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The cheerful gentleman, Dazai, tilted the sake bottle and poured the chief some alcohol. After knocking it back in one gulp, Taneda shot Dazai a sharp glance.
“I’ve seen your face in our reports more times than I can count. You’re a regular on the blacklist… So how’d you know I was here?”
“I can figure out most things if I look into them.” Dazai beamed with a shrug.
“You’re supposed to be missing… What brings you here?”
“I’m looking for a new job. Do you have any recommendations?”
Chief Taneda stared at Dazai in shock, but Dazai just innocently grinned.
“I find that hard to believe. There’s a long list of things I’d like to ask you…” Taneda scratched his chin with a finger. “Are you interested in the Special Division for Unusual Powers? If that’s the case—”
“You’d lose your job if I did that.” Dazai wryly smirked. “I don’t like places with lots of rules.”
“Then what kind of job are you looking for?”
“One where I can help people,” Dazai replied without a moment’s delay.
Chief Taneda crossed his arms and stared at Dazai in silence.
“Your record is too filthy. You’d need to lie low underground for a good two years to clean up. But, well…first, how about you answer a few questions? I’ve got an idea that could work.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s an armed agency made up of skill users. It’s kind of a legal gray
area, but they take on and solve troublesome tasks that the military and city police can’t. Their president is a sensible guy. It might be just what you’re looking for.”
Dazai nodded before closing his eyes as if he was contemplating something important. He opened his eyes again, full of determination, and asked:
“What’s the name of the organization?”
“Their name? The company’s name is…”
AFTERWORD
Good evening. Asagiri here.
I ordered the late Sakunosuke Oda’s favorite Osaka-style curry online and tried it. It was extremely spicy, but good. But also extremely spicy. My hand was basically glued to my water glass. The moment I finished, I started planning when I would eat it next. It was that kind of curry. I apologize to anyone reading this in the middle of the night.
Anyway, this is the second Bungo Stray Dogs novel: Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era. While Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam took place two years before the comics, this novel takes place four years earlier and is about Dazai’s life as a Mafia executive. The title inspiration came from the artist Pablo Picasso’s first works (as a young man) known as the Blue Period. The author Osamu Dazai was rather wild in his younger years, but the Dazai in Bungo Stray Dogs had his own dark days as a youth, too.
Now, if I may digress.
The substance of this novel came to life because of a certain photograph. Authors Osamu Dazai, Sakunosuke Oda, and Ango Sakaguchi were part of a school of writers known as the Buraiha, or libertines. They would gather at a bar in Ginza, drink, and talk about the literary world, novels, their family, and everything in between.
There’s actually a photo of them talking and having a good time that you can find at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature (taken by the photographer Tadahiko Hayashi). Osamu Dazai is trying to act all cool with his legs on the stool, Sakunosuke Oda is facing the camera and smiling, and Ango Sakaguchi has a hand on his glass while listening to Dazai’s story. They’re so relaxed that it’s hard to believe they’re in front of a camera (especially when you consider that cameras back then were huge and the flashbulbs had to be changed with every shot). You can really tell they got along. Not only are these three authors pillars of the literary world, but they seemed to be really close as well. I guess you could even call them “friends.” Such wonderful, sympathetic relationships aren’t easy to come by, and you can’t simply take them back if you lose them. That’s something even normal people like us can understand.
Then, only nine days after the picture was taken, Sakunosuke Oda passed away from a lung hemorrhage due to tuberculosis.
Osamu Dazai wrote “Oda! You did well” in his eulogy for the funeral. Not too long after that, he and Ango Sakaguchi also departed from this world, and now all that’s left is this picture of them. The starting point of this story came from what will never again return, something forever sealed within a strip of film.
As you know, the characters in Bungo Stray Dogs don’t share everything in common with their real-life counterparts. There are a number of discrepancies in the series’s setting that contradict historical fact (for example, it was actually Osamu Dazai who looked up to Ryuunosuke Akutagawa). I have no qualms with readers treating these as entities independent from the actual history.
However, my belief is that the faint glimmers these individuals left behind for future generations (such as the lines written in their stories, or that something within the aforementioned photo) are the very nature of a great author. So to stretch the point a bit, I feel as though this series wouldn’t be able to live up to its name—Bungo—without these glimmers.
Enough serious talk. I just wanted to express my gratitude to everyone for their support and love for the series. Thanks to you all, we are planning on a third novel. I’m going to be extremely busy releasing four comics and three novels within a year, but I really hope you look forward to the continuation of the Bungo Stray Dogs universe.
