Daffodil by Osamu Dazai

Daffodil by Osamu Dazai

Around that time, I started reading your novels, which had me realize there was such a way of living, and it felt like I had discovered an aim in life. I'm a poor child like you. I wanted to meet you. On New Year's Day three years ago, I was glad to see you for the first time in a very long time. Seeing your freewheeling way of getting drunk made me envy you to the point that I was jealous. This, I thought, was an honest way to live a life. No ostentation, no flattery, and yet a life lived mightily with pride on one's own. How enviable to live such a life.

Dazai's timeless tale of fame, doubt, family, and critics in a brand new translation from Maplopo. This Masters of Story edition also includes the previously published Wish Fulfilled (no longer in print), as well as the full Aftertalk with Dazai's translators, Doc and Reiko Kane.

Doubt... the swell of Should I? Can I?

It's common, of course, to think everything we're facing is new... that only we know what this must feel like. How silly we are. Confide in a parent, ask a wise friend, read a timeless book.

Dazai's 1942 story is, in fact, so relevant that the primary theme of the book is one you likely keep running into-no searching required... just a scroll here, a click there.

We read about 1990's band Silverchair, and how the sudden worldwide attention they'd received as teenagers changed them-and not always for the better; about the upcoming, posthumous, musical from Stephen Sondheim and the considerable debate concerning whether or not the play is/was actually finished, and if so, when. A curious story to be sure, particularly because this concept is precisely what we tackle in our introduction to Daffodil.

These days, we run into a lot of people who say they never read. That they're not readers, per se. And, that's a shame. Because, we fear in making this statement (almost with pride it seems), that these friends and acquaintances are acting almost as if the embodiment of the context Dazai lays bare for us so elegantly in this short story.

Daffodil is now out there in the ether for you grab. Enjoy.

This is the third in the Maplopo Masters of Story collection.

Additional English translations of Japanese literature include:

Legend of the Master, by Nakajima Atsushi

Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me, by Sakaguchi Ango

Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) is largely considered as one of the most prominent players in postwar Japanese literature and is usually regarded as one of the most highly valued authors of contemporary Japan. Contemporaries remembered him for his diverse lifestyle, imaginative use of words, and several suicide attempts, the last of which was successful in 1948. No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, his two main books, are still widely read and leave a vivid legacy for one of Japan's best writers.