Osamu Dazai’s ‘The Setting Sun’: The Manga Edition

Kashiwaya makes her English-language debut with a faithful manga adaptation of a grim 1947 novel by Japanese author Dazai. In the wreckage of WWII, young divorcée Kazuko moves to the countryside to support her formerly privileged and now-impoverished family. Working in the fields, Kazuko grows stronger as her sickly, aristocratic mother weakens, until their uncertain new balance is upended by the reappearance of Kazuko’s “rascal” brother, a veteran and opium addict. Meanwhile, Kazuko falls for a married, alcoholic writer, imagining that his sensitive novels betray an inner nobility. Despite the bleakness of the tale, a thread of hope runs throughout as Kazuko finds new freedoms in the destruction of the old order and comes to believe that “humans are born for love and revolution.” Kashiwaya’s attractive if old-fashioned art style is a pleasant match for the period setting, but the retelling does little more than dramatize the original plot; there’s none of the daring artistry found in the manga versions of Dazai’s No Longer Human drawn by Usamaru Furuya or Junji Ito. Still, it’s a solid introduction to Dazai’s oeuvre. (Mar.)