The Setting Sun
A mother and daughter of an old Tokyo family sell the house after the defeat and move to a cottage in Izu, where the mother — the last person her daughter believes still knows how to be an aristocrat — is visibly ailing and the money runs out faster than either of them can follow. Kazuko's brother comes back from the south addicted and contemptuous of everything, and she begins writing letters to a dissolute novelist in the city whom she has decided to make her business. Dazai worked the daughter's sections up from the diary of his lover Ōta Shizuko, and the title handed post-war Japan the word shayōzoku for its ruined upper class.
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Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Closest analogues
- 62% · 13 shared
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- 49% · 11 shared