I think this is one of those books where i regret not knowing the language in which it was originally written. All the works from japanese authors that I have read (which, I must admit, are not many, but still) have this particular style to them that I can't quite put my finger on, and of course Dazai's book here isn't an exception. I was under the impression that this book would be more disturbing than "No longer human", a book I haven't read but have been warned about thanks to my far from cheerful background. But i don't find where that 'disturbance' lies in. This book is about a changing society, and the ones most affected by it: the aristocracy. As a raging anti-capitalist (lol) I find absolutely no remorse in the aristocracy loosing the money delivered to them on a silver platter through the explotation of others; however there is another way this book explores aristocracy, or rather, the concept of nobility and that of the heart. What makes a person truly noble, far beyond anything anyone from this so called aristocracy could fathom to be. I'd be lying if i said i fully understood the purposes of this book, but of course i don't, I'm not Osamu Dazai, and I don't know him. What I take from this book is that one must, if nothing else, attempt to be noble, with the knowledge that to be noble is to be kind and look at the world with hope in one's heart; if not noble then one must live for two reasons: love and revolution. I am aware that is probably not the message the book was trying to communicate but it is the one I'm deriving from it, and whether it denotes my lack of media literacy or quite the opposite, will be up to you