Part of Series
Osamu Dazai's classic tale retold by Usamaru Furuya is now in a complete omnibus edition! Set in modern-day Tokyo, Dazai's tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japan's far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts, referred to in the novel as memorandums, which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties. The comic is narrated by the artist, Furuya himself, making appearances at the start of each volume.
Authors
Osamu DAZAI (native name: 太宰治, real name Shūji Tsushima) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
Usamaru Furuya (古屋兎丸) is a Japanese manga creator from Tokyo. His production covers a variety of art styles and genres, such as horror, humour, slice-of-life, erotica, sci-fi, always with a personal surrealistic touch. Society oppression and the human condition are common themes in his body of work. Furuya showed an interest in comics making since elementary school. He graduated from Tama Art University, where he had studied sculpture and oil painting. His manga career started in the alternative magazine 'Garo', in which he published a series of one-page comics called Palepoli (1994-1995). He then worked on Short Cuts (1996-1999), a gag manga serialised in the mainstream magazine 'Weekly Young Sunday'. Other short stories from the same period were collected in the books Garden (2000) and Plastic Girl (2000). Over the years Furuya has created work for a number of manga magazines, underground and mainstream. Among his series available in one or more Western languages are: the dystopian The Music of Marie (2000-2001); the surreal horror Lychee Light Club (2005-2006), loosely based on a play by Norimizu Ameya; the post-apocalyptic 51 Ways to Save Her (2006-2007); Genkaku Picasso (2008-2010); No Longer Human (2009-2011), adaptation of a novel by Osamu Dazai; Amane Gymnasium (2017-2020).
