Osamu Dazai 
Early Light (Storybook ND Series) [EPUB ebook] 

Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human

Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai’s genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. ‘Everything’s gone, ‘ the father explains to his daughter: ‘Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up, ‘ ‘Yeah, they all burned up, ‘ she said, still smiling.
‘One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, ‘ another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: ‘Goodbye, ‘ he hisses through his teeth, ‘Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click.’
And the final story is ‘Villon’s Wife, ‘ a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard’s wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.’

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RALPH MCCARTHY has lived in Japan for almost two decades. He is the translator of two collections of stories by Osamu Dazai, “Self Portraits” and “Blue Bamboo, ” and of Ryu Murakami’s novel 69.