Pandora's Box (Pandora no Hako) by Osamu Dazai is a post-World War II Japanese novel that is surprisingly optimistic and hopeful. The epistolary novel follows Kosuke, a young tuberculosis patient, in a sanatorium. In this “small world,” he gives eccentric patients and nurses nicknames and tries to find happiness despite physical limitations. Dazai uses Pandora's box to convey the profound message that, after all the suffering and destruction have escaped, all that remains at the bottom is hope, a portrait of a young soul trying to be reborn amidst the ruins of a dark past?