Tsushima was born in
Mitaka, Tokyo, the third child (younger of two daughters) of famed novelist
Osamu Dazai and Michiko Ishihara, a teacher at a girls' school.[4][5] Her father committed suicide when she was one year old;[6] she later drew on the aftermath of this experience in writing her
short story "The Watery Realm".[7][8]
Career
While attending
Shirayuri Women's University she published her first fiction. At age 24 she published her first collection of stories, Carnival (Shaniku-sai). A prolific writer, she was the winner of several literary prizes.[9] In 1972 her story Pregnant with a Fox (Kitsune wo haramu) was a runner-up for the
Akutagawa Prize. She was awarded the
Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature in 1977 for Kusa no Fushido (Bedchamber of Grass),[10] and the first annual
Noma Literary New Face Prize for Hikari no ryōbun (Territory Of Light) in 1979.[11] In 1983 she was awarded the Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize for her short story Danmari ichi (The Silent Traders),[12] and in 1986 she won the
Yomiuri Prize for her novel Yoru no hikari ni owarete (Driven by the Light of the Night).[13] In 1998 she was awarded the 34th
Tanizaki Prize and the 51st
Noma Literary Prize for her novel Hi no yama – yamazaruki (Mountain of Fire: Account Of A Wild Monkey).[14][11] In 2002 she won the Osaragi Jiro Prize for Warai ookami (Laughing Wolf).[15]
Writing style
Tsushima's work is often characterized as
feminist, though she did not apply this label to her own work.[16][17][18] Her writing explores the lives of marginalized people, usually women, who struggle for control of their own lives against societal and family pressures.[17][19] She has cited
Tennessee Williams as a literary influence.[20] Unlike many of her contemporaries, whose writing about women tended to assume a nuclear family, Tsushima wrote about women who had been abandoned by family members.[21] Her stories, several of which draw on her own experience as a single mother,[20][22] focus on the
psychological impact of abandonment on those left behind.[7][23]
^Hartley, Barbara (3 June 2016). "Chapter 6: Feminism and Japanese Literature". In Hutchinson, Rachael; Morton, Leith Douglas (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature. pp. 82–94.