The Death Of Dazai Osamu

The Death of Dazai Osamu

Osamu Dazai had tried to take his own life on a number of occasions, two of these attempts assuming the form of shinjuu, the traditional Japanese suicide pact entered into by a pair of lovers. But when he disappeared with his mistress on a rainy night in mid-June of 1948, the signs that he was thoroughly prepared to die were unmistakable. Dazai and his companion, Tomie Yamazaki, left behind a series of farewell notes to friends and kin, the author conscientiously composing his last will and testament for his wife, Michiko. Photographs of Dazai and Tomie stood next to one another in Tomie’s lodging in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, along with the traditional water offering to the deceased. Also, nearby was a small pile of ashes, all that remained of the incense that the lovers had lit before departing. After the police began an intensive search for the couple’s whereabouts, they eventually found a suspicious-looking place along the Tamagawa Canal, midway between Dazai’s own home and Tomie’s residence. A strip of wet grass lay flattened from the top to the bottom of the bank, as if something heavy had slid down into the water. The ground nearby was strewn with several objects - a small bottle or two, a glass plate, a pair of scissors, and a compact. A little ways downstream, two pairs of wooden clogs were found against the lock of a dam. Despite these ominous signs, an intensive search along the canal failed to turn up anything more. It was almost a week later - on June 19, the author’s thirty-ninth birthday - that a passer-by happened to notice two waterlogged corpses in the canal tied together with a red cord. This discovery occurred less than a mile from where the couple had evidently entered the water.

- James O’Brien, Crackling Mountain and Other Stories Introduction

^ Dazai and Tomie’s bodies discovered in 1948 ^

Ibuse Masuji, Dazai’s writing mentor and friend, was a recipient of one of the suicide notes left by Dazai (you can find an excerpt of the note along with possible meanings behind it here). Ibuse-sensei wrote this as a response to Dazai’s suicide:

The police officer told his story. A writer by the name of Dazai had thrown himself into the water. When the corpse was found he went ot the scene as the investigating detective. The results of his examination revealed bruises on Mr. Dazai’s neck and throat caused by a cord or rope. It was called an involuntary double suicide. In deference to the position of the deceased, however, this was not announced to the public.

- Ibuse Masuji, “The Ways of the Women”