Sachiyo Takano, a charismatic young woman, travels from the countryside to a bustling prewar Tokyo, where she meets an irresistible stranger. They spend the night together, but things go sideways and never quite straightens out. Sachiyo wakes up in a hotel room, having survived a drug overdose, while her lover, whom she learns was an anarchist and a wanted criminal, is dead. The Phoenix chronicles how she rises from the ashes of this debacle—having heartfelt conversations friends in the bars in Shinjuku and Asakusa, performing in a Chekhov play, finding herself in a love triangle, and chasing her new ambition of becoming an actress—even as the men drawn to Sachiyo continue to tear each other apart.

Appearing in translation for the first time ever, THE PHOENIX is classic Osamu Dazai at his poignant, cinematic, and euphoric best.

A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy’s place that very night as the live narrator of a film screening…

So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution, and intellectual one-upmanship reveals glimmers of truth. Replete with settings incorporated into the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and with echoes of No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.

The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba — the narrator of No Longer Human— is convalescing after a failed suicide attempt. Friends and family visit him, and nurses and police drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, Yozo and his visitors try to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh. Dazai is known for delving into the darkest corners of human consciousness, but in The Flowers of Buffoonery he pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a fresh and darkly humorous addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.

All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions.

Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett