The Ironist and the Exhibitionist: On Osamu Dazai

Where to begin the story? It’s tempting to start at the end—on the morning of Osamu Dazai’s 39th birthday, June 19, 1948, when his corpse was dredged from an irrigation canal outside Tokyo. Entangled with him was the body of Tomie Yamazaki, the war widow for whom he had abandoned his wife and children the year before.