Drawn (Dazai Osamu)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Drawn ( Japanese 人間 失 格 , Ningen Shikkaku , German for example: "disqualified as a person") is a novel by Dazai Osamu . It was published in 1948 in Tembō ( 展望 ) magazine as a three-part series. Signed applies next to run, Melos, run! , Villon's Wife and The Setting Sun as Dazai's masterpiece. The novel ranks second in the list of the most widely read books in Japan, behind Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki .

overview

The novel is divided into five parts. The main part consists of three postponed notebooks with notes by the protagonist Ōba Yōzo. The allegedly truthful reproduction of the recordings is bracketed by the prologue and epilogue of an unnamed narrator. Since the narrator is nameless and it is a first- person novel ( 私 小説 , shishōsetsu ), the use of jibun ( 自 分 , myself) and wata (ku) shi ( 私 , me) serves to distinguish the protagonist from the narrator. The protagonist tells about himself with Jibun, while the narrator uses the personal pronoun Watakushi.

content

Prologue ( は し が き , Hashigaki)
With the first sentence: "I saw three photographs of him", the narrator gives both the structure and the stages of development of the plot. The first photograph is from the protagonist's childhood. She shows him with an ugly grin or grimacing smile, with a bland face that arouses displeasure. The second photograph, taken during school or university, shows the as yet nameless protagonist with a more subtle and at the same time paper smile, refined and deceptive at the same time. The third and last photograph is the most repulsive; she shows him sitting gray and neglected in a corner of the room. The smile has completely faded and the face has become so expressionless that it eludes any memory of being able to remember the face.

The booklets presented below are to be understood as the protagonist's recordings from the phases of life to which the photographs are assigned. The narrator only informs the reader of this in the epilogue.

Recording - Book 1 ( 第一 の 手記 )
The main character Ōba Yōzo noticed in his childhood the lack of any ability to empathize with other people. This deficiency not only makes it impossible for him to build social relationships and bonds, he also perceives this deficiency as a defect that must be kept secret. As a means of secrecy, Ōba chooses clowning. Jokingly distracting from his lack enables him to move undetected in society, but at the same time it also creates the impression of complete alienation. The inability to adapt to society as expected culminates in the opening sentence: "I led a shameful life".
Recording - Issue 2 ( 第二 の 手記 )
The fear of being discovered leads Ōba noticeably into isolation. He neglects his studies, gets to know Horiki during a drawing course, with whom he leads a dissolute life in the red light district. Extended drinking bouts and visits to prostitutes determine the everyday rhythm of this phase of life. This is how Ōba meets the prostitute Tsuneko, whom he persuades to throw herself off a cliff with him near Kamakura in order to commit double suicide. While Tsuneko drowns in the process, Ōba is saved. Due to his father's influence, however, Ōba escapes charges of Tsuneko's culpable death.
Recording - Booklet 3 ( 第三 の 手記 )
Shibuta, in whose house he lives in Ōkubo , is assigned to him as a "guardian". As a result, Ōba's life seems to normalize. He lives with Shizuko and their daughter Shigeko and earns his living as a cartoonist. As Ōba becomes increasingly lonely, he again begins to drink excessively. He starts consuming morphine and becomes dependent. He reached the lowest point when he had to experience the sexual assault on Yoshiko, who he knew from a kiosk across from his local bar. Unable to do anything, plagued by guilt, he completely succumbs to his addiction and ends up in a mental hospital by the end of the third booklet. Three years later, the father has meanwhile passed away, his brother takes him out of the institution and brings him back to his homeland, where he lives secluded in a house bought especially for him. At the end of the story, the deeply felt loneliness and inner isolation are also reflected in the seclusion of his home. This is where the last photograph is taken, showing him in complete apathy and indifference, as a human scrap.
Epilog ( あ と が き , Atogaki)
The narrator reports how he happened to meet a bar owner from the pre-war period while visiting a bar in Kyōbashi , who was also the owner of the main bar of the protagonist. She hands him three notebooks and three photographs that Ōba Yōzo left with her.

Acting persons

Ōba Yōzo ( 大 庭 葉 蔵 )
Main character of the novel. Born as the last son of a wealthy family in the Tōhoku region, as a child of poor health, Ōba Yōzo wishes to become a painter, which his father forbids him. Described as a heartthrob, dependent on alcohol and morphine, lonely and neglected, he is unstoppable.
Takeichi ( 竹 一 )
Classmate Ōbas in middle school; he recognizes the masquerade in the clowning Ōbas. He also prophesies Ōba that he will be a heartthrob and a successful painter.
Horiki Masao ( 堀 木 正雄 )
is the closest friend of Ōbas, whom he met in painting and drawing classes, six years his senior. He introduces Ōba to a world that revolves around alcohol, prostitution and pawn shops.
Tsuneko ( ツ ネ 子 )
is a 22-year-old servant in a coffeehouse who comes from Hiroshima, is married to a man who is in prison and who, out of loneliness and a feeling of desperation, attempts a double suicide together with Ōba, in which she is the only one Loses life.
Shizuko ( シ ズ 子 )
is the editor of a newspaper and lives with her daughter Shigeko after Ōba's unsuccessful suicide attempt in a marriage-like relationship with him. She encourages him to make a living drawing comics.
Shigeko ( シ ゲ 子 )
Shizuko's five year old daughter.
Madamu ( マ ダ ム )
Owner of Ōbas Stammbar, of small stature with a pronounced sense of justice. She hands over the photographs and notes Ōbas to the narrator.
Yoshiko ( ヨ シ 子 )
18-year-old daughter of a kiosk owner who runs a tobacco shop across from Ōbas Stammbar. She is the epitome of trust and confidence and she is the victim of sexual assault.
Shibuta ( 渋 田 ), also flounder ( 鮃 , Hirame)
As a second-hand dealer and antique dealer, 40-year-old Shibuta is Ōba's father's personal errand boy. After Ōba attempted suicide, he was put to one side as a “watchdog”.
The father (nameless)
The narrator (nameless)

Stylistic devices

Osamu uses different stylistic devices to prove the authenticity and truth of the story. He introduces a narrator who gives the fictional protagonist the appearance of a real person by describing the circumstances under which he came to the recordings. Remarkably, this is also a first-person narrator instead of an omniscient narrator .

He also inserts details into the plot that can be related to Osamus' real life. The described attempts at suicide, pill addiction and debauchery can also be found as events in Osamu's life. Thus the impression of a parallelization of real writer existence and fictional action is created.

The focus of the plot is the diary-like interior view of the protagonist. In contrast to the social and living conditions, a form of bitter irony develops that is increased to the grotesque. The main character is a torn personality, comparable to a viewer, located outside the world, more reactive than acting out of his own volition. Persisting in this tragic conflict, the downfall, similar to that of Wallenstein Schiller, is apparently determined and almost inevitable.

Classification in literary history

A Japanese first- person narrative ( 私 小説 , Shishōsetsu ) is drawn, which is characteristic of Japanese naturalism ( 自然 主義 文学 , Shizen Shugi Bungaku ). The work was published after the end of World War II , which generally marked the end of modern and the beginning of contemporary Japanese literature. Literary life, which had essentially come to a standstill during the war due to censorship, began to stir again. Japan had been dropped two atomic bombs during the war. In his New Year's address to the nation ningen-sengen (1946), which was broadcast on the radio, the Tennō had renounced his divinity. In the same year, Sakaguchi Ango's essay on the decline of morality ( Darakuon ) appeared. Characteristic of the attitude towards life at that time, he praised the beauty of destruction, propagated total disillusionment and decadence. With Drawn , which was published only after Osamus suicide, as well as with Shayō (Eng. The sinking sun , 1947) Osamu is one of the most important and most widely read representatives of post-war literature and Shishōsetsu .

reception

“For Western readers it is revealing that suicide in the land of enthusiastic suicides can very well be considered a disgrace. Of the most current importance as a correction of any Japanese clichés and as an antidote to the global media laugh and fun society: This novel tears with the interior view of the clown role that the isolated child desperately plays in order to at least belong to the people leitmotiv insistence to reveal the abysses hidden behind laughter. The “lost laugh” that the sad humorist Gottfried Keller so impressively described has a Japanese counterpart in Dazai. More precisely: it is not actually lost here, it freezes. The laughing and smiling mask of Japan is broken by Dazai. "

- Ludger Lütkehaus : Neue Zürcher Zeitung of April 9, 1998

Mentioned people

Mentioned places

Film adaptations

  • In 2009 the book was filmed on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Dazai Osamu under the direction of Arato Genjirō . Film opening: July 2009, since February 2010 the film has been shown in all major Japanese cinemas.
  • 2009: As part of the 12-part Aoi Bungaku series, Geanned was broadcast as one of six anime adaptations of modern Japanese literature on Japanese television.

expenditure

  • Dazai Osamu: Drawn . Translated by Jürgen Stalph. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-458-16871-0 .
  • Dazai Osamu: Drawn . Translated from the Japanese by Jürgen Stalph. With an afterword by Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit. Cass Verlag, Löhne 2015, ISBN 978-3-944751-03-0 . [Reprint of the 1997 translation.]

Manga adaptations

  • Ningen shikakku Mangaka : Hikochi Sakuya
  • Ningen shikakku - Mangaka: Furuya Usamaru (as a series in the manga magazine Shūkan Komikku Banchi - edited by Coamix)
  • Ningen shikakku kai - Mangaka: Ninose Yasunori (as a series in the Manga magazine Champion Red - edited by Akita Shoten)

See also

Web links

Wikiquote: Dazai Osamu  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Japanese text edition section 1 and 2
  2. ↑ The German translation speaks of high school or study time.
  3. ↑ Drawn German edition, p. 113
  4. ↑ Drawn German edition, p. 102
  5. ↑ "Ōba Yōzo, weighed as a person and found to be too light. Failed. I had ceased to be regarded as a human being ”, Drawn German edition, p. 129
  6. ↑ Other literary-historical classifications are also based on the Japanese reigns of Taishō and Shōwa or even the great Kantō earthquake of 1923 to delimit the epochs and to periodize.
  7. ↑ Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: Japanese contemporary literature . Munich 2000, p. 28
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Dazai is the family name, Osamu the first name.