Goodbye

with a Modern Translation and Annotations

By: Osamu Dazai

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This novel, written in 1949, was Osamu Dazai's last work and was unfinished upon his death.

It is set in Tokyo just after the war's end. It tells the story of a handsome editor who wants to leave his mistresses and a black marketeer woman who has a thick voice, a big appetite, and great strength but is also stunningly beautiful.

It is a cheerful, humorous, and unprecedented novel, so much so that it is hard to believe that it was written by a novelist who was so depressed that he was contemplating suicide.

All the reader can do, however, is to imagine the rest of the novel.

Annotations

[1] Janome umbrella

[2] Three years after the end of the war

[3] Black Market

[4] Evacuation

[5] The form is emptiness; emptiness is the form

[6] Hotaru no Hikari

[7] Aogeba Toutoshi

[8] Black Market Peddler

[9] Monpé

[10] Hizakurige

[11] Kinton

[12] Do-or-Die Situation

[13] Nihonbashi

[14] Sensei

[15] Four and a half tatami mats

[16] Karasumi

[17] Ajinomoto

[18] Oshiire

[19] Chopin

[20] Echigojishi

[21] Manchuria

[22] Faust

[23] Siberia