Osamu Dazai

Osamu Dazai (太宰 治, Dazai Osamu); (June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. He is noted for his ironic and gloomy wit, his obsession with suicide, and his brilliant fantasy. Dazai was born Shūji Tsushima (津島修治, Tsushima Shūji), the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Tsugaru, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefect... more

Osamu Dazai (太宰 治, Dazai Osamu); (June 19, 1909 – June 13, 1948) was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. He is noted for his ironic and gloomy wit, his obsession with suicide, and his brilliant fantasy. Dazai was born Shūji Tsushima (津島修治, Tsushima Shūji), the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Tsugaru, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. His father was a member of the House of Peers and was thus often away from home, and his mother was chronically ill after having given birth to 11 children, so he was brought up mostly by the servants. Shūji was sent to boarding schools in Aomori for middle school and Hirosaki for higher school. An excellent student and an able writer even then, he edited student publications and contributed some of his own works. His life only started to change when his idol writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa committed suicide in 1927. Shūji started to neglect... less