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 si...