The Setting Sun (New Directions Book)

Product Information

When the room became faintly light, I stared at the face of the man sleeping beside me. It was the face of a man soon to die. It was an exhausted face. The face of a victim. A precious victim." The Setting Sun’ is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the daughter of a widowed mother whose brother Naoji has disappeared in the war. She is divorced after a stillborn birth. The money has run out and they are supported by her uncle. He is forced to sell their old house in Tokyo and move them to the country. Kazuko had destroyed snake eggs on the old property and has a sense of guilt and fear. Since then ill-fated events happened, from their forced relocation to her mother’s illness and a dangerous fire in the new house. She learns that Naoji hasn’t died in the war and is coming home, now an opiate addict, as Dazai was in real life. She pays the bills and enables his habit as he lies and breaks his promises to quit using drugs. Uncle Wada acts as the head of Kazuko’s family; they seek his advice and financial support in all important practical matters. Naoji accuses him of being stingy, as he does not provide a generous allowance for Kazuko and her family and instead suggests that she should work as a governess. Uncle Wada traveled to Europe in his youth and is generally regarded as worldly and experienced. Mr. Uehara However, Kazuko is plagued by feelings of shame, worried that she is not a good enough daughter for her elegant mother. Over time, Kazuko reveals herself to be highly sensitive and prone to bouts of melancholy; she also clings to her aristocratic self-confidence, which allows her to pursue her relationship with a married man, to whom she writes: “Ever since I was small, people have often told me that to be with me is to forget one’s troubles. I have never had the experience of being disliked.” Naoji

Kazuko feels ashamed that such a gentle and beautiful person as her mother cannot continue to exist in a world where she must fight for survival. Soon after her mother’s death, she goes to Tokyo and finds Mr. Uehara. Though he is much changed and seems close to death, she finds that she still loves him. The two of them share a bed, talking nihilistically about the emptiness of life. On the following morning, Naoji commits suicide. This is a theme that first appears at the very beginning of the novel when Kazuko refuses to believe that her brother is dead. She explains that scoundrels like him always survive while beautiful, selfless souls like her mother die, as they cannot cope with the coarseness and vulgarity of the world. The story of the aristocratic family that is confronted with the fall of their class and forced to accept its failure is the story of all aristocratic families forced to give up their values and traditions and confronted with the harsh reality of a postwar, transitional society. Dazai captures in his book the essence of the transformations of the Japanese society by capturing the changes that took place in a Japanese family, the symbol of society. A great influence on these changes was made by the Western ideas that corrupted the traditional Japanese values. In Dazai's view, modernization stays at the basis of the changes that took place in the traditional Japanese family. Although he sees modernization as corrupting, he is hopeful that these changes could bring progress and prosperity. Y ya digo que Osamu Dazai escribe como los dioses, parece que hace sencillo lo más difícil. Esa generación casi “perdida” que se tiene que levantar tras una guerra, aquí está perfectamente reflejada en los personajes de Kazuo y de su hermano Naoji. Todos esos conflictos morales que estaba viviendo Japón en aquella época están aquí reflejados en ellos dos. Es una novela para saborear y disfrutar sin prisas. Una joya.

Kazuko, Naoji, and the other major characters in the novel are highly educated, and their conversation is filled with literary, artistic, and other cultural references. However, they seldom mention Japanese culture, preferring to discuss Chekhov, Goethe, Lenin, and other famous Western figures. When Kazuko talks of religion, it is always Christianity rather than Buddhism that claims her attention. She mentions Jesus several times and quotes at length from the Bible. Even the roses in her garden are from France or England. Hayır, bu kötü bir resim. Geçen gün çıkan resimlerinde genç ve mutlu görünüyordu. Bugünlerde çok mutlu olmalı. In the days, weeks and months following 9/11 I had a really difficult time getting a grasp on reality. I pretty much walked around the city in a daze for quite a while not knowing what to make of any of it. I frankly still don't know what to make of any of it...

Hoye, Timothy (2011). "Styles of Truth in Dazai Osamu's Setting Sun". Voegelinian Readings of Modern Literature. University of Missouri Press. p.78. ISBN 9780826219152. Kazuko, a divorced, childless woman of twenty-nine, lives with her mother in a small cottage in the mountains of Izu, on the Pacific coast of Japan. Although their family was once aristocratic, they are now poor and are forced to sell their possessions to survive. After the death of Kazuko’s father, she and her mother were forced to move to Izu. Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.Gazetede imparatorun resmini gördüm. Tekrar görmek isterdim. “ Gazete sayfasını annenin yüzüne doğru açtım. To me, it occurs, as one of those books which leave you emotionally exhausted after you finish them, all your feelings get drained off our conscience, and you actually feel nothing and become oblivious to the emotions which otherwise might have been surged due to surroundings. In fact, I’ve been so attached with book that even after 3-4 days of finishing it I’m quite struggling to start a new one. Perhaps this verbose outburst may help me in coming to terms with my reading choices :) Overall, it was a marvelous experience, quite vivid and full of human sensibilities which has got power to bring out your most deep rooted emotions, as you expect Dazai (or Japanese authors as a whole) to be, and something peculiar which I’ve experienced a few times. The Setting Sun" presents in detail the Japanese society in the postwar period and the struggle between traditional society and modernism pictured in the struggle of an aristocratic family to overcome her past and leave its customs. The period in which the novel's action takes place is a period of transition for the characters as well as for Japan.

The book talks about eminent struggle of the protagonist- Kazuko- to come in terms with the rapid changing world wherein she’s not sure about her inclination whether it's about the aristocratic heritage or the new uprising world which is derived by convenience and desires. Eventually, she battles herself to survive along a fine thread lingering between the customary world and a developing modern sphere of humanity. The nihilistic traits of grief, sadness, bleakness, suicide, absurdism and despair of life are as evident as water in a vessel of glass and I found that these traits in other major works of Dazai too - No Longer Human and Schoolgirl. In fact, it could said be authority that post-war philosophy and literature is highly inspired form these abovementioned traits- whether it may be existentialism of Sartre, absurdism of Camus or any other modern and post-modern movement of literature. The harrowing experiences of World Wars certainly contribute to sudden rise in popularity and development of these schools of thoughts in post- war times. All these art/ philosophical movements works on similar themes that existence somewhat lingers upon absurd situation of life and one has to accept this state of absurdness, and in fact that very realization is the onset of true of existence wherein one has to take responsibility of one's life. So I can't even imagine what it must have been like for not just the Japanese but for everyone to go from a pre-nukes world to witnessing the near annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

See a Problem?

This chapter introduces the central theme of decline, which is suggested by the novel’s title. Kazuko’s family is aristocratic and was once rich and powerful; now, they are left in reduced circumstances and are forced to move into a much smaller house far away from their decadent lives in Tokyo. Gelelim kitabımıza; İngiltere’nin sömürgelerinden kaynaklı üzerinde güneş batmayan ülke ünvanı varsa Japonya’nında imparatorun şahsıyla simgelenen güneşin sahibi olma hak ve hürriyeti var. Bu anlamda Batan Güneş Dazai’nin kaderiyle beraber, 2. Dünya savaşı sonrası yankeelere kayıtsız şartsız teslim olan ( artık güneşin sahibi değiliz) ve “manavlık yapan “ majestelerin dönemine de hem de tüm ömrünü o ünvanla savaşarak geçirmiş bir yazarın ağıtının hikayesidir. Osmanlı’ya dair yakılan bu dörtlüğü duymuşsunuzdur, Anadolu’da kim bilir bu güne ulaşmamış ne sövgüler vardır Osmanlı’ya. Ama şöyle bir durum da var; 600 yıldan fazla bu topraklara hükmetmiş bir yapının çöküşünden sonra bu çöküşün yarattığı boşluğa dair tek bir edebi sözün, eserin ortaya çıkmamış olmaması çok garip ve aslında öğretici de. Cumhuriyetin kuruluş sancılarına dair romanları bilmekle birlikte o “ eski güzel günlere dair” hiçbir şey okumamış olmamız halife- hanedanın aslında bu topraklarla bir ilgisi olmadığının da bir kanıtı olsa gerek. Dekadans, toplumsal çözülme ya da gelişen yeni sınıflar karşısında çözülen eski aristokrasi hikayeleri daima ilgimi çeker lakin bir kişinin bile bunu edebi olarak kaleme dökememiş olması edebi bir eksik olmaktan öte sarayın kofluğuna delalet ediyor sanırım. Neyse geçelim bu faslı.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-05-03 22:31:03 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Boxid IA40918602 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

When the room became faintly light, I stared at the face of the man sleeping beside me. It was the face of a man soon to die. It was an exhausted face. The face of a victim This winningly naive thought by the main character, upon reading a book on economics in the wake of WWII, her first foray into such "adult" matters, is emblematic of the stance taken throughout this narrative. It says - Forget all the larger complicated political/economic/etc. analyses and concerns of collective life in times of massive upheaval and destruction and focus on one's own responses to events, however untutored and illogical. Defeatism? Possibly. But also heroic and perpetually necessary. Through his own egocentricism and resolute determination to remain authentic, Dazai wrote a book that gets to the heart of a universal individualism, while at the same time advocating for transient beauties and dissolution and suicide.