#Let’s be honest— there’s no such thing as a dazai analysis that’s 100% true

[bsd-fan]

Dazai, chuuya, humanity and the mafia part 1: Dazai Osamu

Okay first a warning, this is gonna be LONG.

Now, let´s begin by saying that analysing Dazai? Is a fucking pain in the ass. I give my everything in this analysis and even then I can´t be sure if I´m right or not because the truth is whether you love or hate Dazai, he is by far the most complex character from the series. He is layers upon layers upon layers of narrative but the real reason why he is so damn difficult to analyse is because he is an unreliable narrator.

(You can skip this part and start reading from “I want to say”)

Dazai is there from the very beggining of the story, he appears in most of the light novels and is a prevalent presence in the manga and even then we know next to nothing about him. Once I saw someone asking why are we so obsessed with his backstory when technically speaking we have more information about his past that the one we have about other characters, including Akutagawa, Tanizaki, kouyou and even Atsushi. And while technically right, there is a reason for it. Thing is that the things we know about Dazai are simply not enough to make sense of his character. We can take the same five flashbacks of Atsushi in the orphanate and that´s enought to understand most of his personality, his insecurities, the way he acts and the same applies for the other characters. Maybe we don´t know a lot but it´s enough to get the bigger picture. This doesn´t happen with Dazai. The things we know about him aren´t enough to make us understand him. Worse than that, some of the few things we do know is that he lies /constantly/, that he is hella good at saying half truths and that he almost always is hiding information. This only makes analysing him even more complicated because I can´t be 100% sure of ANYTHING. It´s not even that he is always lying, because I know he isn´t. The real problem is that when he does, he is so good at it that we don´t know when he is lying vs when he is saying the truth. Harukawa-sensei expresses a lot with her art, specially the eyes (We all know about that thing of darkness/light in the eyes and how that speaks of the mental situation of the characters) BUT this doesn´t necessarily applies to Dazai. 

There are panels like this in which we /Swear/ that he is being honest only to realize that he wasn´t. So, to summarize we can´t believe in his words, we can´t believe in his face or expressions and we almost never can get to his thoughts. So I decided to analyse him using everything I could, the few instances we are in his mind in the novels, the moments we /know/ are true that were confirmed by asagiri: When he speaks about oda or when he is with another superhuman (Fyodor, shibusawa and tentatively speaking verlaine), when he convinces Kyoka to keep living. And at last we are gonna use the perceptions of certain characters that canonically speaking have the best read of him (Oda and chuuya, for example). And certain scenes that seem like true based on context.

I want to say that I usually disagree with Dazai analysis because I think it´s a mistake to analyze him from a moral ground. BSD is all about morally grey characters and even then, a huge part of the fandom insist in classifying them as “good” or “bad” and Dazai is particularly affected by this perspective. People will fight all the time. People will say that Dazai has changed to be a better person, that he is better morally speaking, that he is trying to be “good” but then we got scenes like this:

Scenes in which he seem to go back to his mafia days. Scenes in which he is manipulator and cruel, scenes in which he is shown hurting people and then the other half of the fandom appears to say that he hasn´t changed, the he still is horrible and bad. And the thing is? I think both of this parts are wrong. 

Dazai as a character doesn´t revolve around moral. Dazai´s path is not one of him regretting his bad actions and wanting to be good, that´s not it. Oda who is the one who knew him best said:

“you might not see a great difference between right and wrong, but...saving others is something just a bit more wonderful”-Dark era

Dazai is not like chuuya who has a moral code and decide to go over it when necessary. Dazai simply doesn´t have a moral compass. Words like “good” and “bad” doesn´t mean anything to him. Dazai is elementarily speaking a character oriented towards results. Either the action has the predicted result or not. This is the real reason we see this ambivalence in him. This is why we constantly see him doing “bad things” that lead to “Good results”. When he does something bad is not because he is going back to his habits, is because is the best way to get what he wants. Dazai has /never/ read like a bad person that suddenly turned good. That has never been his objective and even less the main point of his characterization. That´s why I will never agree to talk about him like “ADA Dazai” vs “Mafia Dazai” in terms of morality, this is also incredibly reductionist with his character and all the shades of grey that has been there since the beggining. Dazai didn´t develop a moral compass for being in the agency. He went to the place that saves lives, so that´s what he does. In order to work for the ADA he needs to follow certain codes, so he adapt himself to them as better as possible but that´s it. As matter of fact, there are a lot of instances in which Dazai conveniently looks for loopholes in the law to get the wanted outcome. This is not a secret and was there even when he made his entrance exam. 

In the first novel, sasaki is about to win and there´s no legal way the agency can stop her. So what Did Dazai did? He manipulated a 14yo who was full of hatred and resentment to kill her. Is that a good action? Of course not, Did he save a lot of lives by doing that? Yes, he did, so in the great scheme of things there was a good result that justified the bad action. Another good example is akutagawa, he still is emotionally abusive towards him, he keeps manipulating him and hurting him but thanks to that the shin soukoku duo was possible, thanks to that they save the city from moby dick and later from fyodor. Or even that scene in which he got ango in the car knowing they were gonna crash and that Ango was going to get hurt and counting with that to manipulate him into giving him the information necessary to save kyoka. All of them are bad actions that got translated into good results. I´m not saying this to justify him, I think this depends on each perspective. Maybe for some people the end really justifies the means, for some it doesn´t (That´s a big part of why we have Dazai apologists vs Dazai antis) and that´s valid. But the thing is I don´t think Dazai cares if he is justified or not, he only cares about the final result. And the undeniably truth is that his methods get results. 

“A murderer who doesn´t soil their own hands...

Getting someone to kill another human being for you: What Dazai did was no different from what Miss sasaki did. There is no way to prove their intention to kill under current laws and regulations, and they would go unpunished”- Kunikida, 1 light novel: Osamu Dazai´s entrance exam.

So I ask you how are you deciding his morality? based on his motivations? on his actions? Or in the final outcome of those actions? This is why is useless to try to put him into a good or bad category. He is far more complex than that. A lot of his actions may be seen as bad but he has saved tons of people thanks to that an what? Are you going to tell me those lives are not valid? That´s bullshit. And just like I just mentioned the moments of manipulation and cruelty now that he is in the ADA, I can mention moments of genuiness and caring while he was in the mafia. Dazai is still Dazai morally speaking. 

Now I want to clarify that yes, maybe Dazai hasn´t changed all that much in terms of morality but that doesn´t mean he hasn´t changed at all. Actually he has one of the best character developments in the story. It doesn´t matter if it´s not in morality because just as I said before that has never been the main point of his character. So, if not morality what is it? I already said it. 

His real core is his inability to recognize himself as a human being and his need to look for his humanity despite that.

But that leads to other questions, the most important one being why does he feel inhuman? With chuuya we have a clear answer, with dazai we don´t, but I think its the same problem of Yozo from no longer human. 

Okay so, for everyone who haven´t read the book. It´s about Yozo,  a depressed man who feel alienated from the rest of the people, who desperately tries to hide the emptiness inside him, he doesn´t perceive himself as a human being and more like a clown desperate to keep appearences who tries to keep the other people from realizing how inhuman he really is. I think the reason the book is consider a classic is because maybe yozo is a horrible person, but you never, not even once doubt about how human he is, he is full of flaws but he is undeniably human, even when he can´t see it. And I think this is exactly bsd Dazai problem. 

From what we know, Dazai is not like chuuya, he  really is a human being, he was born like one, he was raised like one but he can´t connect with his humanity. In my opinion Dazai´s problem with his humanity comes from a distorted perspective of himself. So the next question is why he got this distorted perspective? Well there are two important factors: The alienation and isolation the character experiments through the story, and this is perpetuated by extrinsect and intrinsect factors. 

First, as you probably have already noticed Dazai is one of the most deshumanized characters in the story. People talk about him as “The demon prodigy”, “A heresy”. Ango has called him “an alien”, and people around him conceives him as some kind of god. This omnipotent figure who always knows everything and has a plan for every contingency. For God´s sake his ability literally is “No longer human” and Fukuzawa´s ability “All men are equal” doesn´t work on him. There´s no need for a genius to understand all the simbolism behind that. That´s the alienation I´m talking about. Then we got other factors, his monstruous intelligence, personality (he is naturally highly maquiavelistic, utilitarian, controlling, has a deep distrust for the world and his self destructive tendencies), maladaptive coping mechanisms plus a bad enviroment (the mafia) translates into two big problems: disconnection with himself (He can´t understand his own motives and emotions so this worsens the distorted perception he already has of himself) and problems stablishing bonds with other people (that aggravate the isolation). 

(we´ll continue in part two because this is already too long)

[anti-dazai-blog]

hi im here again!! (sorry i love discussing my thoughts!!) i can share who i think dazai cares abt (also pls note these are not HEALTHY ways of caring or even what is considered normal), personally from how i interpreted it, dazai has cared for more ppl even if its not what is normally seen as caring. and in that i do inlcude; oda, chuuya, akutugawa . (also just cause i can see care that does NOT take away any of the trauma aku faced please do not get me wrong) with aku its VERY complicated especially cause dazai’s “care” was so warped (basically boiled down to dazai knew his training was abuse but cause aku did survive in the mafia and he’s able to make a use now he sees it as it was required) and especially cause unless something happens dazai wont ever acknowledge his actions cause he doesn’t want to acknowledge his mafia past (i could literally do a whole another post on chuuya so i wont do that 😭, skk’s trust and care is another thing despite how they become so destructive due to yk never being normal and being mafia ) dazai needs sm therapy basically in how he shows ANYTHING -🪡

[regarding the second (third?) ask: don’t worry, I know you’re not toxic— you’ve been very polite the whole time, so. It was pretty clear that you’re a casual analysis enjoyer and not some toxic fan/stan]

Tbh I think what you said actually aligns well with what I said (if I’m remembering the original ask correctly). He treats people poorly, including the people he cares about. He would need some sort of “wake up call” (a big uh oh moment, y’know.) to get him to realize he messed up. 

I guess another way to look at it would be to check how he spends his time— the people he (intentionally) spends the most time with would be the people he cares about the most— which, as you listed here, are Oda, Chuuya, and Akutagawa. I think Atsushi could probably be included on that list as well. (The only reason Kunikida’s not on this list is because I haven’t read the light novel Dazai’s Entrance Exam yet, so I don’t feel qualified to decide whether or not he enjoys(?) spending time with him.)

Either way, this is probably something that will come up later on in the manga series (I’d be surprised if there wasn’t eventually some moment where Dazai had to face The Consequences of his own Actions). So I’m in no rush to definitively make any claims here. I will gladly wait and see how it’s resolved in the manga.