Dazai Osamu's literature is replete with Biblical references and Christian motifs. The Anglophone scholarly community has, however, traditionally dismissed the importance of Christianity in his work, calling it "disconcerting," "confused," and "obvious." This study is concerned with how Dazai interfaced with the Christian religion and whether it is true that—to put it in one scholar's words—that interface "failed to give his works the additional depth he sought." The purpose of the study is twofold: 1) to address the current paucity of scholarship on this topic among researchers overseas and provide a long-overdue analysis of Dazai's interaction with Christianity, and 2) to offer evidence that the modalities of that interaction were deeply rooted in the Meiji Christian experience and as such a development consistent with the outcomes of that legacy. The significant similarities between Dazai and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke in terms of their fictional representation of fate and the Christian God, and an early infatuation with Uchimura Kanzō's works, demonstrate Dazai's own exposure to those ideas, reaffirming the need to reinterpret his religious discourse vis-à-vis earlier developments.
Massimiliano TOMASI (Tue,) studied this question.