The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Pronunciation of Names + Translator's Introduction

Japanese in transcription is pronounced with the consonants as in English and the vowels as in Italian.Thus, the name Naoji is pronounced nah-oh-jee. There is no marked stress accent, and one is safe ingiving equal weight to all syllables. 

In this novel most of the characters (such as Naoji, Kazuko, and Osaki) are referred to by theirpersonal names only. Where both personal and family names are given, the family name comes first. Thus,in the name Uehara Jiro, Uehara is the family name and Jiro the personal name.

The foreign visitor to Japan today is apt to be at once delighted and dismayed by what he observes.The delight will probably stem from what is old in the country — the temples set in their clean-sweptgrounds and gardens, the brilliant spectacle of the theatres, the cordiality and charm of one's reception inany Japanese home. Most travelers indeed are so captivated by this aspect of Japan as to becomeexcessively critical of what the past sixty or seventy years have brought from the West. They bewail thefact that many Japanese women have given up their beautiful kimonos in favor of mass-produced dresses,that the Japanese house is all too frequently marred by a "foreign-style" room with lumpish furnitureobscurely derived from European prototypes, and that the streets are filled with the din of clanging tramsand squawking loud-speakers. Those who complain in these terms are quite justified in their aestheticindignation, although not in the arrogant impatience with which it is too often accompanied.

Japan today, alone of the nations of Asia, is closely connected to the West, not only in its industrial andpolitical developments, but in its active cultural life. The bookshops are full of European (especiallyFrench) works of literature in translation, including all the latest and most difficult ones. There arenumerous coffee-shops where students gather to listen to records of Beethoven and Brahms, if not ofDebussy and Stravinsky. Even the banks send out calendars all over the country with excellentreproductions of Renoir, Van Gogh, or Matisse. It may be debated how deeply this interest in modernWestern literature and art penetrates, whether the farmer in his village has any better understanding ofGoethe or Manet than his grandfather did. The fact remains that almost everywhere in Japan education hasbrought with it a profound respect for Western culture, and sometimes a genuine love.

 This feeling has often been indiscriminate and led to a defacement of the Japanese landscape which wemay find all but unpardonable, but it has not been only adulation for the West which has led to many of thechanges so deplored by the foreign visitor. The Japanese woman who abandons the traditional kimono infavor of a dress is not merely imitating some Hollywood star; she is liberating herself from the nuisanceof the elaborate series of robes and underrobes, unbearably hot in summer and impractical at any time ofthe year in the offices and busses she must cope with today. Even if she would like nothing better than towear a kimono every day, the cost of the expensive silks makes the traditional costume a luxury whichfew can afford unless they have inherited them.

The face of Japan is changing every day as taste, convenience, and economic necessity dictate.Underneath the surface, at an undeniably slower pace, the moral and spiritual life of the country isundergoing similar change. The family system is breaking up, especially in the larger cities, and thetraditional values associated with the family are losing ground. Divorce, for example, is now accepted (atleast in Tokyo) as the alternative a woman has to an odious marriage, although until very recently she wasexpected to accept the flagrant infidelity of her husband and any other indignity he might choose to inflicton her in the interest of preserving the family. It will take years for such new ideas to spread throughoutthe country, but even today few of the younger people share their parents' belief in the traditional views.

As far as religion goes, one would have to look very hard to find in Japan even as much fervor asexists in this country, let alone India. Although most Japanese are nominally Buddhists and are buried, forform's sake, in accordance with Buddhist ritual, real interest in the religion is comparatively unusual. If,for example, the Prime Minister of Japan were to adopt the practice of important political figures in theUnited States and England (and elsewhere, of course) of invoking the blessings of the Deity — any deity— on the heads of the Japanese people, he would be greeted with astonishment and possibly derision. Itmay seem strange that Japan, which has borrowed so much from the West, has never taken more toChristianity. There has in fact been a decline of interest in Christianity since its high point at the turn of thecentury when many of the intellectual leaders were devout believers in a "churchless" Protestantism. Thisform of Christianity has not proved satisfying to most of their descendants who, even if they remember theBible lessons of their childhood, find in them no adequate solution to their present problems.