Japanese author Osamu Dazai sees unexpected revival thanks to anime and young readers
Osamu Dazai, a Japanese author who died by suicide in 1948, has experienced a surge in popularity in the UK in recent years, partly driven by an anime series and social media.
Japanese literature has been a notable success for British bookshops in recent years: in 2024, nearly half of the bestselling translated fiction titles were from Japan. Among these, the works of Osamu Dazai stand out, with sales skyrocketing in the last few years.
Dazai was born in 1909 in northern Japan to a wealthy family. He was a brilliant student but showed early signs of mental health issues, making two suicide attempts by age 21. His translator Donald Keene described his life as one of "wild dissipation," including morphine addiction and numerous relationships.
His best-known novel, "No Longer Human" (1948), has sold over 75,000 copies in the UK alone. This intense semi-autobiographical account of alienation is characterized by bleak nihilism and self-loathing. Despite its dark tone, Dazai's works have become particularly popular among younger readers, especially young men—a demographic often said to be avoiding books.
One factor in this revival is the 2016 Japanese anime series "Bungo Stray Dogs," which features a swashbuckling version of Osamu Dazai as a central character. After the series aired in the US in 2018, publisher New Directions noticed a sharp increase in Dazai's book sales. "Before that we were selling dozens or hundreds of copies [a year]," says editor Tynan Kogane. "At the height of it, the annual figure was something like 150,000 copies, which for us is pretty rare."
Dazai's popularity has also spread online, particularly on Reddit and TikTok, where commenters praise him as "the only person that understands me." This month, Penguin Classics is publishing the first UK edition of Dazai's work in nearly 70 years: a collection of short stories from a female perspective titled "Schoolgirl," selected and translated by Polly Barton.
Barton notes that Dazai's work has an "unashamed emotional quality, but also tempered with enormous intelligence." Kogane adds, "I think a lot of young readers see themselves in Dazai's works," pointing to the resonance of postwar Japanese nihilism with contemporary despair. Despite the bleakness, works like "The Flowers of Buffoonery" and "The Beggar Student" are often playful, self-mocking, and humorous.
Dazai's most famous book remains linked to his own life and death. Shortly after finishing "No Longer Human," he completed a suicide pact with his lover Tomie Yamazaki. Their bodies were found six days later, on what would have been his 39th birthday. Yet his work—now more than ever—lives on.
