Set in the early post-war years, it examines the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Osamu Dazai died by suicide in 1948. Nevertheless, the influence of his book "The Setting Sun" has made it a staple of the Japanese language, and its heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately leaves her class, becomes a symbol of the anomie that permeates much of the modern world.