convey my regards to your wife.
Respectfully,
Hayakawa Shunji.
Mr. Tsushima Shuji:

“Mr. Tsushima Shuji:”

“I can only manage thirty yen.”
“Having heard about this life-threatening situation, I am deeply concerned—what exactly is happening?”
“Truthfully, I had been waiting to see if by around the 20th there would be some detailed notice from your brother.”

(Empty line.) Being apart like this means we lack understanding of each other's lives, so I imagine we'll encounter all sorts of difficulties.

“Since you say it’s life-or-death, I’m sending this.”
“And mind you—I’m doing this by getting a salary advance (not that they’ll give me much), when my own situation leaves no room to breathe.”

“(Empty line.) It’s not that I’m putting on airs.”
“And I’m not living in luxury.”
“As a teacher, I’m not merely living the life ordinary people imagine.”
“Once, you and I had work that set our young blood ablaze.”
“(It wasn’t literature!) That’s what it was.”
“It was for that reason.”
“Moreover, since the child was born—Frau with tuberculosis, me with tuberculosis too (mild of course)—we’re practically riding a burning cart.”

(Empty line.) “Therefore, make do with thirty.”
“And if possible, return it.”
“Because I’d end up staking my life on it.”

“(Empty line.) I have a general understanding of your conduct regarding literary gossip,your novels,and other matters.”
“However,I do not want to believe that constitutes your entire being.”

(Empty line.) "Cheer up! Putting your life on the line... dying... such nonsense!"
Kishitsusawa Takeyasu.

“Bad habits must be eradicated.”
50 Sendagi-machi, Hongō Ward, Yoshida Kiyoshi.”

Date.

I had to say it yet couldn’t.
I resolved to write a letter when summer vacation came.
I wanted to write a letter.
Though knowing I must write it，I pondered why I couldn’t.
Even being told “One shouldn’t mock others，” I still hadn’t written.
The letter would decide me.
My resolve to write hardened.
Tomorrow，I would paint one picture.
Then fortify my determination further.
In a week，the painting could be done.
Afterward，go to Tsuta and write.
If unwritten，no return to Tokyo.
Whatever came would follow that letter.

“I have received the inaugural issue of Blue Whip.”
“I will do it.”
“I have created nothing; I merely thought of painting such a picture, tried to gain your approval, and tormented myself for failing to act.”
On the day I returned from Funabashi, the words you spoke—which I grieved over as utter despair toward me—now grant me a precious strength I desperately need.
“Picasso and Matisse too, depending on how you look at it, are doing things that could be laughed off.”
“I think the paintings I’ve drawn lately were not genuine actions but mere excuses.”
I had wanted to write a long, long letter.
Senke-kun seems to have misunderstood things like someone saying “letters are quite hard to write” as referring to flawlessly crafted letters.
Until the day I swore to write a letter, I made an effort.
From that day onward, I no longer had to strain to speak to you.
I had thought to write a long letter that could be read all night.

I am not a weasel.
I sometimes feel myself as ponderous as an apple tree.
I don’t even want to talk to the others.
To you alone, I can say anything.
If you don’t believe this letter, I will die.
“Respectfully, Keishiro.”

Date.

“Dear Master,
This is a sudden and impertinent request, but would you take me as your disciple?
I have read *Das Gemeine* and continue to do so.
I am nineteen years old.
Last year I graduated from Kyoto Prefectural Kyoto First Middle School, and next year plan to attend either the Third Higher School’s Humanities Division C, Waseda University, or Osaka Pharmaceutical College.
I intend to become a novelist and study with desperate intensity.
Master, please accept me as your disciple.
What formalities would this require?
Tsujikawa Jun says great souls are discovered only by great souls.
I possess some talent for drawing Ponchi-style cartoons and maintain a sensitivity toward literature.
My upbringing was refined.
Yet I am somewhat peculiar.
I am a pitiable man—both Christian and Stillerian.
Please send your reply.
Dazai-ism has infiltrated our group with terrifying momentum.
I nearly perished from joy.
Farewell—I await your response.
Kuki Port, Kitamuro District, Mie Prefecture, Kesen Jin’ichi.”

P.S.
I have a tattoo.
“I had it made in the same design as appears in your novels, Master.”
Across my entire back, blue waves undulated while four slender fish—mackerel-like with pointed beaks—rubbed their bodies against crimson rose petals.
The rural tattoo artist had likely never handled roses before; his attempt at a large bloom resembled nothing more than a worthless monkey mask. For weeks I lay in dim rooms disheartened, but fortune smiled—unless contorting painfully, I couldn’t see my own back. Resolving to wear short sleeves year-round, I gradually forgot. Next year I’ll sit exams for Third Higher’s Humanities C.
“Master—what should I do?”
“Tell me!”
“I love Yamada Waka.”
“She must be physically formidable.”
“When I anger Father and Mother, they slap my cheeks sharply.”
Yet being weaklings themselves, revenge never crosses their minds.
“Father remains an active Army lieutenant colonel at precisely five shaku one sun [154 cm], inexplicably unable to gain weight.”
“He only grows thinner.”
“How bitter he must feel.”
He strokes my head weeping.
Perhaps I’m cursed with misfortune.
As a pacifist yesterday I sat cross-legged in a ten-mat room’s center, eyes darting—though seeing every corner clearly proves troublesome when one lacks quarrelsome strength.
“Kisen Ni’ichi.”

“The state of your suffering—everyone, everyone endures anguish precisely equal to your present torment.”
“As for my creative work these past six months, no magazine will accept submissions.”
“The rock bottom every writer must pass through eventually.”
“This stems from journalists’ tacit pact—there’s nothing to be done.”
“Twenty yen enclosed.”
“Since I’ve advanced this sum for now, might you contribute three or four pages of travel diary when inclined?”
“I recommend taking five or six modest days’ journey with these funds.”
“Even abandoned alone, I keep faith in you.”
Osaka Salon Editorial Department, Takahashi Yasujiro.

Haruta was fired.
"I was the one who arranged it that way."

“According to your wife’s report, it seems you’ve quit both alcohol and tobacco—I can well imagine.”
“In exchange, you now chew through twenty bananas a day and no fewer than thirty toothpicks—gnawing their tips into tiny shreds like palm fronds—then wander about spitting them everywhere. Moreover, you slip out of bed without purpose, roam aimlessly, and have already smashed three lampshades by bumping your head into them. I’ve heard all this, and while your wife sighs over one calamity after another, I can only think: this isn’t Dazai’s fault alone.”
“Everyone ganged up and turned it into a laughingstock—I feel murderous rage toward two or three people involved.”
“Dazai, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Hold your head high and walk.”
“Kuro.”

“Mr. Dazai, it has been quite some time since our last correspondence.”
“Your renown flourishes daily—though you may dismiss this as idle flattery, I shall not be cowed by even the harshest of your rebukes.”
“Lately, with *Mekura Sōshi* dominating conversations, I have been devoutly reading *The Thinking Reed* each month, allowing it to inform my rigorous self-cultivation.”
To reverently bid farewell to the retreating figures of those promising youths advancing steadily without peril—in the spirit of venerating the most sacred light illuminating all living beings—yesterday I cleaned our household shrine. Henceforth, I can only pray for Mr. Yoshida’s continued success and distinction.
When I reflect upon it, ours remains a most peculiar bond.
You kept three hundred sheets of manuscript paper arranged neatly upon your desk throughout the year—a fountain pen lying beside them—yet whenever I called, not a single sheet appeared diminished. Instead, I would find you engaged in silent games of shogi with Mr. Hayakawa or napping. To me, you were the most vexing of clients. Still, whenever delivering goods to writers in that district, I made certain to visit you on my return journey, partake of your tea, and secretly anticipate the emergence of that singular figure.
You never indulged in gossip, and even when I relayed news of others, you feigned disinterest—directing your fervent scrutiny solely toward the minutiae of my trade.
My instincts proved sound—only yesterday, before a certain celebrated playwright, I recounted this anecdote in full and achieved splendid reception.
“Though scoldings may come, there is no remedy.”
“Henceforth I shall never mention this matter elsewhere—I beg your forgiveness solely on this occasion.”
“I have committed a grievous blunder at the most inopportune juncture.”
“Now then—having just delivered five hundred sheets of manuscript paper at this month’s start per your instruction, your subsequent order for another five hundred sheets left me quite thunderstruck.”
“A thousand sheets—I dispatched them last night under cover of darkness.”
“Pray accept them without comment.”
“Has your first story collection yet reached publication?”
For your publication commemorative event, I had hoped to perform the crane-and-turtle song to convey but a fraction of my joy—yet the Fukunuma family declares they shan’t attend any gathering where I bellow that tune. Their current deliberations suggest we must host two separate affairs: one with the full attendance of the Fukunuma clan, and another where they abstain so my crane-and-turtle antics may emerge.
Furthermore, regarding my humble report earlier this month about your imminent contribution to *Heroic Literature*—I trust it proved marginally useful. I shall continue submitting updates despite my tendency toward needless agitation and private conjectures. Kindly interpret these missives with forbearance, however incoherent they may seem.
With but days remaining in December, we merchants feel flames licking at our heels.
Late into the night—likely near three o’clock.
Tadokoro Yoshinori.

“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”

“I have read your letter.”
“I fully grasp the gravity of your circumstances.”
“To give such a reply disgusts even myself—knowing particularly how it must strike you, I briefly hesitated to write—but this month I’ve done something idiotic and find myself in terrible difficulties.”
“Therefore I must regrettably inform you that assistance is utterly impossible; pray understand this without ill feeling.”
“This concerns pure matters of fact.”
“There exists not the slightest stratagem in my sentiments.”
“If at all possible, please believe my sincerity toward you remains unaltered.”
Beneath the window, at the year-end market’s grand sale, laughter and clamor rise even to this height.
“I entreat you to guard your health.”
“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”
“Hosono Tetsujiro.”

“A punishment.”
“Did you want to become a writer even if it meant killing a woman?”
“Writhe and struggle—you gained a writer’s glory! Look at yourself now: a drug-addicted insect.”
“You never imagined it would come to this, did you?”
“From the Woman from Hell.”

Date.

“Respectfully,

“Mr. Dazai.”
“This must surely be the first letter you’ve received from a woman.”
“Because you carry yourself like a woman—men coddle you while women seethe with envy.”
“The other day at my relative’s home—(I work selling hibachi and futons at Kagurazaka’s vaudeville hall)—I read your letter and felt sickened.”
“Whether he’s my second cousin or great-uncle matters little—our blood ties remain.”
“I attend night classes at Nihon University.”
“Under our arrangement—he’ll become an electrical engineer in two years—I’ll marry into his household.”
“At night I study; mornings find me lunchbox in hand at Keiō Line’s new station where he serves as assistant master.”
“This assistant master whispers weekly secrets to you—things he’d never tell kin—then monthly scrawls grubby postcards like some scullery maid. These he pastes in an album and parades before every visitor with such giddiness it brings me to tears.”
“Sometimes he reads them abed—the album hidden beneath his futon. One Sunday morning I went to wake Ken-san and found it; when caught he flushed crimson and wrested it from me.”
“I wailed until my throat burned.”
“Those postcards reek of desperation.”
“You must elevate your readers’ gaze far higher.”
“A man yet unproven groveling about being someone’s ‘devoted reader’—how pitiful.”
“Writers aren’t human—they can’t grasp true sincerity.”
“Seventeen postcards filled that album—yet now you churn out however many pages for whatever magazine’s whatever issue.”
“Next comes some pretentiously titled story collection spanning hundreds of pages.”
“Do you imagine other topics would prove too complex?”
“Do you know how Ken-san outshone every pupil in elementary school?”
“As for me—I’ve never been bested in studies or needlework.”

“From now on, I must refuse your postcards.”
“Ken-san looks so pitiful.”
“You always write these postcards five or six days before publishing some new story, don’t you?”
“Did you actually send out fifty greeting cards?”
“Our rakugo master at the theater performs what he calls an ‘ear-stopping ritual’ before presenting new material—he circulates soba or sushi to the audience first. Only after they’ve eaten does he accept requests for new works. It’s rather mystifying.”
“It sounds most impressive.”
“There’s no difference here, is there?”
“Ken-san doesn’t respect you.”
“If you keep making such self-important assumptions, something dreadful will happen.”
“As for where in your novel he comments and what exact words he uses—Ken-san’s thoughts are so considerate that I wish to record them properly and send them to you.”
“No matter what magazine you write for or how many other fans flock to you, it means nothing to Ken-san.”
“And since Ken-san is unquestionably superior to you as a human being, he carefully notices things even you overlook and protects you accordingly.”
“If you had spared even a moment’s thought for our household’s happiness two years from now, you would stop sending Ken-san those vulgar things.”
“They always become the source of our arguments.”
“If by some miracle you possess even a shred of human decency, I trust you’ll correct your behavior from now on.”
“I don’t doubt this even in my dreams.”
“To state it plainly—I dislike both you and your novels.”
“It feels like crawling under fresh leaves teeming with caterpillars.”

"The sooner the better. Goodbye."
"Mr. Dazai Osamu, Hirakawa Taki."
To a stranger I do not know—this act of secretly writing a letter must surely be something I'll only do once in my lifetime.
"I took out the letter hidden in my sash's folds, hid it again, and stood there thinking deeply."

“Is money truly that indispensable to you?”
“This morning, I found another SOS in the newspaper’s notices section—from what appears to be you to what appears to be me. How mortifying.”
“Strange how a man bursting with vigor yesterday becomes a shriveled husk of interest overnight after sending monetary distress signals. What alchemy is this?”
“Did you actually chant those lunatic spells—*Jumuge jumuge*, *imokutene* and such?”
“What face did you make while muttering those curses? You who fancy yourself both supreme philosopher and base opportunist—dangling a paltry hundred yen before someone as lowly as myself—I must know that expression! Next time you publish an essay, include one passage meant solely for me. A hundred words others needn’t comprehend.”
“X and Y you may be, but chiefly—a hundred yen pilfered from one with coin to spare.”

“To their house writer, Dazai Osamu.”
“Dazai Osamu.”
“Thinking no one would find out—stop these contemptible acts.”
“I advise you to show some self-respect.”

Date.

“Mr. Dazai,
“I too will be twenty-five in a night or two.
“I will begin writing novels at twenty-five, achieve success by thirty, receive a modest inheritance from my family’s estate, then marry my nearsighted fiancée in the countryside.
First a son, then a daughter, followed by son after son until another daughter—in precisely that order. My fourth son would contract pneumonia from a stubborn cold and perish at five. Then I would age completely yet still produce two substantial novels annually until dying at fifty-three.
My father too had died at fifty-three, and everyone praised him.
That must be the proper age.
Regarding the novel commissioned by Heroic Literature that we had previously discussed—I completed and submitted it to the publisher. Even now my chest swells with anticipation for that work.
“It must surely be a masterpiece.”

Omitted formalities.

Completion of the novel reported.
A grand occasion indeed.
With roaring applause that threatened to tear the roof apart, they once again revealed their ulterior motive to undermine us fellow professionals.
Congratulations.
"You should've sent it to a magazine offering better pay than Heroic Literature."
But ah—this urge to clutch actual cash as soon as possible, even if it means losing a hundred yen over New Year's—seems no different for us commercial hacks than you pure literati.
May spring dawn brightly.
Kayano Teppei.

Date.

“The other day (the 23rd), following your honorable mother’s instructions, I sent a package containing New Year’s rice cakes and salted salmon, along with a barrel of pickles. However, according to your letter, it appears the pickles did not arrive. Though it is a trouble, I must request that you investigate at your local station and send a reply. Please convey the above to your wife. Below are a few words from me: For twenty-eight years since the autumn of my sixteenth year until my present age of forty-four—a poor merchant serving the Tsushima family, entirely uneducated—I have known my place. Though I have presumptuous admonitions to offer, I realize now is not the time for lengthy discourse. Prostrating myself in shame, I shall briefly voice what pains your ears. I beg your temporary indulgence.”
“According to rumors, your old vice of borrowing money has sprouted anew—you now make loan requests even to distinguished strangers with whom you share no acquaintance, accompanied by dog-like pleas of desperation. Moreover, when rebuffed, you show not an ounce of shame—'What’s wrong with borrowing? If I repay as promised someday, the lender suffers no loss, and my own life is saved—where’s the harm?' Just the other day, this very attitude led you to hurl a brazier at your wife, shattering two glass panels. Even if half this account were exaggeration, I could scarcely contain my bitter tears.”
“Though your house—with its House of Peers membership and Order of Merit Second Class—holds nothing for you literary types to boast of as lineage, being but an antiquated relic in your eyes, I humbly believe you must consider your honorable mother, left solitary in this world since your father’s passing, and permit this lowly one to preserve some semblance of dignity.”
“‘Now that I alone have been disowned, struck from the family register, and exiled from my hometown—and now that I alone am reviled all the more viciously, allowing everything to fall neatly into place’—how bitterly I resent such words.”
“Once your esteemed family’s name has been fully restored after a little while longer, by what means could your honorable elder brother and sister possibly speak ill of you?”
“You must refrain from any such misinterpretation without fail.”
“The other day, I received heartfelt lamentations from Elder Sister Kikuko, who married into the Yamakida household. Though it feels like a play’s contrivance, I have undertaken the great role of Masooka for you—someone I dislike—and thus must inform you that even were you my master, such extensive care is unwelcome. It is not I alone who suffers: Elder Sister Kikuko too finds her position at her marital home troubled due to attending to your affairs. Yet compelled by forced service, I implore you—from this day forth, resolve absolutely to cease borrowing from others. Should unavoidable circumstances arise, I beg you to endure to your utmost and direct such requests to me instead. Should your honorable elder brother learn of this matter, it would spell grave peril for me. Therefore, on this occasion alone, I shall temporarily cover the matter on your behalf. I humbly request your comprehension of this point.”
“I reiterate my words: even I do not trouble those I dislike with endless complaints. With this understanding, I humbly pray for your recuperation and self-care.”
“Kanagi Town, Aomori Prefecture, Yamagata Sōta.”
“Mr. Dazai Osamu.”
“In closing, I humbly pray for your auspicious crossing into the New Year.”

New Year's Day

“Wishing you a joyous New Year.”
“Heralding Spring.”
“Happy New Year.”
“Celebrating the New Year.”
“Hailing Spring and Offering Longevity.”
“Heralding Spring.”

"Omitted formalities.
We have received the manuscript.
There must be some mistake.
Our company retains no record of having commissioned this work; we must therefore return it under separate cover and request your acceptance thereof.
'Heroic Literature Editorial Department, R.'
'Joyous New Year.'
'Celebrating the New Year.'
'Hailing Spring.'
'Joyous New Year.' 'Joyous New Year.' 'Joyous New Year.' 'Joyous New Year.'
'Happy Spring.'
'Happy New Year.'
'I hereby tender New Year's felicitations.'
'Happy Spring.'
'Joyous New Year.'
'Hailing Spring.'
'Happy Spring.'
'Hailing Spring and Offering Longevity.'"