Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai

Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai

Japanese fiction

Original title – 女生徒 Joseito

Translator – Alison Markin Powell

Source – Personal copy

I take another stop on the January in Japan tour it isn’t a long one I think I may get another book but here we have a modern classic. This book came out just at the start of world war two it is from one of the highest regarded writers of his generation. The eighth son of wealthy landowner Shūji Tsushima or as he later was known Osamu Dazai attend school and briefly university. This time in his life was hard his idol the writer Akutagawa died later on he tried to take his own life in a double suicide the woman he did it with died. He was then arrested for being in the communist party and went on the run his family got the charges dropped on the promise he would calm down he did and then started his writing career. He Wrote from 1933 till his death in 1948. This is from early on in his career and is considered a masterpiece for its use of language.

Mother, who was very busy arranging someone’s marriage, had gone out early this morning. Ever since I was little, Mother had devouted herself to other people, so I was used to it by now, but was really amazing how she was constantly in motion. She impressed me. Father had done nothing but study, so it fell to mother to take up his opart. Father was far removedfrom things like social interaction, ut mother really knew how to surround herself with lovely people, The two of them seemed an unlikely pairing, but there had been a mutual respect between them. People must have often saidabout them what a handsome and untroubled couple, without any unattractive qualities. Oh I ‘m so cheeky

THe mother tries to fill the fathers void but there is a gaping hole in the schoolgirls world it is obvious

Well, that was a long intro for a book that is barely 100 pages long and it is a small size book I read it in an evening. The beauty of this book is a simple fact it is a book where nothing really happens but you just get caught up in the day of our narrator the unnamed schoolgirl of the book’s title. It is told in a stream of conciseness style that starts with her having breakfast talking about her love of the book adverts in the paper. Going to school with the new umbrella that her mother has brought her when she heads to school there is a sense of her having a sort of self-loathing of others from ugly people she sees on the train to school to a dog as the day goes on we are let into the fact her father is dead and this means they are a single-parent family. But she also seems to grip on to her love of books at one point saying she didn’t know what she would do without them. This is a modern girl but she is caught in a traditional world and dealing with grief.

I was reminded of the lady next to ne on the train this morning with the heavy makeup. Ugh so vile. Women are disgusting. Being female, I am all too familar with the impurity found in women, it sets my teeth on edge with repulsion. It’s as if that unbearable raw stench that clings to you after playing with goldfish has spread all over your body, and you wash and wash but you can’t get rid of it day after day, it’s like this , until you realize that she-odur has begun to emante from your body as well. I wish I could die like thism as a girl

Telling lines about not wanting to grow into a woman in what at the time was a very male society in Japan!!

This is a gem of a book the narrator had hardly aged I felt although some of the things like reading a paper may now be via a phone and maybe she’d be reading Manga instead of books. but her view of the world one of a modern teen. The book has a feel of a modern book than its time. It is an insight into the drifting minds of a teen from her avoid the death of her father in the way she daydreams. This is a simple version of the modern teen world of worry she shows the conflict between trying to be herself and what they expected and grief. This is written by a man that tried to take his own life and was in a suicide pact with a young woman that could have easily been our narrator the feeling is this was someone that the writer knew or maybe just using a female voice to convey his own life his father was absent during his growing up and was brought up mainly by the female members of his extended family when younger. I have another collection of short stories by him I will be reading at some point. Have you ever read any books by Osamu Dazai ?