Was Mori really a father figure to Dazai?
I've seen a lot of people argue about this, saying that Dazai doesn’t see Mori as a father figure and never will. And honestly, I can understand why people think that. Dazai went through an enormous amount of suffering while he was in the mafia, and a lot of that suffering is directly tied to Mori himself. Their relationship was manipulative, emotionally damaging, and built within an environment where violence and control were normalized. Because of that, many people immediately reject the idea of there being any sort of parental dynamic between them.
But I think the discussion becomes more complicated when you look beyond whether the relationship was healthy or not, and instead focus on how it developed and what role Mori actually occupied in Dazai’s life.
After all, Mori was the person who found Dazai at a very young age and kept him by his side for years. He was the one who guided him through the mafia, shaped the way he viewed the world, and influenced many aspects of the person Dazai eventually became. Even now, Dazai shares a surprising number of similarities with Mori, whether in the way he thinks, manipulates situations, or understands human behavior. There’s a reason people constantly compare them within the story itself. Mori didn’t just “work with” Dazai — he had a direct hand in raising and molding him during some of the most formative years of his life.
And I think that’s why the topic is difficult to discuss in such absolute terms. A parental figure does not automatically mean a loving or morally good parent. Realistically, there are many parent-child relationships that are deeply toxic, controlling, exploitative, or harmful, yet they still remain parental relationships. The existence of trauma doesn’t necessarily erase the role someone had in another person’s upbringing.
That’s why I personally see their relationship less as “Mori was secretly a good father” and more as an example of an unhealthy parental dynamic. Mori clearly cared about Dazai in his own distorted way, but that care was always intertwined with manipulation, control, and Mori’s own ambitions. He treated Dazai as both a person and a tool simultaneously, which created a relationship that feels incredibly difficult to define in simple terms.
At the same time, Dazai’s own attitude toward Mori is equally complicated. He clearly resents him, distances himself from him, and rejects many things connected to the mafia. Yet despite that, there’s still a level of understanding between them that Dazai rarely shares with other people. Dazai knows Mori extremely well, sometimes to an unsettling degree, and Mori understands parts of Dazai that very few characters seem capable of grasping. That mutual understanding is part of what makes their dynamic feel so personal rather than purely professional.
So while I’m not entirely sure I would outright call Mori a father figure either, I do think their relationship resembles the kind of toxic parent-child dynamic that can exist in real life far more than people are willing to admit. Not because Mori was a good parent, but because he occupied a role in Dazai’s life that went far beyond that of a simple boss or mentor.