Self-identity In The Context Of Modernity

The modern Japanese writer Dazai Osamu(1909-1948)was the representative writer of the Japanese post-war"Buraha" literature.In his fifteen-year career,he has left a large number of famous works,and has the reputation of "The inextinguishable pyramid of Showa literature." After the publication of the setting sun,the buzzword like setting sun clan was even produced.Dazai Osamu’s novels show the individual’s negative,embarrassing and degenerate after the war,reflecting the spiritual crisis what individuals generally face.The spirit of resistance in his work still has a strong attraction.Dazai Osamu has always excavated the ugliness of the real society,criticized the hypocrisy of human nature and contradicted the sinisterness of the human heart.The pursuit of truth and virtue has become the life creed and the literary goal of Dazai Osamu that he has carried out through his life.To examine the traditional Japanese culture in Dazai Osamu’s works from the perspective of modernity,not only can we explore the profound details of Japanese traditional culture,fill the gaps in the research of modern factors in Dazai Osamu’s works,reveal the conflict and integration between modernity and traditional culture phenomenon,but also can be based on the present,reflecting on the survival dilemma of mankind nowadays.In addition to the "Introduction" and "Conclusion",this article consists of four parts.The introduction part mainly introduces the research reasons and significance of this paper from two perspectives——Japanese traditional literature and Modernity.It introduces the general research angle of Dazai Osamu’s novels at home and abroad.The related concepts such as "subjectivity" and "self’ have been briefly explained,so as to sort out the main ideas of the research.The first chapter begins with the "marginal people" shaped in Dazai Osamu’s novels.He exposed the survival dilemma of these characters in the context of World War II.The Meiji Restoration promoted the rapid modernization in Japanese society.The outbreak of the Second World War completely unveiled many problems that modernity has imposed on Japanese society and the people.Dazai Osamu’s novels reflect the sense of crisis,disillusionment and emptiness of modern people in modern life.He projected his own life experiences and epiphanies into his works,creating one after another decadent and degrading characters,which made his works fullfilled a feeling of emptiness.Dazai Osamu expressed his decadent and nihilistic philosophy of life through the protagonist what he created in his works,and attempted to fight the post-war social system and seek spiritual freedom and liberation.The second chapter analyzes Dazai Osamu’s novels by using the theory of modernity.Exploring the dilemma of self-identification generated by the characters in the context of modernity.Under the trend of modernity,individuals can’t keep up with the times be trapped in survival dilemma.Survival dilemma results from the individual’s difficult choose between fame and metaphysical ultimate pursuit.The most intuitive manifestation is the confrontation in the individual’s mind.In this way,while the individual recognizes the intense pain of the demise of internal experience,self-identification tends to dissipate,and in the disintegration,the pain is recognized infinitely cyclically.These marginal characters shaped by Dazai Osamu are the process of constantly searching for the true self and seeking external and internal identity.Although their resistance is a failure of self-identification,it is a group of people who redeem themselves on an abstract metaphysical level.The third chapter analyzes the traditional Japanese aesthetic consciousness expressed in Dazai Osamu’s novels.Aesthetic consciousness has long been a source in Japan."Monoaware","Yugen","Wabi" and "Sabi" are all aesthetic ideas throughout Japanese literature.Dazai Osamu’s novels are full of delicate and sad feelings.His slender lyricism and simple literary form are all derived from the aesthetic consciousness.His novels are deeply influenced by the traditional aesthetic consciousness,and his delicate thoughts and feelings have exerted the Japanese traditional aesthetic consciousness such as "Monoaware"and "Yugen".Since the Meiji Restoration,with the advancement of modernity,the orthodox status of Japanese traditional aesthetic consciousness has tended to be dissolved,and individual self-identification has been in trouble.Dazai Osamu reflects the individual’s confusion and expresses profound humanistic care with his unique style and disgusting tone.The fourth chapter aims to reflect on the self-identity dilemma of the individual in Dazai Osamu’s novels.The sluggish Japanese economy after the World War II led to social unrest and the poverty of the people.The government suppressed Marxism and nationalism.In order to escape the metaphysical distress,Japanese writers have hid in the Japanese traditional aesthetic consciousness.However,this kind of behavior seeking help from classical is not the result of the development of individual subjectivity,but the consequence of the mental crisis caused by the high pressure of the surrounding environment.Therefore,the post-war writers have expressed the individual’s self-identity and the special development of the subject consciousness in the special era background.In the context of modernity,the Japanese literary tradition represented by "private novels",combined with the special historical and cultural background of the convergence of Japanese and Western cultures in modern society,makes the self-identity of individuals in Japanese literature full of urgency in the process of modernization.Japanese traditional aesthetic consciousness uses the "Monoaware " and "Yugen "as the keynote of asthetics,which dilutes the role of ideology.From this point of view,it conforms to nationalism and liberalism.In the face of the defeated Japan,Dazai Osamu had a strong confusion about today’s society and lost the basic understanding of morality.While lamenting the disappearance of noble spirit,Dazai Osamu also bears the pain caused by the collapse of the classical world.It generates a dense sense of anti-customity that pervades the fiction of Dazai Osamu.The conclusion part summarizes the whole paper.Dazai Osamu is always good at pens from the nuances of life,with a strong sense of reality,and does not have a profound symbolic meaning.There are too many statues of Dazai Osamu in the many characters shaped by his own life experience.Both life and writing techniques have great similarities.The prevalence of post-war modernity has led individuals to fall into the predicament of self-identification.The " Buraiha " represented by Dazai Osamu began to resist the society in a degenerate and decadent manner,calling for the freedom and liberation of human nature.Dazai Osamu is a step that we must take to face the future and bravely advance.His decadence,his fall,his nothingness are the "pain"that human beings must try to control the uncontrollable beast of modernity.It is possible for us to get the future and beat the modernity.