Shoji Tsuji was born in Wakayama Prefecture. In 1976, he graduated from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine. After research and teaching appointments with the Jichi Medical University Department of Neurophysiology, the NIH in America and the Niigata University Department of Neurology, Brain Research Institute, Tsuji was made director of the Niigata University Brain Research Institute in 2001. Since 2007 he has served as Director of Neuroscience in the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine. He has been the director of the Medical Genome Center at the University of Tokyo Hospital since 2011, and since 2015 he has headed up the Medical Genomics Research Initiative of the University of Tokyo. He has been a professor in the International University of Health and Welfare Graduate School of Health and Welfare Sciences since 2017. He has been in his current position since 2019.