Factbook

Osamu Dazai  (1909-1948) famous for his novel No Longer Human, Ningen Shikaku, killing himself at the age of 38, womanising, and being expelled from Tokyo Imperial University, has been dubbed The Bad Boy of Japanese literature.

Many of Japan’s most interesting creative writers, such as Fuminori Nakamura, cite his book No Longer Human as their favourite book, or one that had a huge influence on them, and the author still has a James Dean (1931-1955) cult-like status amongst many in Japan.

Dazai, son of a rich landowner, moneylender and politician, grew up in a beautiful Western-style home, known as Shayokan, in Aomori, Northern Japan. His real name was Shuji Tsushima.

His father commissioned Sakichi Horie (1845-1907) a local architect to design the house for him, which consists of 11 rooms on the ground floor, including a special room know as the Money Lending Shop, and 8 rooms on the first floor much of which is made from hiba wood, considered one of Japan’s best types of wood from a tree in the cypress family.

The property, which spans a total of 2,250 square metres, was completed in 1907.

Horie is also famous for designing and building the Renaissance-style 59^th National Bank in Hirosaki, Aomori in 1904 – a regional bank set up in 1879.

At this time modern banking in Japan was still emerging and the type of money lending conducted by Dazai’s father, Genemon Tsushima, who owned around 300 tenanted properties or farms, was an early form of modern banking when financing in Japan was still mostly based around crop and rice yields. 

Japan’s first bank and first company structured as a joint-stock company was founded in 1873 with the right to issue banknotes. Later it became a commercial bank after the Bank of Japan took over this responsibility. And Japan started raising funds for the first time internationally in the London money markets in the same decade, changing the sector completely.

Dazai lived in the house for 13 years, but his father, a member of the House of Peers, was mostly absent in Tokyo during this time. His mother and aunt brought him up.

In his mother’s living room, known as The Library, Dazai and his siblings studied and played. This beautifully crafted room has poetry displayed on one of its sliding cupboard doors. One of these poems, close to where Dazai’s desk is said to have been located as a child, included the word shayo, setting sun, a phrase, which Dazai in later life would select as the title for one of his most famous novels.

Dazai often drew on this family background in his works. His novels The Setting Sun and No Longer Human are still both considered modern-day classics in Japan.