Osamu Dazai

Real name: Shuuji Tsushima Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20thcentury Japan. A number of his most popular works such as The Setting Sun Shay and No Longer Human Ningen Shikkaku are considered modernday classics in Japan. With a semiautobiographical style and transparency into his personal life Dazais stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His influences include Rynosuke Akutagawa Murasaki Shikibu and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. While Dazai continues to be widely celebrated in Japan he remains relatively unknown elsewhere with only a handful of his works available in English. His last book No Longer Human is his most popular work outside of Japan. On June 13 1948 Dazai and his mistress Tomie drowned themselves in the rainswollen Tamagawa Canal near his house. Their bodies were not discovered until six days later on June 19 which would have been his 39th birthday. His grave is at the temple of Zenrinji in Mitaka Tokyo.