Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was one of the most important Japanese novelists of the twentieth century. His many published works include No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, Schoolgirl, and A Shameful Life. Dazai died by suicide at the age of thirty-eight.

David Boyd (translation, introduction, notes) has twice won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has translated fiction by Mieko Kawakami, Izumi Suzuki, and Hiroko Oyamada, among others. He is an assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.