Week 8: 人間失格

[NicoleRauch]

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人間失格 Home Thread

Week 8

Start Date: Aug 21th
Previous Part: Week 7

Reading:

Week	Start Date	Chapter / End Phrase	End Page	Kindle LOC	Kindle %	Page Count
Week 8	Aug 21th	第三の手記・一 End	116	1298	76%	13.5

Discussion Rules

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[miwuc]

Dazai is surpassing himself, there’s a sentence that’s a whole page.

Note a period in sight.

お弁当箱に食べ残しのごはん三粒、千万人が一日に三粒ずつ食べ残しても既にそれは、米何俵をむだに捨てた事になる、とか、或いは、一日に鼻紙一枚の節約を千万人が行うならば、どれだけのパルプが浮くか、などという「科学的統計」に、自分は、どれだけおびやかされ、ごはんを一粒でも食べ残す度毎に、また鼻をかむ度毎に、山ほどの米、山ほどのパルプを空費するような錯覚に悩み、自分がいま重大な罪を犯しているみたいな暗い気持になったものですが、しかし、それこそ「科学の嘘」「統計の嘘」「数学の嘘」で、三粒のごはんは集められるものでなく、掛算割算の応用問題としても、まことに原始的で低能なテーマで、電気のついてない暗いお便所の、あの穴に人は何度にいちど片脚を踏みはずして落下させるか、または、省線電車の出入口と、プラットホームの縁へりとのあの隙間に、乗客の何人中の何人が足を落とし込むか、そんなプロバビリティを計算するのと同じ程度にばからしく、それは如何いかにも有り得る事のようでもありながら、お便所の穴をまたぎそこねて怪我をしたという例は、少しも聞かないし、そんな仮説を「科学的事実」として教え込まれ、それを全く現実として受取り、恐怖していた昨日までの自分をいとおしく思い、笑いたく思ったくらいに、自分は、世の中というものの実体を少しずつ知って来たというわけなのでした。

[Aislin]

I put it in deepl as an experiment, and deepl divided it into 6 English sentences

Also there is a period! At the very end

[Aislin]

This week I’m going to divide my trivia into 2 parts, because I need to speed up a little, if I’m going to finish my book on time, with book club’s final week.
And it’s easier for me to manage this in smaller portions.

Trivia Week 8, Part 1
The Saga of Dazai Osamu by Phyllis I. Lyons
chapters: The Journey Outward , Establishing the Writer

Last week I said that after his first marriage was a failure, Dazai wanted to have his second marriage arranged.

pictures of both wives

details about the 2nd marriage

The person who found him wife was his mentor, Ibuse Masuji. First try was a failure:

Ibuse’s abortive attempt to arrange a match with the daughter of the proprietor of a bar he and Dazai frequented, after her parents had asked him if he knew of some suitable young man (“When we said anyone would do, we didn’t mean Dazai!”)

The next try was a success.

She was Ishihara Michiko, twenty-six, well-educated – and teaching at an upper school for girls in Kōfu, at the base of Misaka Pass. […] In July, he [Dazai] and Michiko moved to Mitaka, just outside Tokyo, where they were to live until his death, except for a period at the end of the war when they evacuated to Tsugaru as refugees from the air raids in Tokyo.

Because of the quotes within the quote I decided to make a photo of the next part as I thought it would be clearer to read:

Dazai’s life after this second marriage was surprisingly stable and to people then who weren’t spoilered by his biography it might even looked like he matured and calmed down for good. He was able to support himself financially by his writing, and very proud of this:

“Now I live by my writing. When I am on a trip, I write in a inn register, without equivocation, Occupation: Writer.”

He even was even recognized enough to be giving lectures at Niigata College or Tokyo Commercial University.
He also had kids, which is a scary thought for me. One of his daughters, who was born a year before his final suicide, even became a writer herself (Yūko Tsushima - Wikipedia).

It was during that time that he tried to reconcile with his family and Tsugaru area in general, which will be the topic of the Week 8, Part 2

[rodan]

The last few weeks I’ve been preoccupied with a sudden (but voluntary) house move, so I wasn’t catching up as quickly as I’d hoped, until I was in the “just waiting” phase at which point I overcompensated and read the whole book.
So hopefully it still counts as technically participating in my first book club even if still manage to at no point actually be on the right pace.

I remember one thing I wanted to mention from this part, if only to make sure nobody misses it - his silly pun pen name - 上司幾太「情死、生きた」. I assume of course the only way to properly translate that is to footnote it or just explain it in the parentheses, but I kind of wish I could get to read the foolhardy version where they swing for the fences and try to come up with an English pun to match.
The best I’ve managed to come up with so far is Sir. Vivor O. Pact or maybe Trystan Liv. Seems like risky territory lest it become to morbid though…

I’d also be curious to read over the poems again more closely. Those are a whole other translation problem…

[NicoleRauch]

Hey, welcome aboard!

@rodan

even if still manage to at no point actually be on the right pace.

Well, you were on track during that week’s assignment, so no worries at all

These book clubs are not trying to limit you but to support you. And if you decide to go a different route, that’s excellent! I think especially at the Advanced Club level the support aspect becomes weaker and weaker.
The only hard rule would be not to spoil the others regarding upcoming events, and a soft rule might be to join in the discussion (which you did already), so you look like a perfectly fine book club member to me

[miwuc]

@rodan

I’d also be curious to read over the poems again more closely. Those are a whole other translation problem…

Yeaaah I kind of skipped those I have to say.
But so he says they are from ルバイヤット which seems to refer to a collection of Persian poems. And I tried skimming through them to see if I could recognize some from the book. But according to a footnote in the French translation, they are not actually from the Rubaiyat but merely in the same style.

[icefang97]

These poems were hard to read and I also just skimmed over them. I looked carefully at the first one but lost energy afterward. Always had trouble with poem so…

This week spoiler

Apart from the existential crisis about leaving rice on your plate, it was nice. He just married again after being saved and promised to know drink anymore only to drink back the next day. What happens to the person he was living with? DId they just go their separate way or have I missed something.

I always feel like the main storyline is in shamble ha ha. Old books always seem to me like a collection of random events kinda linked together.

[Shigurette]

I just skimmed through the poems too cuz they looked a bit 面倒臭い, but when I have some extra time I might try looking at them a bit more carefully.

What happens to the person he was living with? DId they just go their separate way or have I missed something.

Our hero went out on a bender and then shows up at the apartment in bad shape, hears the voices of Shizuko and Shigeko playing and having fun without him, and then decides he doesn’t want to ruin their happiness. So he leaves them and finds somewhere else to stay.

[icefang97]

Was that last week or time week? I feel I missed it.

Thx for the help

[miwuc]

This week.

It's this part.

（幸福なんだ、この人たちは。自分という馬鹿者が、この二人のあいだにはいって、いまに二人を滅茶苦茶にするのだ。つつましい幸福。いい親子。幸福を、ああ、もし神様が、自分のような者の祈りでも聞いてくれるなら、いちどだけ、生涯にいちどだけでいい、祈る）
自分は、そこにうずくまって合掌したい気持でした。そっと、ドアを閉め、自分は、また銀座に行き、それっきり、そのアパートには帰りませんでした。

And yeah, he just got married to a girl who seems really sweet, but he does say that it’s going to end terribly

[icefang97]

Thx for the help. I don’t remember that at all. I will look it up. This is probably the only time that when I read a book I lose complet part of the story.

[Aislin]

Trivia Week 8, Part 2
The Saga of Dazai Osamu by Phyllis I. Lyons
chapter: Going Home

Some random stuff I thought was interesting

More important, art in position of command partakes more of authority than of art. This is the philosophic basis of Dazai’s instinctive reaction to writers like Shiga and Kawabata: by virtue of the very supremacy they are granted by the literary establishment or the world at large, they are inimical to the development of the individual artistic voice. Dazai saw himself as weak voice crying in the wilderness – but a voice that spoke artistic truth. Weakness was his subject (as he decided in “These Days”), and weakness was his means.

Mishima Yukio’s antipathy toward Dazai apparently stemmed from such conflict. He was taken one evening in 1947 to join Dazai, whom he admired, and a group of “disciples.” Mishima had hoped to talk literature, Dazai was clearly bent on drinking as much as he could in as short time as possible. Mishima challenged Dazai: “I dislike your writing.” Dazai reportedly disarmed the twenty-two-year-old man’s attack by murmuring, “But he must like me, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.” Mishima never forgot the incident.

In “Sakka no techou”, Dazai had written about his childhood unhappiness at receiving special favor because he was the “master’s” son. A circus had come to town, and all the children were chased away while trying to sneak in; he alone had been given a guided tour and shown all the animals. He was miserable, wanting only to be outside with the other children.

Tsugaru stuff

First reunion with Tsugaru was a party Dazai was invited to, a banquet sponsored by the Tokyo office of a Tsugaru newspaper, for natives of the northern region working in the arts:

(it wasn’t that bad for his career)

Then he traveled to the area itself, one of the first trips was because his mother was ill. And he realized he forgot his own dialect:

He had issues with feeling at ease at his family home:

Thinking it improper to just wander around the house as if he belonged there, he asks where the bathroom is. Eiji looks quizzically at him, and Mr. Kita laughs, “What a thing to ask – in your own home!” Here once again he comes up against what he sees as his sad fate: actions he undertakes after the most exquisite considerations and for the most scrupulous of reasons are misunderstood as weird by people who are unaware of his tortured logic.

But at the end, it works out somehow and even if it’s not perfect, his ties with his family are somehow mended. He also found a new way to define himself, through his homeland:

Dazai would never be an island, free of the pressures of authority. But in “Tsugaru” he develops a protection: a concept of the soul of Tsugaru as being one of resistance and wild emotional excess hidden within otherwise sober men. The people of Tsugaru love with an intensity beyond that of other Japanese; and that blood flows within him, primitive, uncivilized, misunderstood by outsiders, but genuine. Dazai feels that even Bunji, for all his elegant, withdrawn, surface coolness, partakes of this nature; he recognizes it in “My Older Brothers” and “Hometown,” and the recognition is what makes possible Dazai’s pity for his brother, trapped in a role that closed him to emotional expression.

Later he will travel to Tsugaru again, to write, welp, “Tsugaru” (津軽 (小説) - Wikipedia). And then he will be forced to live there for some time as a refugee because of wartime air raids.

The next bit is about “Tsugaru” ending, which is about reunion with his nursemaid, Take. I found it interesting because Take’s version of events was completely different from Dazai’s narration:

But at least they got a nice statue together, Dazai and Take?

(it’s located here: Tsugaru Statue Memorial Hall - Popular tourist spots - Dazai Museum )

[Aislin]

@rodan

his silly pun pen name - 上司幾太「情死、生きた」

ohhh I would totally miss it, because in Polish it’s just that - “a silly pun pen name” thank you!

[Belerith]

@icefang97

These poems were hard to read and I also just skimmed over them.

@Shigurette

I just skimmed through the poems too cuz they looked a bit 面倒臭い

I actually liked those poems! They felt like a welcome break from the ever present, somewhat depressing ruminations of our narrator. Especially the first one was nice and short, and a bit like a breath of fresh air.

Even with the poems (that 2nd one required a couple lookups) this week’s part felt a bit easier to read than the previous ones, too.

@Aislin

because in Polish it’s just that - “a silly pun pen name”

Aww. Very understandable since that would be a pin to get across in a different language, but still a shame. I wish they’d put at least the footnote.

[icefang97]

@Belerith

I actually liked those poems! They felt like a welcome break from the ever present, somewhat depressing ruminations of our narrator. Especially the first one was nice and short, and a bit like a breath of fresh air.

Ha ha, at the time it was pretty hard to follow everything and I looked up lots of words so I got lazy and just skim over them to make it easier. Poems are hard to read and harder to understand so I just gave up.