Early Light (Storybook ND Series)
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. "Everything's gone," the father explains to his daughter: "Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up," "Yeah, they all burned up," she said, still smiling.
"One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: "Goodbye," he hisses through his teeth, "Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click."
And the final story is "Villon's Wife," a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that "There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive."
"One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: "Goodbye," he hisses through his teeth, "Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click."
And the final story is "Villon's Wife," a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that "There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive."
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
This collection of three stories—Early Light, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, and Villon's Wife—was my first experience of Osamu Dazai's writing. I understood these stories to be semi-autobiographical, and seemed to (or maybe I'm just assuming) illustrate the breakdown of Dazai's mental health. These three stories read as simple, but are fairly intense in their portrayal of human suffering. Not a fan of how Dazai's mental health and alcoholism seemed to bring people (mostly women!) down with him, in his writing and in his life, with his final act being taking his own life, which he did with his girlfriend at the time— unsure whether or not she herself wanted to die.
According to Dazai's Wikipedia page:
"A heavy drinker, Dazai became an alcoholic and his health deteriorated rapidly. At this time he met Tomie Yamazaki, a beautician whose husband had been killed in the war after just ten days of marriage. Dazai abandoned his wife and children and moved in with Tomie."
"On June 13, 1948, Dazai and Tomie drowned themselves in the rain-swollen Tamagawa Aqueduct, near his house. Their bodies were not discovered until six days later, on June 19, which would have been his 39th birthday."
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.