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Retrogression by Dazai Osamu

“Major credit must go to A. L. Raye for rendering Dazai’s Japanese in a vivid, sparking English.”
– Asymptote Journal

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Available in portable bunko format and ebook.

“I’ll stab him! I thought. What an absolute scoundrel!” So Dazai wrote to Yasunari Kawabata, one of the judges for the first Akutagawa Prize, when his story ‘Retrogression’ failed to win. Thus began what came to be known as the Akutagawa Prize Incident, which culminated in Dazai being forcibly hospitalised by one of the judges.

A collection of intertwined autobiographical tales from the author’s life, Retrogression starts with the protagonist’s death as an ‘old man’ of twenty-five and regresses back through a life of sin and decadence.

This book pieces together the fractured and disorderly lifestyle of one of history’s greatest romantics and pairs it with a particular moment in his life; losing the Akutagawa Prize. The ensuing drama that unfolded through private letters, newspaper articles, diaries, obituaries and fiction created a scandal that disturbed the early Shōwa literati with its coarse and indecent honesty. Dazai’s fiction, fiction written about Dazai, speculation and reality intertwined to create an explosive event that not only changed the desired trajectory of his life but also raised issues of discrimination within prominent literary circles and the treatment of mental illness in 1930s Japan.

Including:
Retrogression
Diary of My Distress
Human Lost
Various letters written both to and from Dazai
Two articles written about Dazai by his mentor, Satō Haruo
Excerpts from the Akutagawa Prize selection committee
…As well as extensive cultural notes and annotations.