The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

  Why does he say “same.” Can’t he say “superior”? The vengeance of the slave mentality!

  The statement is obscene and loathsome. I believe that all of the so-called “anxiety of the age”—men frightened by one another, every known principle violated, effort mocked, happiness denied, beauty defiled, honor dragged down—originates in this one incredible expression.

  I must admit, although I was entirely convinced of the hideousness of the expression, that it intimidated me. I trembled with fear, felt shy and embarrassed, whatever I attempted to do, throbbed ceaselessly with anxiety, and was powerless to act. I needed more than ever the momentary peace that the vertigo of drink and drugs could afford. Then everything went astray.

  I must be weak. There must be a serious deficiency somewhere. I can just hear the old lout saying with a snicker, “What’s all this rationalizing for? Anyone can see that he’s a playboy from way back, a lazy, lecherous, selfish child of pleasure.” Up to now when people have spoken of me that way I have always nodded vaguely in embarrassment, but now that I am on the point of death, I would like to say a word by way of protest.

  Kazuko.

  Please believe me.

  I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow—being an aristocrat.

  I wonder if we are to blame, after all. Is it our fault that we were born aristocrats? Merely because we were born in such a family, we are condemned to spend our whole lives in humiliation, apologies, and abasement, like so many Jews.

  I should have died sooner. But there was one thing: Mama’s love. When I thought of that I couldn’t die. It’s true, as I have said, that just as man has the right to live as he chooses, he has the right to die when he pleases, and yet as long as my mother remained alive, I felt that the right to death would have to be left in abeyance, for to exercise it would have meant killing her too.

  Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm. No, Kazuko, I know just how much sadness my death will cause you. Undoubtedly you will weep when you learn the news—apart, of course, from such ornamental sentimentality as you may indulge in—but if you will please try to think of my joy at being liberated completely from the suffering of living and this hateful life itself, I believe that your sorrow will gradually dissolve.

  Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.

  Kazuko.

  I am better off dead. I haven’t the capacity to stay alive. I haven’t the strength to quarrel with people over money. I can’t even touch people for a hand-out. Even when I went drinking with Mr. Uehara, I always paid my share of the bill. He hated me for it and called it the cheap pride of the aristocracy, but it was not out of pride that I paid. I was too frightened to be able to drink or to hold a woman in my arms with money that had come from his work. I used to pass it off by saying that I acted out of respect for Mr. Uehara’s writings, but that was a lie. I don’t really understand myself why I did it. It was just that being paid for by other people was somehow disturbing. It was in particular intolerably painful and repugnant to be entertained with money gained by another person’s own efforts.

  And when I was reduced to taking money and belongings from my own house, causing Mama and you to suffer, it didn’t bring me the slightest pleasure. The publishing business I planned was just a front to conceal my embarrassment—I was not at all in earnest. For all of my stupidity I was at least aware that someone who could not even stand being bought a drink would be utterly incapable of making money, and there was no use in being earnest.

  Kazuko.

  We have become impoverished. While I was alive and still had the means, I always thought of paying for others, but now we can only survive by being paid for by others.

  Kazuko.

  Why must I go on living after what has happened? It’s useless. I am going to die. I have a poison that kills without pain. I got it when I was a soldier and have kept it ever since.

  Kazuko, you are beautiful (I have always been proud of my beautiful mother and sister) and you are intelligent. I haven’t any worries about you. I lack even the qualifications to worry. I can only blush—like a robber who sympathizes with his victim! I feel sure that you will marry, have children, and manage to survive through your husband.

  Kazuko.

  I have a secret.

  I have concealed it for a long, long time. Even when I was on the battlefield, I brooded over it and dreamed of her. I can’t tell you how many times I awoke only to find I had wept in my sleep.

  I shall never be able to reveal her name to anyone, but I thought that I would at least tell you, my sister, everything about her, since I am now on the point of death. I discover, however, that I am still so terribly afraid that I dare not speak her name.

  And yet I feel that if I die keeping the secret absolute and leave the world with it locked within my breast undisclosed, when my body is cremated the insides of my breast will remain dank-smelling and unburned. This thought so disquiets me that I must tell you, and only you, about it—indirectly, imprecisely, as if I were relating some odd bit of fiction. And even if I call it fiction you will, I am sure, recognize immediately of whom I write. It is less fiction than a kind of thin disguise achieved by the use of false names.

  Do you know, I wonder?

  I imagine that you do know about her, although you probably have never met. She is a little older than you. Her eyes are the true Japanese shape, like an almond, and she always wears her hair (which has never been subjected to a permanent) in a very conservative Japanese style, tightly pulled back from her face. Her clothes are shabby but spotless and worn with a real distinction. She is the wife of a certain middle-aged painter who won sudden fame after the war by producing a rapid succession of paintings in a new idiom. The painter is very wild and dissipated, but his wife always goes about with a gentle smile on her face, pretending to be undisturbed by his behavior.

  I stood up. “I must be going now.”

  She also rose and walked, with no suggestion of reserve, to my side. “Why?” she asked, looking at my face. Her voice had quite its ordinary timbre. She held her head a little to the side, as if really in doubt, and looked me straight in the eyes. In her eyes there was neither malice nor pretence. Normally, if my eyes had met hers, I would have averted them in confusion, but that one time I felt not the least particle of shyness. For sixty seconds or more, our faces about a foot apart, I stared into her eyes, feeling terribly happy. I finally said with a smile, “But—”

  “He’ll be back soon,” she said, her face grave.

  It suddenly occurred to me that what people call “honesty” might well refer to just such an expression. I wondered if what the word originally meant was not something lovable like that expression, rather than the stern virtue smelling of textbooks of morality.

  “I’ll come again.”

  “Do.”

  Our whole conversation from beginning to end was completely unimportant. One summer afternoon I had called at the painter’s apartment. He was out, but expected back at any moment. His wife suggested that I wait, and for half an hour I had read magazines. When there were still no signs of his returning, I got up to take my leave. That was all there was to it, but I fell painfully in love with her eyes as they were that day.

  You might even describe them as “noble.” I can only say with certainty that none of the aristocrats among whom we lived—leaving Mama aside—was capable of that unguarded expression of “honesty.”

  Then it happened one winter evening that I was struck by her profile. I had been drinking since morning with the painter in his apartment, and we had roared with laughter as we
abused the so-called “Japanese men of culture.” The artist fell asleep and soon was loudly snoring. I was also dozing off when a blanket was gently thrown over me. I opened my eyes a crack and saw her sitting quietly with her daughter in her arms next to the apartment window, against the clear blue sky of a Tokyo winter’s evening. Her regular profile, its outlines clear-cut with the brilliance of a Renaissance portrait, floated against the background of the pale blue of the distant sky. There was nothing of coquetry or desire in the kindness which had impelled her to throw the blanket over me. Might not the word “humanity” be revived to use of such a moment? She had acted almost without consciousness of what she did, as a natural gesture of sympathy for another person, and now she was staring at the distant sky, in an atmosphere of stillness exactly like a painting.

  I shut my eyes. I felt sweep over me a wave of love and longing. Tears forced their way through my eyelids, and I pulled the blanket over my head.

  Kazuko.

  At first I used to visit the painter’s house because I was intoxicated by the unique idiom of his works and the fanatical passion hidden in them, but as I grew more intimate, his lack of culture, his irresponsibility, and his dirtiness disillusioned me. I was drawn in inverse proportion to the beauty of feeling of his wife. No, it was rather that I was in love with someone of true affections. I came to visit the painter’s house solely in the hope of getting a glimpse of his wife.

  I am convinced that if anything at all of artistic nobility is discoverable in the painter’s works, it is most probably a reflection of his wife’s gentle spirit.

  The painter—I will now come out with exactly what I feel—is nothing but a clever businessman with a great capacity for drink and debauchery. When he needs money for his pleasures, he daubs something together which he sells at a high price by posing as a great artist and by taking advantage of the current fads. His only assets are the shamelessness of the country boor, a stupid confidence, and a sharp talent for business.

  He probably has no comprehension whatsoever of the paintings of other artists, foreign or Japanese, and I doubt whether he even understands what his own pictures are all about. What it amounts to is that when driven by financial pressure he frantically splashes paint onto a canvas.

  Incredibly enough, he apparently has no doubts, shame, or fears about the rubbish he produces. In fact, he is quite puffed up about it. And, given that he is the kind of man who does not understand what he himself has painted, one cannot expect him to appreciate other people’s work. Far from it—all he does is carp and rail.

  In other words, although he is fond of ranting on about the agonies he suffers in his life of decadence, in point of fact he is just a stupid country bumpkin who realized his dreams by coming to the big city and scoring a success on a scale quite unimagined even to himself. This so inflated his ego that now he spends his time in one round of pleasure after another.

  Once I said to him, “It makes me feel so embarrassed and afraid if, when all my friends are out amusing themselves, I study by myself, that I can’t do a thing. That’s why, even when I don’t feel the least like going out, I join the crowd.”

  The middle-aged artist answered, “What! That’s what they mean, I suppose, by an aristocratic disposition. It turns my stomach. When I see some people having a good time, I think what I’m missing if I don’t do the same, and I really throw myself into it.”

  His answer was so pat that it made me despise him from the heart. No suffering lies behind his dissipation. On the contrary, he takes pride in his stupid pleasures. A genuine idiot-hedonist.

  I could relate any number of other unpleasant things about this artist, but after all he doesn’t concern you. Besides, now that I am about to die, I remember also the long acquaintanceship we have had, and I feel so nostalgic for him that my impulse is to go out drinking with him once more. I don’t bear him any hatred. He has many endearing qualities, and I shall say no more of him.

  I only would like you to know how excruciating it was for me to spend my time in fruitless yearning for his wife. That is all. But now that you know, there is absolutely no necessity for you to play the busybody by informing anyone of this in the hopes of “winning recognition” of the love your brother bore when he was alive, or any such thing. It is quite sufficient if just you know it and are kind enough to murmur to yourself, “Was that what happened?” And, to voice one more hope, I should be very happy if this shameful confession of mine made at least you, if no one else, understand better the sufferings I have gone through.

  Once I dreamed I held hands with his wife, and I knew at once that she had loved me from long before. Even after I waked from my dreams, the warmth of her fingers remained in the palm of my hand. I told myself that I would have to resign myself to that much and nothing more. It was not that I was intimidated by the morality of the thing, but that half-mad, no, virtual maniac of an artist terrified me. As part of my resolve to give her up, I attempted to direct the flames in my breast toward another object and recklessly threw myself into wild orgies with all sorts of women, whichever one happened to be available, so outrageously in fact that even the artist looked disapprovingly at me one night. I wanted somehow to free myself from his wife’s enchantment, to forget it, to have everything over and done with. But it was no use. I am, it would seem, a man who can only love one woman. I can state it quite positively—I have never once felt any of my women friends was beautiful or lovable except her.

  Kazuko.

  I would like once before I die to write her name.

  Suga.

  That is her name.

  Yesterday I brought a dancer here (a woman of ingrained stupidity) for whom I have not the least affection. I never dreamed when I arrived that I would be dying this morning, although I had as a matter of fact had a premonition that it would certainly not be long before I was dead. The reason why I brought the girl here this morning was that she had begged me to take her on a trip somewhere, and I was so exhausted by my dissipation in Tokyo that I thought it might not be a bad idea to rest here for a couple of days with that stupid woman. I knew it would be rather awkward for you, but the two of us came anyway. When you left for your friend’s place in Tokyo, the thought flashed into my head “If I am going to kill myself, now is the time.”

  I always used to think that I would like to die in my room in the house in Nishikata Street. Somehow I was repelled by the thought of dying in some public place and having my corpse handled by the rabble. But the house in Nishikata Street passed into other people’s hands, and I realized that now I had no choice but to die in this house in the country. Even so, when I told myself that you would be the one to find my body and imagined how alarmed this would make you, I felt so hesitant about killing myself that I could not possibly have gone through with it.

  And now this chance. You are not here, and instead an extremely dull-witted dancer will be the one to discover my suicide.

  Last night we drank together and I put her to bed in the foreign-style room on the second floor. I laid out bedding for myself in the room downstairs where Mama died. Then I began to write this wretched memoir.

  Kazuko.

  I have no room for hope. Good-bye.

  In the last analysis my death is a natural one—man cannot live exclusively for principles. I have one request to make of you, which embarrasses me very much. You remember the hemp kimono of Mother’s which you altered so that I could wear it next summer? Please put it in my coffin. I wanted to wear it.

  The night has dawned. I have made you suffer a long time.

  Good-bye.

  My drunkenness from last night has entirely worn off. I shall die sober.

  Once more, good-bye.

  Kazuko.

  I am, after all, an aristocrat.

  CHAPTER EIGHT / VICTIMS

  Nightmares.

  Everyone is leaving me.

  I took care of everything after Naoji’s death. For a month I lived alone in the house in the country.

  Th
en I wrote Mr. Uehara what was probably to be my last letter, with a feeling of futility.

  It seems that you too have abandoned me. No, it seems rather as though you are gradually forgetting me.

  But I am happy. I have become pregnant, as I had hoped. I feel as if I had now lost everything. Nevertheless, the little being within me has become the source of my solitary smiles.

  I cannot possibly think of it in terms of a “hideous mistake” or anything of the sort. Recently I have come to understand why such things as war, peace, unions, trade, politics exist in the world. I don’t suppose you know. That’s why you will always be unhappy. I’ll tell you why—it is so that women will give birth to healthy babies.

  From the first I never set much stock by your character or your sense of responsibility. The only thing in my mind was to succeed in the adventure of my wholehearted love. Now that my desire has been fulfilled, there is in my heart the stillness of a marsh in a forest.

  I think I have won.

  Even if Mary gives birth to a child who is not her husband’s, if she has a shining pride, they become a holy mother and child.

  I disregarded the old morality with a clear conscience, and I will have as a result the satisfaction of a good baby.

  I presume that since last we met you have been continuing your life of decadence or whatever it is called, drinking with the ladies and gentlemen to the tune of “Guillotine, guillotine.” I have no intention of suggesting that you give that life up. It will, after all, most likely be the form your last struggle takes.

  I no longer have the desire to say, “Give up your drinking, take care of your health, lead a long life, carry through your splendid career,” or any of the other hypocritical injunctions. For all I know, you may earn the gratitude of later people more by recklessly pursuing your life of vice than by your “splendid career.”