Dazai Osamu Memorial Museum

About

The Osamu Dazai Memorial Museum 'Shayokan' occupies a residence built in 1907 by Tsushima Gen'emon, Dazai's father and a member of the House of Representatives. The wooden two-story building, with an irimoya-style roof in a Japanese-Western hybrid style, covers roughly 2,255 square meters of grounds and about 1,302 square meters of floor space. After Dazai's death, the Tsushima family sold the house in 1950, and the innkeeper who bought it converted it into an inn called 'Shayokan' that also housed a literary memorial to Dazai. The town of Kanagi purchased the building in 1996, and it reopened in 1998 under its current name, the Osamu Dazai Memorial Museum 'Shayokan.' In December 2004 the building was designated a National Important Cultural Property. It is now operated as a municipal facility in the Kanagi district of Goshogawara City, Aomori Prefecture.