Osamu Dazai's "The Flowers of Buffoonery"

ISBN: 978-0-8112-3454-2 (New Directions)

It sounds juvenile, but when I first read Osamu Dazai’s short stories a few decades ago, I thought, “hey, I can do this.” I'm not actually writing one of his stories, but using my experiences and putting it on a page or paper, and somehow (or hopefully) make it amusing at the very least. Dazai, it seems, was not precisely the best fellow in the bunch. Which, with that addition, even made him more of a role model for me. Due to his addiction to pills, drinking, and the habit of suicide attempts, which he did succeed in that act in 1947, I did not want to follow his life to the “T.” What I did do was study how he used his narrative and how that becomes a work of fiction. I have not out-mastered the Master, but I feel I wouldn’t be writing if it wasn’t for the comic yet horrific touch of Osamu Dazai.

It seems in America, Dazai is having a resurgence due to a popular manga based on his masterpiece No Longer Human, and that I’m thankful for this because we have a new piece of Dazai published by the great press, New Directions, and translated by the talented Sam Bett, The Flowers of Buffoonery—a pre-sequel (not originally by design) of No Longer Human’s main character Yozo Oba. Yozo, in this novella, is a young man who survives a suicide attempt, but the woman he jumped into the waters with dies. Yozo comes from a prominent family, and the girl who died worked in a bar, which raises the issue of the class system and how financial wealth separates the masses. Our anti-hero is placed in a seaside (one can’t escape from the water) sanitarium and waits to hear of his fate as various friends rally around him, his older brother, and the Police.

All the above is based on Dazai’s life, and it’s fascinating to see how he handles such tragedy yet puts a humorous spin on it. The issue of separating the artist from the art comes to mind, but also how human nature and the ability to articulate such manners interests me the most. Countless other writers write about their bad habits and life and somehow make it glamorous, or the road to decadence will make us all wiser (Burroughs?). Still, Dazai writes with great charm, which makes him almost like a Patricia Highsmith character. The Flowers of Buffoonery is a powerful little book because it brings up a lot of issues to the surface, and Dazai is struggling with the undercurrents of such a life and work.

This book and his two major novels, No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, are an excellent gateway to his works, but whatever you do, one must read his short fiction. His observations are magnificent, and anyone who can piss off Yukio Mishima (another fave of mine) is OK with me. As quoted by Mishima at the back of the book, “What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes those things precisely in myself that I most want to hide." And therefore, I love Osamu Dazai. And he has the best opening line for a book ever: Welcome to sadness. Population one.