Japanese Literature and Bungou Stray Dogs — Dazai Quotes Pushkin: “Seascape with figures in…

I wanted to make a distinction about my blog and how I view Bungo Stray Dogs that is abnormal (at least as far as I can tell). 

For many, including myself, Bungo Stray Dogs was our first exposure to the world of Japanese literature. Because we enjoyed the series, its characters, the intricate plot that Asagiri Kafka so brilliantly creates, and Harukawa35′s incredible art style we were intrigued and wanted to know more about the authors who inspired the series. Because of this it is normal for fans of the series to, when they read or encounter Japanese literature, to look for traces of their favorite characters in the literature.

This is where I differ from many Bungo Stray Dogs fans, and why I answer asks and run my blog the way I do. I am a fan of Bungo Stray Dogs, but I am even more so a fan of Japanese literature. To me the authors and their works are distinctly different from the characters based on them and I do not mix the two often. And when I do rather than looking at the authors and their works to find similarities to the BSD character I look for how the literature inspired the character. 

When I read a book by Dazai Osamu the BSD Dazai is insignificant. Likewise, when I read a new chapter in BSD the real Dazai Osamu doesn’t even enter my mind. There are only the few instances where the author and character are similar or the exact same when I think, “Oh, maybe Asagiri-sensei and Harukawa-sensei took a little bit of their Dazai’s character from this paragraph.” Those are not necessarily the quotes that I gather together and post. It happens every once in a while, but it is still rare.

The quotes I post are chosen more for the authors and their writing style than the BSD character. And I do this intentionally. Japanese literature is not familiar to most people outside of Japan and, while the fans in Japan already have a great deal of prior knowledge about the authors and their works, foreign fans have no prior knowledge and limited resources to turn to in order to learn about Japanese literature. BSD fans already know plenty about the series and there are lots of resources to get to know the characters in that sense, but because it is so much harder to find resources about the real life authors people tend to know very little about them. And that is why when reading a quote from an author they tend to think of the author and quote in terms of BSD and not Japanese literature.

At this point, I feel as if I know the world of Japanese literature more than I do the world of BSD. For example, I am far better acquainted with Dazai Osamu-sensei and Akutagawa Ryuunosuke-sensei than I am with their BSD characters. When I read Tsugaru or Kappa I am constantly considering how the authors’ life experience and personality shaped their work. This is something that only comes from reading story after story and researching the authors’ lives. These are the tools necessary to be able to look at the author and what they wrote and then be able to see how the BSD character is related to the author. 

To put this another way: If you want to understand how the authors inspired BSD try looking at the series from a Japanese perspective. In high schools the students are required to read stories and poems by the BSD authors. They study their lives and works as a part of their class. They view the Japanese authors in much the same way a high school student in America would view Edgar Allen Poe or F. Scott Fitzgerald in the series. As an American high school student, I know I was required to read The Great Gatsby and The Raven and what I recalled from those stories greatly influenced how I viewed the BSD characters. It is the same for Japanese students who have read The Moon over the Mountain and Run, Melos! in their classes. They view BSD Atsushi and BSD Dazai through the lens of someone who has read the authors work prior to watching BSD (so the fact that Atsushi turns into a tiger was absolutely not a surprise for them). 

I hope that by compiling quotes and facts from the authors and making their works more accessible it will help foreign BSD fans see the authors in a new light. The authors and their works are infinitely more complex and compelling than the BSD characters based on them; if they weren’t then BSD wouldn’t have come into being. Knowing BSD is not the same as knowing Japanese literature. But BSD is amazing because it creates a bridge for anime/manga fans to discover literature and for literature fans to discover something wonderful in the world of manga and anime. Let BSD spark your interest and lead you to discovering new worlds, characters, and experiences that can change who you are and how you view the world.