A New Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet is the consummate tale of an introspective melancholic struggling to come to terms with the world he lives in; it is no surprise, then, that artists like Goethe and Coleridge have identified with this tortured character over the centuries. As one of Japan’s most famous and troubled writers, Osamu Dazai, too, offered his own interpretation of Hamlet in his book Shin-Hamlet, or “A New Hamlet.” This book was published in 1941 during Dazai’s middle period and it marks a significant development in the career of the writer as he worked toward lengthier works that culminated in his classics Shayo (“The Setting Sun,” 1947) and Ningen Shikkaku (“No Longer Human,” 1948). It is a significant work that has never been published in English before.