The Setting Sun
Published on 15. November 2022
Book
Hardback
192 pages
978-0-8112-3444-3 (ISBN)
Description
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. Set in the early postwar years, The Setting Sun probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. The influence of Osamu Dazai's novel has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
Reviews / Votes
"What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes precisely those things in myself that I most want to hide." -- Yukio Mishima "From the point of view of wholesome common sense, Dazai's writings may be regarded as the soliloquies of a deviant." -- Yasunari Kawabata "Dazai offers something permanent and beautiful." -- The New York Times Book ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 211 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
355 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8112-3444-3 (9780811234443)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
The author of the global bestseller No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan. He committed suicide by drowning in Tokyo's Tamagawa Aqueduct.
Donald Keene, the author of dozens of books in both English and
Japanese as well as the famed translator of Dazai, Kawabata, and Mishima, was the
first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Prize for Literature.
Donald Keene, the author of dozens of books in both English and
Japanese as well as the famed translator of Dazai, Kawabata, and Mishima, was the
first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Prize for Literature.