The Japanese preoccupation with Osamu Dazai in the twenty-first century

Abstract

This paper considers the underlying factors that dictated Osamu Dazai's adaptation of Hamlet in 1941, The New Hamlet, alongside the intellectual background against which he rewrote the play. Despite his reference to the critique of the Romantic interpretations of the play, Dazai's protagonist is represented as an indecisive man who is seized by what Carl Schmitt called ‘Romantic irony’, namely an impulse to suspend practical judgements. Underlying such a representation of Hamlet is Dazai's lack of a criterion of justice (or belief systems), which can be seen as a tragedy not only for Dazai and his contemporary young people but also for young people living in twenty-first century Japan.