Osamu Dazai (IEI): Personality Type Analysis

Osamu Dazai was a Japanese novelist, considered to be one of the most important storytellers of postwar Japan. While known primarily as a novelist, Dazai also earned recognition for his numerous short stories, including “Omoide” (“Memories”), “Sarugashima” (“Monkey Island”), and “Ha” (“Leaves”), which were published in Bannen, his first collection of short stories. Like most of his longer fiction, Dazai's short stories are autobiographical and reflect a troubled life marred by alcoholism, drug addiction, and several suicide attempts. Nevertheless, Dazai's fiction showcases his artistic imagination and unique confessional narrative technique.

Of what is known of Osamu during his youth, was his obsession with Japanese communities and society, nearly to the point where he would feel extremely desolate and depressed when people didn't take notice to his lamentations on what would happen to these societies in the future. Osamu was also interested in idealized projections of a utopia, he actively expressed of resentment towards societies he perceived as failures. (Countries torn apart by war, famine, apartheid, etc.) Many of his novels can easily be identified by having a very dark and wry theme, from powerful explorations of an individual’s alienation from society to the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Osamu was regularly arranged towards the wanderings of his creative ability in everyday life, running recollections through his mind numerous times to understand the progressions of their own adventure. This consistent hunt of importance in his life and philosophising on the explanation behind human presence (i.e. "Why we are here and what everything is paving the way to."), would point to a type with a very strong confidence in T, more like T1 than the weaker T6.

Osamu desperately wanted to share the depths and insights of his novels that projected the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Osamu was interested in getting others to feel what he felt, in hopes that individuals out there in the world wouldn't be afraid in exploring their own darker emotional states. In his youth, Osamu acted unusually cheerful and whimsical, though he spoke about this to address that he wanted to "mask how I truly felt on the inside". Osamu tried to motivate others by this idea and determined a solid feeling of recognizable proof with the individuals who might transparently bolster him in his tries. However, this did not give Osamu the results that he expected, with much of his works becoming bestselling novels in Japan long after his death. His methodology emerged in public settings, though was is considerably more inconspicuous and supportive, permitting him to work easily out of sight of a group. This suggests that Osamu was very fluent in E related works, bringing the notion of his flexibility in whether to add a profound T deeper meaning or the struggles of how people emerge triumphantly from F harsher realities, hinting at a flexible E2 than a more restrained E5.

Osamu had a hidden self-destructive nature in which he was involved in various scandals with women in an attempt to force himself out of his own negative emotional states. He actively sought physical stimulation in an attempt to passionately feel something, rather than be dragged down by trivial and meaningless tasks. His scandalous life of drug addiction, alcoholism, rebelliousness, love affairs, and despair touched the lost generation of his times. Osamu was easily manipulated and taken advantage of by others, his advocation of communism at the time of post-war Japan had very little practical bearing on reality and pertained to his own insights and reflections of an ideal world. Furthermore, he was able to fulfill his pervasive interest in revolutionary change by participating in the Pacific war, motivating him to act. The following already makes sense for a type with weak, valued F and unvalued P, making it more likely for an unattended P4 and sensitive F5.

In his personal life, Osamu was very emotionally intelligent and nihilistic towards the meaninglessness of human society, constantly striving for a "perfect society" that could not be practically implemented in the physical world. Osamu specifically lacked the ability to clearly express his inner perceptions to others, resulting in him becoming even more troubled and isolated from Japanese society. As an adult, the majority of his literary works become increasingly despairing, thus reflecting his own emotional crisis. Osamu Dazai spent years formulating a clear ideology for himself to live by and thus provided much needed structure to his own beliefs. Osamu sought to keep up a steady, clear comprehension of himself and the world he was involved in, alongside with the time that he set aside in his leisure to attempt to make sense of his actual needs in life and standards for him to live by. This points to a type with weak and valued L6.

His literary works would often reflect the cogitations to topics pertaining to morality, ethics, and relationships, wanting others to better understand that human nature isn't "black and white". The stories he wrote carried a large amount of emotional depth and the personal internalized conceptions of not what humanity "should be" but rather delivers his gloomy and nihilistic interpretation of what humanity "is". Rather than delving into an assortment of insights and intrigues, Osamu concentrated seriously on his thoughts that he felt conveyed individually intending to his presence and committed himself hours upon hours expounding on subjects that once in awhile veered off from negative emotionality. This recommends somebody with a powerlessness to adjust I for the sake of T, suggesting the relationship between I7 and T1 with reluctantly having to come up with alternate perceptions of these topics that already held a clear vision in his mind. 

Thus far what has been mentioned about Osamu clearly points towards T1, E2, P4, F5, L6, I7. In conclusion, I believe that Osamu is a very clear IEI.

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