Retrograde collects five short stories and one novella written by a young Osamu Dazai and gorgeously translated by Leo Elizabeth Takada.
The novella, Das Gemeine, follows a 25yo student studying French literature who aspires to become a writer himself. While hovering around an amazake stand in Ueno Park and hoping to catch the attention of the young woman who works there, the narrator meets another student, a violinist who barely attends class at all. The violinist’s friend, himself a painter, warns the narrator not to believe any of the violinist’s tall tales about his supposed talent.
The three young men decide to start a literary journal together (along with their pathetically unattractive acquaintance Osamu Dazai), but petty personality conflicts crash the project before it can get off the ground. Feeling hopelessly at a loss in letters and in love, the narrator meets a sad fate that may not have been entirely an accident.
One of the many myths surrounding Osamu Dazai (the author, not the character) is that he considered himself to be a failure rejected by the mainstream literary establishment. For better or worse, I can relate. I know from personal experience that, as an outsider, you often find yourself placing your work in the hands of upstart editors organizing projects that may, in all likelihood, never see the light of day. More often than not, things fall apart precisely because the creative team had big dreams but no practical skills to realize their ambitions.
I myself am something of a coward who immediately walks away from that sort of unpleasantness, but my familiarity with creative collaboration mishaps makes me respect the truth of the story Dazai tells in Das Gemeine, which is remarkably well-observed. The characters in this novella are deeply frustrating and more than a little cringe, but they’re 100% real – this is exactly what it’s like to work with creatives in their twenties who build castles in the air but haven’t yet developed the artistic discipline to commit their visions to paper. Bless their hearts.
The five shorter stories in the collection read like something that the narrator of Das Gemeine might actually have written. A 25yo man dies tragically and is mourned by his beautiful wife. A college student sits for the final exam of a French literature class he never attended. A high school student obnoxiously flirts with café waitresses but swiftly loses a fight with a grown man who’s not interested in his sophomoric bullshit. A teenage boy experiences a sexual awakening when the circus comes to town. Each of these stories is only a few pages long, and their unguarded sincerity contributes to their charm.
The closing story, “Blossom-Leaves and the Spirit Whistle,” is about two sisters in love with an idealized version of a man who only exists on paper until the strength of their shared storytelling summons his ghost to appear under their window… perhaps. I appreciate this story’s clever touch of Todorovian fantasy, and I’m always here for unapologetic gothic pathos. This aesthetically luxurious story is classic Dazai, in that it’s exactly the sort of work that’s contributed to his popularity among generations of students. I myself am not immune, of course, and this is by far my favorite piece in the collection.
In their “Translator’s Afterword,” Takada describes Dazai’s writing style as “a casual conversation with someone familiar,” and they explain that they want their translation to feel as if they’re “doing this just for you,” the reader. Takada gets the tone exactly right, rendering Dazai’s straightforward prose into an invitation to sympathize with the writer and his characters even despite their naked sincerity. I’ve never responded to overly “literary” renditions of Dazai’s prose, but I found myself flying through this translation. It’s fantastic.
I also want to highlight the care and attention that One Peace Books has put into the layout and typeset of this book, giving the words on the page exactly the room they need to breathe. Retrograde is a lovely object to hold in your hands, so much so that it might even spark the same youthful enthusiasm for literature that Dazai so aptly captures in his early fiction.
Much love to Leo Elizabeth Takada and One Peace Books for breathing fresh life into these classic stories from the 1930s. Retrograde is an admirable achievement, and I hope it brings the work of a fascinating author to new readers.
Contemporary Japanese Literature 
As someone who has translated Japanese short fiction previously, I’m surprised that you didn’t point out that some of these stories have been translated previously. “Das gemeine” by James O’Brien and “Blossom-leaves and the spirit whistle” by Ralph McCarthy (as “Cherry leaves and the whistler”). And the description of the product on both One Peace Books and Amazon’s sites describe the collection as 3 short stories, which is confusing, but I’m very hopeful your description is more accurate as that increases the likelihood of finding something new to read by Dazai in this collection
To be honest, as someone who has indeed published translations of Japanese fiction, I find that a close comparison of different translators’ decisions is something best done around a seminar table, not in a general-audience book review. I’ve also found that, unless one translation is presented as particularly “bad,” the nuts and bolts of the craft don’t interest most people, and I’d prefer not to boost one translation by comparing it to others, especially if there’s a publication gap of several decades.
For the purposes of this review, I thought it best simply to say that Takada’s translation spoke to me in a way that some of the older translations I’ve read did not. This isn’t to throw shade at the translations published by Tuttle and New Directions, which still have a place on my shelves, but rather to say that there’s always room for fresh new translations of classic literature.
Still, thank you for mentioning that there are other translations! It’s my hope that readers intrigued by this book will search for Osamu Dazai at their local library or bookstore and find all of the other excellent collections of his stories.
Concerning the publisher’s description of the contents of this collection, I have to admit that that’s something I wondered about as well. I considered multiple possibilities, including that the three opening pieces might have been grouped together as a single story cycle. Since I can’t say anything with certainty, though, I didn’t see a point of bringing up the matter in this review.
It’s been my experience that it’s a minor miracle whenever a book is published, and this is even more the case when the book in question is published by a small press. Unless one of the Big Five publishers has committed itself to a truly questionable marketing strategy, I always do my best to cultivate the good grace to overlook any discrepancies in a book’s press packet. Again, it’s a minor miracle that anything gets published at all. No need to sweat the small stuff. 😅