SOURCE: “Japan,” in World Literature Today, Vol. 64, No. 3, Summer, 1990, p. 530.

In the following review, Yoshida praises the faithful translation of Crackling Mountain and Other Stories, which includes ten of Dazai's eleven major representative works written before 1945.

One of the misconceptions about Osamu Dazai (1909–48) is that he is a postwar writer. This probably resulted from his sudden visibility in the early postwar period, notably through his tremendously successful novel Shayō (1947; Eng. The Setting Sun, 1956). Most of his fifteen-year literary career, however, spanned the prewar and war period. The bulk of his writing in those years dealt with literary themes that would become more applicable to the concerns of postwar society, such as the “loss of identity” and “disorientation and alienation.” Thus the very nature of Dazai's writing made him an important figure right after the war.

The significance of Crackling Mountain and Other Stories is that it includes ten...