SOURCE: “At the Edge of Existence,” in The Times Literary Supplement, November 16, 1990, p. 1233.

In the following essay, Tuohy praises Dazai's earlier works but looks less favorably upon the collection Crackling Mountain and Other Stories.

Osamu Dazai was one of the most prominent Japanese novelists to be introduced to Western readers in the post-war period. His career had culminated in 1948: an obsession with suicide, not rare among his compatriots, had ended in a love-pact with one of his mistresses, according to the traditional pattern: pairs of shoes placed together, the bodies tied with a red cord.

Dazai's best-known novels, The Setting Sun and No Longer Human, were translated in the 1950s by Donald Keene, who later commented on the very different ways in which they were received abroad and in Japan. Western critics praised the novelist for his accessibility, his freedom from “cherry blossom reveries and oriental character motivations...