SOURCE: “The War Years (1941–1945),” in Japan, edited by Roy E. Teele, Twayne Publishers, 1975, pp. 91–118, 166–69.

In the following essay, O'Brien discusses Dazai's writings during the war years (1941–1945), focusing on his retelling of both fairy tales and the writings of Ihara Saikakau.

A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces

Although the title of this work is based on Ihara Saikaku's Tales from the Provinces, a collection of thirty-five stories published in 1685, only one of Dazai's twelve tales, “Stubborn in Poverty,” is based on this particular Saikaku collection. The remainder are scattered throughout such other works by Saikaku as The Eternal Storehouse of Japan and Tales of Warriors and Duty.

The stories in A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces were initially published in various magazines from January to November, 1944. The following January the entire collection was brought out under its present title by the Seikatsusha Publishing Company. In...