The Setting Sun — Summary and Characters

About this work

The novel Dazai Osamu serialized in the magazine Shinchō in 1947. Through a mother and her two grown children, born into an aristocratic family now sinking, it sets those who go down together with the old morality against those who search, even so, for a new way to live, in the upheaval of values after the war. It struck home hard enough to put the phrase "the setting-sun class" into the language, and stands with No Longer Human as Dazai's major work and as one of the defining books of postwar Japanese literature.

Summary

Characters

• Kazuko　The protagonist, born into a fallen aristocratic house. She sets out to throw off the old morality and choose a new way of living
• Naoji　Kazuko's brother. Home from the war and addicted to drugs, he takes his own life after dissipation and self-loathing
• Mother　The mother of Kazuko and Naoji. Keeping her refinement to the last, she weakens, unable to keep pace with the changing age
• Uehara Jirō　The decadent writer who was Naoji's teacher, and the man Kazuko loves

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

1. 1. About This Work
2. 2. Main Characters
3. 3. Major Supporting Characters
4. 4. To Izu — The Snake's Eggs, and Days at the Villa
5. 5. Naoji's Return and the “Moonflower Journal”
6. 6. Three Letters — The Wager on M.C.
7. 7. Mother's Death — The Last Lady in Japan
8. 8. Let the Battle Begin — Tokyo, and a Love Fulfilled
9. 9. Naoji's Testament, and the Last Letter
10. 10. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

At breakfast in the dining room my mother took a spoonful of soup, sipped it, and gave a faint cry. "Oh." "A hair?" I wondered whether something unpleasant had got into the soup.

The Setting Sun by Dazai Osamu (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

There was one more small victim. Uehara. I have no wish now to ask you for anything; but for the sake of that small victim there is one thing, only one, for which I would ask your leave. It is that I be allowed to have your wife hold the child I bear — once will be enough. And that at that moment I be allowed to say this: "This is Naoji's child, that he had by a woman in secret." Why I should do so is the one thing I can tell no one. No — I do not properly understand myself why I want to be allowed to do it. But I must do it, come what may. For the sake of that small victim, Naoji, I must do it, come what may. Does it displease you? Even if it does, please bear with it. Take it for the one faint piece of spite left to a woman who has been cast off and half forgotten, and grant it, I beg you. M.C. — My Comedian. 7 February, Shōwa 22.

The Setting Sun by Dazai Osamu (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

Human beings are born for love and for revolution.

Kazuko's declaration that we are born for love and revolution. It distills the passion of a woman living within a declining aristocratic household, and stands at the very heart of the novel.

But we intend to fight the old morality to the very end, and to live like the sun.

The closing of Kazuko's letter to Uehara. Her resolve to bear a child out of wedlock is declared, flatly, as a war against the old morality.

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

More by this author

• No Longer Human　June 1948

Related works

• Floating Clouds　November 1949
• Li Ling　July 1943
• The Makioka Sisters　January 1943
• Twenty-Four Eyes　February 1952
• Sweet Beans for Two　April 1940
• Tsuru wa yamiki　June 1936