num_pages: 125
description: Dazai Osamu wrote The Fairy Tale Book (Otogizshi) in the last months of the Pacific War. The traditional tales upon which Dazai's retellings are based are well known to every Japanese schoolchild but this is no children's book. In Dazai's hands such stock characters as the kindhearted Oji-san to Oba-san (Grandmother and Grandfather) the mischievous tanuki badger the fearsome Oni ogres the greedy old man the tongue-cut sparrow and of course Urashima Taro (the Japanese Rip van Winkle) become complex individuals facing difficult and nuanced moral dilemmas. The resulting stories are thought-provoking slyly subversive and often hilarious.In spite of the gloom and doom atmosphere always cited in reviews of The Setting Sun and the later No Longer Human though Dazai's cutting wit and rich humor are evident in the entire body of his work. His literature depicts the human condition in painfully blunt and realistic terms but like life itself is often accompanied by a smile.
language: English
title: Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
publisher: Kurodahan Press