A Shameful Life by Osamu Dazai

Author:Osamu Dazai
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press

(Society won’t tolerate it.)

(It’s not society. It’s you who won’t tolerate it, right?)

(If you go on doing things like that, society won’t go easy on you.)

(It’s not society, though, is it? It’s you.)

(Society will bury you alive.)

(It’s not society. It’s you who will bury me, isn’t it?)

Know thyself. Know thy terrifying, strange, wily, villainous, crone-like self!

Such thoughts flitted across my mind, but, in the end, I merely wiped the sweat from my brow with my handkerchief and, laughing, said, “You’ve got me in a cold sweat!”

Ever since this encounter I’ve maintained this quasi-philosophical belief (is not society nothing more than the individual?).

And, having arrived at the realization that society is nothing more than the individual, it became much easier for me to act in accord with my own wishes. Or, in Shizuko’s words, I became a little more selfish and less timid. Or, in Horiki’s words, I grew stingy. Or, in Shigeko’s words, I didn’t play with her as much.

I passed each day in grim silence, looking after Shigeko, filling orders for cartoons (I occasionally received orders from other publishers too but they were all third-rate magazines, even cruder than Shizuko’s). I drew “The Adventures of Kinta and Ota” or “The Happy-Go-Lucky Priest”—a brazen copy of “The Happy-Go-Lucky Dad”—or other, silly cartoons such as “Hasty Pin-chan,” which even I didn’t understand. Deep in my melancholy I drew sluggishly (I draw very slowly), my only thought being to earn money for drinking. The moment Shizuko got back from work I rushed out the door, as though it were the changing of shifts, and headed straight for the cheap standing bars near Kōenji Station where I drank cheap, strong liquor until I began to feel a bit more cheerful. Then, going home,

“You know . . . The more I look at you the stranger you look. Did you know your face was the inspiration for the Happy-Go-Lucky Priest? I got the idea watching you sleep.”

“Well, you look really old when you sleep. Like you’re in your forties.”

“It’s your fault. You suck the life right out of me. Like the rushing of waters, so go lives of men.” I sang, “Why do you fret so? As the willow on the banks of the streeeam.”

“Stop making such a racket and go to bed. Or would you like something to eat?” She was always so calm, as though she wasn’t paying any attention to me at all.

“I’ll have a drink if we have anything. Like the rushing of water, so go lives of men. Like the rushing of men . . . no, water, so goes the life of water.”

Shizuko undressed me as I sang and, head pressed to Shizuko’s breast, I fell asleep. Such was my routine.

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