NOT BEEN EASY BY ANY MEANS
Early Light by Osamu Dazai; translated by Ralph McCarthy and Donald Keene
New Directions
August 2022
Selected by Barbara Epler
Curated by the writer and translator Gini Alhadeff, Storybook ND is a new series of slim hardcover books that look to recreate that childhood pleasure of reading a book from start to finish in a single afternoon. As Alhadeff says, “There's nothing sweeter than to fall, for a few hours, between the covers of a perfect book.” The series, designed by Peter Mendelsund and with covers by renowned contemporary artists, consists of original works of fiction from six international authors. These books, with their riotous individual energies, take the reader from Buenos Aires to Berlin via a mysterious magician, a cyborg child and Hebridean tweed, each telling a story that’s entirely their own.
The three stories of Early Light display different facets of the genius of Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular novel, No Longer Human. They all draw from a similar well of misery, however: “I didn’t have the slightest idea how it would all end.” – Barbara Epler
In November 1944, just two months after Dazai’s son, Masaki, was born, B-29s bombed Tokyo for the first time. In March 1945 the bombings grew intense, and Dazai sent his family to stay at the Ishihara house in Kōfu, where Michiko’s younger sister, Ai, had been living alone. On April 2, the house in Mitaka was struck by a bomb. It was not damaged very badly, but Dazai was half
buried in dirt when the wall of the pit he was taking shelter in collapsed. He went to join his family in Kōfu a few days later. Incendiary bombs were dropped on Kōfu during the early morning hours of July 7.
When our house in Mitaka, Tokyo, was damaged in the bombings, we moved to Kōfu, my wife’s hometown. Her younger sister had been living alone in the family house there.
This was in early April of 1945. Allied planes passed frequently enough through the skies over Kōfu but hardly ever dropped any bombs. Nor was the war-zone atmosphere as intense as it was in Tokyo. We were able to sleep without our air-raid gear for the first time in months. I was 37. My wife was 34, my daughter 5, and my son 2, technically, though he’d just been born in August of the previous year. Our life up to that point had not been easy by any means, but we had at least remained alive and free of serious illnesses or injuries. Having survived so much adversity, even I felt a desire to go on living a bit longer, if only to see how things would turn out with the world. Stronger than that, however, was the fear that my wife and children would be killed before I was, leaving me alone. Just to think about that possibility was unendurable. I had to see to it that they survived, and that meant adopting the most prudent measures. I had no money, however. Whenever I did get my hands on a fair sum, I would promptly drink it away. I have the serious defect known as a drinking habit. Liquor at that time was an expensive indulgence, but whenever friends or acquaintances visited me, I was unable to stop myself from whisking them off to guzzle great quantities of the stuff, just as I had in the old days. ◉