He also dabbled with Marxism, which at the time was heavily suppressed by the government. Tsushima started to neglect his studies, and spent the majority of his allowance on clothes, alcohol, and prostitutes. Tsushima's success in writing was brought to a halt when his idol, the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, committed suicide in 1927 at 35 years old.
He also published a magazine called Saibō bungei ( Cell Literature) with his friends, and subsequently became a staff member of the college's newspaper. Around 1928, Tsushima edited a series of student publications and contributed some of his own works. He developed an interest in Edo culture and began studying gidayū, a form of chanted narration used in the puppet theaters. On March 4, 1923, Tsushima's father Gen'emon died from lung cancer, and then a month later in April Tsushima attended Hirosaki High School, followed by entering Hirosaki University's literature department in 1927. In 1916, Tsushima began his education at Kanagi Elementary. This made Dazai's father absent during much of his early childhood, and with his mother, Tane, being ill, Tsushima was brought up mostly by the family's servants and his aunt Kiye. ĭazai's father, Gen'emon, a younger son of the Matsuki family, which due to "its exceedingly 'feudal' tradition" had no use for sons other than the eldest son and heir, was adopted into the Tsushima family to marry the eldest daughter, Tane he became involved in politics due to his position as one of the four wealthiest landowners in the prefecture, and was offered membership into the House of Peers.
They quickly rose in power and, after some time, became highly respected across the region. The Tsushima family was of obscure peasant origins, with Dazai's great-grandfather building up the family's wealth as a moneylender, and his son increasing it further. At the time of his birth, the huge, newly-completed Tsushima mansion, where he would spend his early years, was home to some thirty family members. He was the tenth of eleven children by his parents.
Shūji Tsushima was born on June 19, 1909, the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner and politician in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. Tsushima in a 1924 high school yearbook photo
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