Great figures who went through “A habit I can't quit”

Figures who went through this

• Dazai Osamu — The Man Who Pretended to Talk in His Sleep

  A boy who wanted his father's fountain pen could only ask for it by pretending to talk in his sleep. He lied, borrowed money, and even begged a prize committee, "Please give it to me." The embarrassing, hard-to-look-away life of a writer.

• Fukuzawa Yukichi — The Man Who Pretended to Be Fine

  As a child, he let his head be shaved without crying, because sake was the reward. He grew up resolved never to let joy or anger show, yet to the man who looked after his household accounts and errands, he was someone who let joy and anger show without hiding them. The proud, bluffing life of the man once on Japan's 10,000-yen bill.

• Masaoka Shiki — The Greedy Invalid

  "My sickbed of six feet: this is my world." He sent his friend the bill for the eel, was turned down by the pupil he chose, and screamed when it hurt. Even so, five days before he died, he looked at his garden that morning and cheered on a natto seller. The story of a greedy haiku poet.

• Nakahara Chuya — The Man He Could Not Hate

  On the day his girlfriend left, he carried her breakable things to the house of the man she was moving in with. He wrote of that man as "my enemy." Twelve years later, he trusted him with his last book of poems. The bitter, hard-to-hate life of a poet who died at thirty.

• Okuma Shigenobu — The Man Who Said He Didn't Mind Losing It

  "The leg I should have cut off decades ago, and I managed to keep it until that day." A man who lost his right leg to a bomb said this. He called being thrown out of school a happiness, said even the illness that nearly killed him was not useless, and said even a lost leg was no great loss. This is the story of his brave front, and of the people who held it up.