Dazai Osamu attended Hirosaki High School from 1927 until 1930, and many of his school notebooks from this period, complete with the inky doodles of a bored schoolboy, are currently being held in various University and Museum archives. Three of them have made their way online and have been preserved by Yobanashi Café over on the Internet Archive. The scribbles inside the notebooks include many portraits, including self-portraits and what appears to be Akutagawa Ryunosuke. These notebooks are valuable not only as an insight into the young Dazai, but also help us understand the type of education that was provided at High Schools during the early Showa era.
In the chemistry notebook, there is a detailed sketch of a schoolboy walking with a geisha, possibly a self-portrait of himself with his future wife, Oyama Hatsuyo, who he met in 1927.
Links to each scanned notebook:
Dazai’s High School English Notebook
Dazai’s High School Ethics Notebook
Dazai’s High School Chemistry Notebook
For a transliteration and short commentary for each notebook please see:
English Notebook transliteration
Ethics Notebook transliteration
Chemistry Notebook commentary by Hiroshi Ando
Yobanashi Café 