Early Light

Osamu Dazai

Contents (4)

EARLY LIGHT

STORYBOOK ND

CURATED BY GINI ALHADEFF

César Aira, The Famous Magician

Osamu Dazai, Early Light

Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool

László Krasznahorkai, Spadework for a Palace

Clarice Lispector, The Woman Who Killed the Fish

Yoko Tawada, Three Streets

FORTHCOMING

Natalia Ginzburg, The Road to the City

Rachel Ingalls, In the Act

Early Light, by Osamu Dazai. Translated from the Japanese by Ralph McCarthy and Donald Keene. Storybook ND.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Publisher’s Note: “Early Light” (Hakumei) and “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji” (Fugaku hyakkei) are selected from Self Portraits, first published in 1993 by Kodansha USA, and are published by arrangement with Ralph McCarthy. “Villon’s Wife” (Viyon no tsuma) originally appeared in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 15 (New Directions, 1955) and is published by arrangement with the estate of Donald Keene.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published clothbound by New Directions in 2022

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Title: Early light / Osamu Dazai ; translated by Ralph McCarthy & Donald Keene.

Other titles: Early light (Compilation)

Description: New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2022. | Series: A storybook ND

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005823 | ISBN 9780811231985 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780811232319 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Dazai, Osamu, 1909–1948—Translations into English. | LCGFT: Short stories.

Classification: LCC PL825.A8 E1713 2022 | DDC 895.63/44—dc23/eng/20220209

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005823

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, NY 10011

EARLY LIGHT

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 thirty-seven. My wife was thirty-four, my daughter five, and my son two, 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.