From author to anime hero: the unlikely revival of a Japanese literary star

Polly Barton, who selected and translated the stories into English, tells me that, although Dazai may be relatively new to English-speaking readers, in Japan, he is “one of the big three, along with Yukio Mishima and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, that everyone talks about as the fathers of modern Japanese literature”.

Her parents knew what they were doing there....