The Final Years (A Farewell to the World in Fifteen Stories)

"Osamu Dazai wrote, better than almost anyone, about the thin line between isolation and belonging." —The Atlantic

The acclaimed Japanese writer Osamu Dazai, often described as the "bad boy" of Japanese literature, is enjoying a cultural moment. Known today in the West primarily as a novelist, Dazai first made his name in Japan through shocking short stories that experimented with radically unconventional styles and deeply personal subject matter, often autobiographical and drawn from his own struggles with suicide, addiction and depression.

The Final Years (Bannen in Japanese) was Dazai's first book, published in 1936 and later described by him as a kind of "suicide note" to the world, though more than a decade would pass before his death in 1948. The stories draw on his personal struggles—fraught family relationships, sordid love affairs, infidelities, and his many addictions—with great humor and empathy. These enduring concerns continue to resonate with contemporary readers.

This collection of fifteen stories includes many of Dazai's most famous works, several appearing in English here for the first time:

• Recollections: A semi-autobiographical piece in which the narrator recalls incidents from his childhood, including struggles to please a domineering father, self-disgust at his own appearance, and unrequited love for a household maid that his brother is also in love with.
• The Flowers of Buffoonery: A young man enters a suicide pact with his lover, but survives while she dies; a direct reflection of events that Dazai himself experienced..
• Undine: A fable about a girl living alone with her father, a poor charcoal gatherer. After an argument, she runs away and throws herself into a waterfall, where she is transformed into a carp and drawn deeper into the waters below.
• The Pillow Book of a Creep: The intimate musings of a depressed writer struggling with debt and an unhappy marriage.

The introduction by translators James Garza and Irena Hayter explores the autobiographical roots of Dazai's writings, his repeated suicide attempts, and the ways in which these stories remain strikingly modern in their psychological insight.