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For all of Dazai’s jokes, he has rather mixed thoughts about Kunikida’s notebook.
On one hand, he admires, in a way, how Kunikida is so dedicated to it. It’s something that he cannot fathom. Dazai knows his own whims change like the wind - it’s demonstrated in his career paths, his scheming, his unpredictable schedule of wandering and going for impromptu swims and not showing up to work.
To him, it’s bizarre and strange for someone to be so passionate about ideals and morals and being on time.
(Even in the mafia, he wandered and went for impromptu swims. He didn’t not show up to work, because Mori is no Fukuzawa and his punishments were not ‘do your paperwork for once, Dazai,’ but he was still aimless, for the most part.
Ideals, morals, being on time… all are foreign, unnecessary things to him.)
On the other hand, he looks at Kunikida’s notebook and he sees vulnerability, a liability, a weak point in the otherwise strong defenses of the stern man - something to attack, to target. He’d never say it aloud, of course, but when he first learnt, two years ago, of what the notebook contained, within minutes he had come up with dozens of plans to steal it, copy it, use it before he remembered that he didn't need to.
Even if he has realised, now, that Kunikida is a friend, of sorts, and not someone he needs to be able to exploit and blackmail and bribe and tug along on his many, many strings, he still sees the small, seemingly endless pages of the notebook as a vulnerability.
It would be so easy to just take from him, and it’s filled with so much information.
(He could even sell it to the right buyer - lots of organizations would kill, literally, for the Armed Detective Agency’s weakness - but he has no use for the money, or the favours it could earn him.)
To someone like Dazai, who used to make a living off of information, and now lives because of it, all those schedules, and logs of cases, and personal accounts, and little details about their colleagues, and their abilities and how they function, their weaknesses and their strengths… it would be one hell of a find.
And he could take it, have it all. He could take it, copy it, put it back, it’s owner none the wiser, and use it.
Instead, Dazai makes sure no one alive knows how precious Kunikida’s little notebook is.