osamu dazai was the pen-name of Tsushima Shuji, a Japanese novelist who became at the end of World War II the literary voice and literary hero of his generation. Dazai's life ended in double-suicide with his married lover. In many books Dazai used biographical material from his own family background, and made his self-destructive life the subject of his books. Dazai rejected the idealistic circle of authors with aristocratic pretensions. For a time he joined the communist movement. His opposition to the prevailing social and literary trends was shared by fellow members of 'Burai-ha' (Decadents).

Dazai Osamu was born in Kanagi, in northern Honshu, as the tenth of eleven children. His father was a wealthy landowner and politician. Dazai studied French literature at the University of Tokyo. There he came into contact with Marxism, started to write and gradually dropped his studies. Dazai first attracted attention in 1933 when his short stories began to appear in magazines. Between the years 1930 and 1937 he made three suicide attempts, and dealt the subject many of his short stories, among them 'Doke no hana' (1936) and 'Tokyo hyakkei' (1941). 'A Clown among Clowns' describes Dazai trying to describe his first suicide attempt.

In 1939 Dazai married Ishihara Michiko, which started a new period in his life. After the war Dazai became friends with the writer Masuji Ibuse (see mass of dead insects [phrases]). The tone of his postwar works was dark, but touched the lost generation of youth with his troubled life, suicidal thoughts, and spirit of rebelliousness. Dazai wrote in a simple and colloquial style. His best stories were based on his own experiences and were classified in the category known as shishosetsu, or autobiographical/confessional fiction. He also wrote children's stories and historical narratives. In his masterpieces, such as SHAYO (1947, The Setting Sun), addressing many social, human and philosophical issues. NINGEN SHIKKAKU (1948, No Longer Human) was an attack on the traditions of Japan, capturing the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity.

After the war, Dazai's alienation continued. He made observations of those who had supported the militaristic regime before and in the new political situation embraced democracy. On June 13, in 1948, Dazai drowned himself in Tokyo and left behind unfinished novel 'GOODBYE'. There is a theory that the lady who drowned with him pushed him in. Dazai's daughter Yukio Tsushima also became a writer and published her first short story in 1969.