Existential Motives in the Works of the Japanese Writer Dazai Osamu

A characteristic feature of the existential philosophy is its closeness to fiction the ideas of existentialism were most vividly embodied in the works of several European and American writers and turned out to be consonant with the worldview of several Japanese prose writers, such as Dazai Osamu. His work is still one of the widely popular among Japanese readers. In Dazai’s last completed work, the story “Confession of the Interior Man” existential motives are clearly felt. The spiritual disintegration of the personality thrown into the cruel and senseless world of modern postindustrial society, is described here in detail. The autobiographical hero of “Confession” (the writer himself became his prototype) makes desperate attempts to find a way of existence that would correspond to this in human world. However, despite all efforts, it turns out to be torn out of it. Dazai’s hero, who rejects society and puts the asocial individual at the forefront, is capable in several cases of a fairy sober assessment of the Japanese social structure. But while criticizing society as such, he criticizes specific social relations with their alienation, atomization of citizens and brutal competition. The gifted and sensitive artist Dazai Osamu was able to discern the process of disintegration of the traditional Japanese identity in the changing conditions of life in 20th century Japan. The Japanese prose writer endowed the character of his story with the freedom of existential choice of “Self”, but he is forced to choose not between the “genuine Self” and the “inauthentic Self”, but to look only for some form of the “inauthentic Self”. This is ersatz-freedom of an existential individual a social outcast-egoist, following his own desires.