Daido Moriyama's homage to the novelist Osamu Dazai (1909-48), whose sensitive and distinctive expression had a tremendous impact on twentieth-century Japanese literature. The book pairs 58 photographs chosen by Moriyama, himself a writer of essays who has often named Dazai among the authors who influenced him, with a stunning new English translation by Ralph McCarthy of the short story Villon's Wife, first published in 1947. The tale is told entirely in the spoken words of the wife of the dissolute poet Ohtani, who can be read as Dazai himself, and shows his sense of life and death; the speech of its women is what makes Dazai so hard to translate. The editor reread the whole of Dazai's stories to prepare the book. Earlier, in 1987, Moriyama made The Journey to Nakaji in homage to Nakaji Yasui. The grey cover is scored with a tangle of fine etched lines.