Customer Reviews

Crackling Mountain and Other Stories (Tuttle Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you've read "Setting Sun" or "No Longer Human" by Dazai and think you've got him pigeon-holed, read this fine collection of his short stories and think again. This is Dazai in a very different key. While the darkness and nihilism characterizing his better known novels still hovers around in the background in these tales, overall they sparkle with a sharp and sprightly sense of irony, satire, and humor that is appealing--this light also gives the shadow contrast and depth, making it less overbearing but more disturbing in a way.

There is a good variety among the stories themselves, too. Some are semi-autobiographical pieces somewhat in the vein of the good old "I-novel", some are funny stories with a bite, one story more typical of Dazai deals with postwar Japan's sense of meaninglessness and loss, but most are retellings of classical or premodern tales East and West but with a twist--including reworkings of vignettes by Ihara Saikaku and Ueda Akinari as well as a take on the Gospel story through the distorted psychology of Judas. All of the stories are intriguing, and O'Brien's translation brings them to life, capturing Dazai's nonchalant and talkative tone in these stories rather well. And they are important too in giving the non-Japanese reader a much fuller sense of the range and artistry of one of twentieth-century Japan's best writers.

The stories included are: "Memories", "Undine", "Monkey Island", "Heed My Plea", "Melos, Run!" "On the Question of Apparel", "A Poor Man's Got His Pride", "The Monkey's Mound", "The Sound of Hammering", "Taking the Wen Away", and (of course) "Crackling Mountain".

"Otogizoshi," a nihilistic anthology based on some Japanese famous folklore by famous novelist, Osamu Dazai. Crackling Mountain, Kachi-Kachi yama in Japanese is originally rather cruel and abuserd falklore, in which a naughty badger kills an old lady and a rabbit revenges for her in cruel way. Here a rabbit is described as a young and capricious woman and gives new lights to this rather absurd and cruel Kachi-Kachi Yama stories.