Early Light
Dazai, Osamu / Keene, Donald / McCarthy, Ralph
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. "Everything's gone, " the father explains to his daughter: "Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, ...