Dazai Osamu, whose real name was Tsushima Shūji, was born in the town of Kanagi in Aomori Prefecture, where his father was an important landowner. Dazai was one of eleven children in a large extended family; his mother's weak constitution caused him to be placed in the care of an aunt whom Dazai for a long time assumed was his mother. He had excellent grades in primary school and junior high school, when he began to dream of becoming a writer. His high school years seem to have been less happy, but he and some friends put out a little magazine for which he regularly wrote stories. Dazai left for Tokyo in 1930 to study in the French Literature department at the University of Tokyo. He also took part in some relatively innocuous illegal activities on behalf of the Communist Party.

Also in 1930, Dazai made the first of several attempts at a lovers' suicide (he had already made a solitary suicide attempt in 1929). In November of that year, he and a Ginza bar hostess tried to drown themselves in the ocean at Kamakura, but while the woman died Dazai was rescued by a fishing boat, leaving Dazai with a strong sense of guilt. In 1935, after being forced to leave Tokyo University and failing a test for employment, Dazai tried to hang himself, but this attempt also proved unsuccessful. In 1937, after Dazai's discovery that his wife had had previous lovers, they both took sleeping medicine, but neither one died. Given this personal turmoil, it is small wonder that suicide became a major motif in Dazai's novels. Stories written during this period include Dōke no hana (The Flowers of Buffoonery, 1935), Gyakkō (Against the Current, 1935), Kyōgen no kami (The God of Farce, 1936), and those published in his 1936 collection Bannen (Declining Years).

In 1939, Dazai married Ishihara Michiko, to whom he was introduced by his mentor Ibuse Masuji, and entered a new period in his life. During this time, he freed himself from his self-appointed task of serving as a model of vice and achieved a harmony of sorts between his career as a writer and his real life. His collection Fugaku hyakkei (The Hundred Views of Fuji, 1939) was one major outcome. Wartime works included Udaijin Sanetomo (Minister of the Right Sanetomo, 1943), Tsugaru (1944), Pandora no hako (Pandora's Box, 1945-46), and the delightful Otogizōshi (Fairy Tales, 1945).

After the war, Dazai wrote numerous stories set in the postwar milieu. Chief among these were Bion no tsuma (Villon's Wife, 1947), Shayō (The Setting Sun, 1947), and Dazai's last novel, Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human, 1948). The postwar period was a dark time for Dazai, the central theme of his works seeming to become the need to pass judgment on the ugly side of the Japanese character and his own egoism. This led him back to suicidal thoughts, and on June 13, 1948, he finally succeeded in drowning himself in the Tamagawa Canal with yet another young woman, leaving behind an unfinished novel titled (in English) Goodbye. Dazai's career as a professional novelist thus spanned only the years from 1933 to 1948. Even so, his works continue to be enormously popular with young readers in particular, perhaps because of Dazai's overriding concern with the search for meaning in life and the nature of truth in human affairs.

• Blue Bamboo: Tales of Fantasy and Romance. Trans. Ralph F. McCarthy. 1993. New York: Kodansha America, 2001.
• Crackling Mountain and Other Stories. Trans. James O'Brien. Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1989.
• Dazai Osamu: Selected Stories and Sketches. Trans. James A. O'Brian. 1983. Ithaca: China-Japan Program, Cornell University, 1986.
• The Declining Sun. Trans. Takahide Kikuchi. Tokyo: Nire Shobo, 1950.
• No Longer Human. Trans. Donald Keene. London: Peter Owen, 1957. New York: New Directions, 1958. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1958. London: Four Square Press, 1961. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.
• Return to Tsugaru. Trans. James Westerhoven. 1985. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994.
• Run, Melos! and Other Stories. Trans. Ralph F. McCarthy. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1988. Tokyo: Kodansha English Library, 1988.
• Self-Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic. Trans. Ralph F. McCarthy. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1991.
• The Setting Sun. Trans. Donald Keene. Norfork: Laughlin, 1956. New York: New Directions, 1956. London: Peter Owen, 1958. London: Four Square Press, 1961. Calcutta: Rupa, 1961. Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1968. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1981.

• Cohn, Joel R. Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 41. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Lyons, Phyllis I. The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study with Translations. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985.
• O'Brian, James A. Dazai Osamu. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1975.
• O'Brian, James A., ed. Akutagawa and Dazai: Instances of Literary Adaptation. Cornell University Press, 1983.
• Tsuruta, Kin'ya and Thomas E. Swann, eds. Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1976.
• Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976.
• Wolfe, Alan. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Osamu Dazai's Temple "Unshoji": A site sponsored by the Unshōji temple in Kanagi, Aomori. Some interesting tidbits of information (along with photographs), but marred by poor (if earnest) English, extremely annoying Tripod pop-up windows, and oddly inappropriate Mozart MIDI background music.