While she attended Osaka University, she studied under the playwright and scholar Masakazu Yamazaki.
She was influenced by Yamazaki and read his plays such as Zeami and Ambition and Summer Grass.
[1] In 1978 she married the Japanese cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi after meeting him at University of Toronto.
[4] The play Destination Japan is about a Zainichi pianist named Ha Song'ae.
Tsutsumi was inspired to write the play after reading Choi Soon'ae's book, To Continue Questioning "My Country": The Repercussions of a Refusal to Being Fingerprinted.