Abstract

Your worries are already worthy of a literary prize.
Love, insults, money troubles… the cringeworthy everyday lives that tormented these once-in-a-generation geniuses.
An anthology of 20 candid, unvarnished writings by Dazai Osamu, Sakaguchi Ango, Natsume Soseki, and others.

The margins of great literature you probably won’t find in textbooks.
Reading about the down-to-earth worries of these great writers will give you the strength to keep living.

◆From the Introduction (excerpt)
When you hear the words “modern literature,” what comes to mind? Probably novels such as Natsume Soseki’s “Kokoro,” Dazai Osamu’s “No Longer Human,” or Rin Usami’s “Idol, Burning.”
But if you think about it, that’s rather strange. Literature can just as well include poetry, children’s stories, dialogues, plays, and even criticism, yet when we picture it, we’re always drawn to the novel.
(…)
Reading these miscellaneous writings again and again, I’m both surprised and amused to see that even the great masters of literature were not so different from us ordinary people. In fact, they worried, suffered, and rejoiced over even sillier things. Love, work, changing jobs, marriage, raising children, aging, death… the anguish never stops.
You realize that the raw material of literature lies all around us; there is no need to travel far to find it. That also means that even the smallest events in your daily life may hold the seeds of literature that could one day be celebrated as a masterpiece.
Seen that way, doesn’t everything happening in front of you start to sparkle a little? These down-to-earth literary greats show us exactly that.

Author’s Information

Yuta Araki
Born in Tokyo in 1987. An independent scholar. Completed a master’s program in Japanese literature at the Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Meiji University. In 2015, received the Award of Excellence at the 59th Gunzo New Writers’ Prize for Criticism. Books include “Kore kara no Eric Hoffer no Tame ni” (For the Eric Hoffers to Come; Tokyo Shoseki), “Arishima Takeo” (Iwanami Shinsho), and “Saakuru Yugairon” (Circles Considered Harmful; Shueisha Shinsho), and as editor, “Zaiya Kenkyu Biginaazu” (Independent Research for Beginners; Akashi Shoten).

Asako Sumimoto
Born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1989. A writer. Completed a master’s program in Japanese language and literature at the Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University. Writes mainly for literary magazines, editing interviews and dialogues and writing criticism. Since the February 2023 issue, has written the monthly review of new fiction in the literary magazine “Bungakukai.”