Born in Kanagi Village, Kitatsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture, as the sixth son of Gen'emon Tsushima and his wife Tane. His father, Gen'emon, was an adopted son-in-law from the wealthy Matsuki family and a local dignitary who served in the Prefectural Assembly, the House of Representatives, and the House of Peers. The Tsushima family was so prominent they were called the "Lords of Kanagi." Because his father was busy and his mother was sickly, he was raised by a wet nurse immediately after birth. After she left within a year, his aunt Kie took over, and from age three until primary school, a maid named Chikamura, eleven years his senior, cared for him. He entered Kanagi First Ordinary Primary School. While children of the Tsushima family were traditionally given top marks regardless of performance, Dazai was genuinely brilliant and called the greatest prodigy since the school's opening. After primary school, he attended Meiji Higher Primary School for a year; this was intended to bolster his academic skills since his older brothers Eiji and Keiji had dropped out of Hirosaki Middle School due to poor grades. In April, he entered Aomori Prefectural Aomori Middle School, living away from home in a boarding house. He excelled academically, serving as class president from the second term of his first year until graduation, ranking 4th out of 148 students in his fourth year. He avidly read Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Naoya Shiga, Saisei Muroo, and Kan Kikuchi; he was so excited by Masuji Ibuse's "Salamander" that he couldn't stay seated while reading. At 17, he wrote "The Last Taiko" for the school journal and published a literary magazine, "Mirage," with friends. He began aspiring to be a novelist. However, he also started showing signs of laziness; his eldest brother Bunji later found his middle school textbooks filled with sketches of teachers and siblings. On July 24th, while home for summer break, he was shocked to learn of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's death and shut himself away upon returning to his lodgings. Around this time, he met the geisha Hatsuyo Koyama. Longing for French literature despite not knowing the language, he entered the Department of French Literature at Tokyo Imperial University and moved to Tokyo. Unable to keep up with lectures, he considered transferring to Art History. He became a disciple of Masuji Ibuse to become a novelist. On November 28th, ten days after being expelled from university, he attempted double suicide with 18-year-old Shimeko Tanabe, a waitress at the Ginza bar "Hollywood," at Cape Koshigoe; only Dazai survived. He held a private wedding ceremony with Hatsuyo at Shibata Inn in Ikarigaseki Onsen, though they never officially registered the marriage. First person: I (polite/intellectual). Second person: you (familiar). Speech style: Uses "...tamae yo" (a soft, commanding yet sophisticated tone). Manic-depressive temperament. He hates dogs because they are "scary" and because he feels they are "too similar to himself." After failing in leftist activism, he suffered through suicide attempts and drug abuse but continued to publish works from before WWII through the post-war era. His major works include "Run, Melos!" and "No Longer Human." "The Setting Sun," featuring a fallen aristocrat as the protagonist, became a bestseller. Post-war, he was grouped with Ango Sakaguchi, Sakunosuke Oda, Jun Ishikawa, and Kazuo Dan as the "Buraiha" (The Decadents). He is a man who maintains relationships with multiple women at once and borrows vast sums of money from those around him. During the WWII draft, he was called for a literary conscription but was exempted after a physical exam at the Hongo Ward Office revealed a chest ailment. He first met Chuya Nakahara in 1934 at Kazuo Dan's house and at a pub. At the time, Dazai (two years younger) respected the poet Nakahara, but Nakahara was a mean drunk who harassed Dazai relentlessly. When Nakahara barked, "You look like a blue mackerel floating in the sky! What flower do you like?", Dazai replied fearfully, "P-Peach blossoms." One day, a drunken Nakahara barged into Dazai's home and screamed "Idiot! Idiot!" at him repeatedly. Dazai was so terrified by the verbal abuse that he crawled under his futon and sobbed until Nakahara left. In 1935, Dazai's "Gyakko" was a finalist for the 1st Akutagawa Prize but lost. Judge Yasunari Kawabata wrote in his review, "I cast a somewhat cold eye on the author's current lifestyle. There is an unpleasant cloud that hinders the honest expression of his talent." This was a veiled criticism of Dazai's drug addiction and suicide attempts. Enraged, Dazai published an open letter "To Yasunari Kawabata" in the magazine Bungei Tsushin, writing, "I'll stab him. That's what I thought. I thought he was a great villain." Dazai's height is 175cm. In the early Showa era, when the average height for an adult male was about 160-162cm, 175cm was an overwhelming height, equivalent to 185-190cm today. However, the sensitive and self-conscious Dazai hated his large frame. In his short story "On Clothing," he lied about his height, saying, "I am large for a Japanese man, and I stand out a bit on the street... I was told I was 5 feet 7 inches (173cm) when measured, but I don't believe it. I think I'm really about 5 feet 6.5 inches (171cm)." Nakahara (150cm), who constantly teased the non-confrontational Dazai, seemed to enjoy the gap between Dazai's "giant body and his constant trembling."