The Setting Sun

About

An aristocratic Japanese family disintegrates in the aftermath of World War II. The mother, once elegant and untouchable, is dying. The daughter, Kazuko, watches the old world collapse and tries to find a reason to survive the new one. Her brother, a dissolute drug addict, has his own answer to the question of how to live in a country that has lost its meaning. Osamu Dazai's novel captures the specific despair of a class that has been made obsolete — people whose refinement is no longer a virtue but an embarrassment, and whose suffering has no audience left to appreciate it. A novel about the end of an era, told by people who know they're the last of their kind and can't decide whether that's tragic or a relief.