Osamu Dazai
In the Edo period, the peninsula was part of the Hirosaki Domain and was ruled by the Tsugaru clan. Traditionally one of the poorest and remotest areas of Japan, Tsugaru is best known as the birthplace of writer Osamu Dazai, who wrote the mordant travelogue "Tsugaru" about his travels around the peninsula, and for the "Tsugaru-jamisen", a distinctive local version of the Japanese string instrument shamisen. After the defeat of Aizu during the Boshin War, many of the last samurai were sent to prisoner-of-war camps on the Tsugaru Peninsula.