午夜剧场

During my first year of my master's program, I wrote my first paper on Osamu Dazai. By chance, that led to an invitation to join a young group of researchers advancing Dazai studies. Since my master's thesis theme was Ryunosuke Akutagawa, it was unexpected, but I was very happy. Eventually, the group began publishing a peer-reviewed journal and continued to be an important forum for dialogue and sharing research practices. In 2019, we published the co-edited volume “Dazai Osamu and War” (Hitsuji Shobo). Through this collaborative research, we were able to explore the correlation between social trends leading up to the end of the war and Dazai's texts.

Later, Masao Saito, a fellow member of the group, approached me. He was planning a research book on Dazai and censorship with Professor Hiroshi Ando of the University of Tokyo and asked if I would like to write about “Tsugaru.” It has been one of my favorite books since my first year of high school, so I accepted immediately. Mr. Saito visited the Prange Collection at the University of Maryland, where many censorship materials from the occupation period are kept, and conducted a thorough investigation. While benefiting from his work, I wanted to illuminate the wartime and postwar periods of “Tsugaru” by bridging it with a different perspective.

The Museum of Modern Japanese Literature in Komaba was gifted precious materials such as manuscripts by the bereaved family, and in 2017, the “Catalog of the Dazai Osamu Library (Enlarged Edition)” was released. In the section for books formerly in his collection, three copies of “Tsugaru” are listed, including reprints and variant editions, and there are reportedly handwritten notes in them. I decided to first check who wrote them. I shut myself in the museum and turned the pages one by one of the books formerly owned by Dazai and his wife Michiko. Considering the “culprit” and their motive from the traces, like a mystery novel, is purely thrilling.

During the investigation, a sense of discomfort I had felt while reading “Tsugaru” in paperbacks or complete works resurfaced. This time, I was able to respond to that long-standing question by linking it to the calamities of war. If you are interested, please read it. “Why was it that when looking at the portrait of Take drawn by Dazai himself at the climax, there were times when the inspiration reached its peak and times when it did not?”

By the way, Dazai has an essay titled “King of the Heart,” which is a play on the phrase “King of the Land” (Riku no Ohja). it was published in the “Mita Shimbun” in January 1940, the year the Tokyo Olympics became a phantom. I often use it in modern Japanese classes at 午夜剧场 Shiki Senior High School, but this academic year I took it up in a lecture for the Faculty of Letters. It is a characteristically Dazai-esque song of encouragement, including a stern rebuke, that likens students who are not yet anyone to poets. I hope it resonates with all 午夜剧场 students studying amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jun Ozawa (Co-author)

Shumei University Press

168 pages, 2,500 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.