Jun Tsuji - The Tengu Incident and Buddhist Renunciation

The Tengu Incident and Buddhist Renunciation

In 1932 Tsuji was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital after what would become popularly known as the "Tengu Incident". According to some accounts, one night during a party at a friend's residence, Tsuji climbed to the second floor and began flapping his arms crying “I am the Tengu!”, eventually jumping from the building, running around, and jumping onto the table calling “kyaaaaaa, kyaaaa!!”

After hospitalization, Tsuji was diagnosed as having experienced a temporary psychosis probably resulting from his chronic alcoholism. During this hospitalization Tsuji came to idealize the Buddhist monk Shinran and read the Tannishō many times over. Thereafter the once prolific Tsuji gave up his writing career, and he returned to his custom of vagabondage in the fashion of a Komusō monk, apparently as a sort of Nekkhamma.

For the next few years Tsuji fell into various incidents with police and was readmitted to mental hospitals several times. At the age of 41 Tsuji suffered a major asthma attack and after hospitalization became weighed down with substantial hospital bills. While book royalties and a sort of "Tsuji Jun Fan Club" (辻潤後援会 (Tsuji Jun kōenkai)?) provided some economic support, Tsuji was caught up in a harsh late World War II economic environment and would spend the last few years of his life in vagabond poverty. Tsuji often made endsmeet by going door-to-door as a busking shakuhachi musician. However, in 1944 Tsuji settled down in a friend's one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo where he was found dead by starvation.

Tsuji is now buried in Tokyo's Saifuku Temple.