Osamu Dazai’s short-story collection “No One Knows” shows why he was the master of melancholy. ... the semiautobiographical “No Longer Human,” centered on the life of Oba Yozo, ...

NO LONGER HUMAN (177 pp.)—Osamu Dazai—New Directions ($3.50).One day in 1948, aged 38, Japanese Novelist Osamu Dazai committed suicide by jumping into Tokyo's Tamagawa Reservoir. It was ...