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was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan. He is incredibly illustrious in Japan and a number of his most popular works, such as Shayō and Ningen Shikkaku, are considered modern-day classics. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan. One such literary work, Ningen Shikkaku, has received quite a few adaptations: a film directed by Genjiro Arato, the first four episodes of the anime series Aoi Bungaku, and a manga serialized in Shinchosha's Comic Bunch magazine. While Dazai continues to be widely celebrated in Japan, he remains relatively unknown in the United States with only a handful of his novels available in English. ==Life and Career== Dazai was born , the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. He spent these early years in the Tsushima mansion with some thirty people. Despite coming from very humble beginnings, the Tsushima family quickly rose in power and after some time, became highly respected across the region. Dazai's father, Gen'emon Tsushima, became politically involved and was offered membership into the House of Peers. This made Dazai's father absent during much of his early childhood, and with his mother, Tane, chronically ill after having given birth to 11 children, Tsushima was brought up mostly by the family's servants. In 1923, Tsushima attended Aomori Prefectural Aomori High School and entered Hirosaki University's literature department in 1927. He developed an interest in Edo culture and began studying gidayū. Around 1928, Tsushima edited a series of student publications and contributed some of his own works, such as "Aware ga" (Poor Mosquito). He even published a magazine called ''Saibō bungei'' (Cell Literature) with his friends, and subsequently became a staff member of the college's newspaper team. His success in writing was brought to a halt, when his idol, the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa committed suicide in 1927. Tsushima started to neglect his studies, and spent the majority of his allowance on clothes, alcohol and prostitutes and dabbled with Marxism, which at the time was heavily suppressed by the government. He frequently expressed guilt in his earliest writings about having been born into an incorrect social class. On the night of December 10, 1929, Tsushima committed his first suicide attempt, but survived and was able to graduate the following year. In 1930, Tsushima enrolled in the French Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University and promptly stopped studying again. In October, he ran away with a geisha named Hatsuyo Oyama () and was formally expelled from his family. Nine days after the expulsion, Tsushima attempted suicide by drowning off a beach in Kamakura with another woman, 19-year-old bar hostess Shimeko Tanabe (). Shimeko died, but Tsushima lived, having been rescued by a fishing boat. He was charged as an accomplice in her death. Shocked by the events, Tsushima's family intervened to drop a police investigation, his allowance was reinstated and he was released of any charges. In December, Tsushima recovered at Ikarigaseki and married Hatsuyo there. Soon after, Tsushima was arrested for his involvement with the banned Communist Party of Japan and, upon learning this, his elder brother Bunji promptly cut off his allowance again. Tsushima went into hiding, but Bunji managed to get word to him that charges would be dropped and the allowance reinstated yet again if he solemnly promised to graduate and swear off any involvement with the party. Tsushima took up the offer. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Osamu Dazai」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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