TANIZAKI Jun'ichiro

Nationality: Japanese. Born: Tokyo, 24 July 1886. Education: Attended Tokyo University, 1908-10. Family: Married 1) Chiyoko Ishikawa in 1915 (divorced 1930); 2) Furukawa Tomiko in 1931 (divorced); 3) Nezu Matsuko in 1935. Awards: Mainichi prize, 1947; Asahi Culture prize, 1949; Imperial Cultural medal, 1949. Member: Japan Academy of Arts, 1957; Honorary Member, American Academy, 1964. Died: 30 July 1965.

Publications

Collections

Zenshu [Collected Works]. 28 vols., 1966-70.

Short Stories

Shisei [Tattoo] (includes plays). 1911.

Momoku monogatari [A Blind Man's Tale]. 1932.

Ashikari. 1933; translated as Ashikari, with The Story of Shunkin, 1936.

Shunkin Sho. 1933; as The Story of Shunkin, with Ashikari, 1936; as"A Portrait of Shunkin," in Seven Japanese Tales, 1963.

Bushuko hiwa. 1935; as The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, with Arrowroot, 1982.

Ashikari, and The Story of Shunkin. 1936.

Neko to Shozo to Futari no Onna. 1937; as A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, 1990.

Yoshino Kuzu. 1937; as Arrowroot, with The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, 1982.

Yume no ukihashi [Floating Bridge of Dreams]. 1960.

Seven Japanese Tales. 1963.

The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, and Arrowroot. 1982.

The Reed Cutter and Captain Shigemoto's Mother: Two Novellas. 1993.

Novels

Akuma [Demon]. 1913.

Osai to Minosuke [Osai and Minosuke]. 1915.

Otsuya-goroshi. 1915; as A Spring-Time Case, 1927.

Ningyo no Nageki [Mermaid's Grief]. 1917.

Kin to Gin [Gold and Silver]. 1918.

Chijin no ai. 1925; as Naomi, 1985.

Kojin [Shark-Man]. 1926.

Tade kuu mushi. 1929; as Some Prefer Nettles, 1955.

Manji [A Swastika]. 193l; as Quicksand, 1995.

Setsuyo Zuihitsu. 1935.

Sasameyuki. 1948; as The Makioka Sisters, 1957.

Rangiku monogatari [Story of Tangled Chrysanthemums]. 1949.

Shoso Shigemoto no Haha [The Mother of Captain Shigemoto]. 1950.

Kagi. 1956; as The Key, 1960.

Futen Rōjin Nikki. 1962; as Diary of a Mad Old Man, 1965.

Plays

Hosshoji Monogatari [Story of Hosso Temple] (produced 1915).

Okuni to Gohei [Okuni and Gohei] (produced 1922).

Aisureba koso [Because of Love]. 1923.

The White Fox, in Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, edited by E.S. Bell and E. Ukai. 1930.

Shinzei [Lord Shinzei]. 1949.

Other

Zenshu [Collected Works]. 12 vols., 1930; and later editions.

In'ei raisan. 1933; as In Praise of Shadows, 1985.

Bunshu tokuhon [On Style]. 1936.

Yōshō-jidai [Boyhood]. 1957.

Setsugoan jawa [Reminiscences]. 1968.

Translator (into modern Japanese), Genji monogatari, by MurasakiShikibu. 26 vols., 1939-41.

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Critical Studies:

The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature by Hisaaki Yamanouchi, 1978; The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Mishima by Gwenn Boardman Petersen, 1979; Three Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata by Van C. Gessel, 1993; The Secret Window: Ideal Worlds in Tanizaki's Fiction by Anthony H. Chambers, 1994.

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Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's life and writings, which spanned the first three imperial reigns of Japan's modern era, both affected and were affected by the development of modern Japanese literature. Constantly at odds with the Japanese bundan, the literary mainstream, Tanizaki boldly set forth his ideas about fiction and forged his own style. From the start he opposed the major literary trends of his day, namely Japanese naturalism and the I-novel. Both these trends incorporated strong autobiographical tendencies, linking life and literature through a sincere, confessional style. Tanizaki believed that fiction involved using the imagination, telling lies not truths, telling a good story. He expressed these views in his famous debate with fellow writer Akutagawa Ryūnosuke in 1927. Throughout the debate Tanizaki emphasized the importance of plot and story in creating and constructing fiction. Throughout his career he explored numerous ways of implementing such ideas. In his writings he strove to create distinct and complete worlds with a reality all their own. Tanizaki played with various narrative devices, including diaries (as in Kagi [ The Key ]), retrospection ("The Bridge of Dreams"), and confession ("The Thief"); created dream-like worlds (Ashikari, "Longing for Mother," "Aguri") and worlds of shadows and darkness ("A Portrait of Shunkin," "A Blind Man's Tale") where fact and fiction were often indistinguishable; and developed a rich, eloquent, often lyrical style, as in Ashikari and Yoshino Kuzu (Arrowroot). Although he initially built his reputation on short stories and novellas, his complete works also include novels, plays, essays, memoirs, and several translations into modern Japanese of the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji.

Tanizaki's work is often neatly divided into two phases: his infatuation with the West and things Western through the mid-1920s, and his return to Japan and things Japanese thereafter. But the reversal was never complete as he continually interwove Japanese and foreign elements, always mindful of Japan's modernization even as he sought an irretrievable past. This modern-traditional dichotomy was often a function of geography, Japanese geography that is, with Tokyo representing the stark, chaotic, disruptive nature of modernization and the Kansai area (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe) representing the beauty and charm of Japan's past. Most of Tanizaki's early writings do take place in Tokyo and its environs, with a transition to the Kansai area in the mid-to late 1920s, shortly after Tanizaki himself moved there. It is during this middle period that Tanizaki not only sought Japan's past in the Kansai area but experimented with the world of historical fiction as well (Arrowroot, "A Blind Man's Tale," "The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi," "A Portrait of Shunkin"). He manipulated history in order to create a separate world and fabricated "documents" to lend authenticity to the form. Tanizaki's next major work to be set in Tokyo was the novel Futen Rōjin Nikki (Diary of a Mad Old Man), near the end of his long career.

The major recurring themes in Tanizaki's writing revolve around a sense of longing. Tanizaki grew up in Tokyo's shitamachi, or downtown, where merchants and artisans lived and where traditional Japan and modernizing Japan came together creating a diverse urban culture. A decline in the family fortune and increasing Western influence robbed Tanizaki of the comfortable world that he loved. Tanizaki's longing for the lost world of his childhood was a stimulus for his nostalgic and loving recreations of both the recent and distant past. Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters) was his most sustained and successful tribute to a vanishing way of life, that of the pre-World War II, upper-middle class. Tanizaki is probably most famous for his longing for and pursuit of the Ideal Woman. Pathological and/or sadomasochistic elements are indispensable to his quest for absolute beauty, thus linking beauty with evil. In many cases Tanizaki's longing for the Ideal Woman becomes a longing for Mother, or vice versa. Other favorite themes include an obsession with feet, excretory processes, food and eating, a fear of madness and self-destruction, and glimpses of perversity in human nature.

Tanizaki's writing is often compared with that of Edgar Allan Poe. Their similarities include explorations of the worlds of fantasy, terror, and shadow; fascination with the Eternal Woman and sadomasochism; and lack of didacticism. Yet in depicting the power struggle between the sexes inherent in the quest for absolute beauty, Tanizaki drew his inspiration not only from Poe and the Western romantic tradition but from the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century erotic and sadistic stories of Japanese picture books and kabuki. Tanizaki's femme fatale stories reveal a masochistic desire on the part of the protagonist to submit completely to a woman, and often one of lower social status, thus opposing Buddhist and Confucian teachings on two counts—elevating women and crossing class lines.

"The Tattooer" is classic Tanizaki. He creates a world where beauty is the ultimate authority. Seikichi, a tattooer renowned for the bold eroticism of his art, revels in the pain his needles cause and dreams of creating his masterpiece on a beautiful woman. He discovers the essence of woman in a young, apprentice geisha and enacts the male fantasy of forced submission (through the use of a Western drug) that leads to sexual awakening. As he tattoos her drugged body, he pours his own being into her. Drained and exhausted, he watches his masterpiece come to life and willingly submits to the power he has created. Through submission he validates his achievement. Other male protagonists participate to varying degrees in molding women to suit their fantasies, leaving the reader to wonder whether submission signifies a loss or gain in power. Okada is literally wasting away from his obsession with an overindulged young bar girl ("Aguri"). In another story Professor Rado is a middle-aged, self-important, eccentric but respected public figure whose startling private obsessions, involving a maid and a chorus girl, are uncovered by an inquisitive reporter ("Professor Rado"). And in a comic yet touching piece two women vie for the love of a man who is totally consumed with love for his cat ("A Cat, A Man, and Two Women"). Tanizaki also treats the theme of dominance and submission by examining a non-erotic relationship between teacher and pupil ("The Little Kingdom"). All these stories entail a power reversal and the questions remain: who has control and at what cost?

Tanizaki's theme of longing for Mother is strongly connected with an idealized image of his own dead mother as well as his fascination with The Tale of Genji, where the pursuit of a lost mother is central to the plot. As in Genji the longing for mother carries with it strong erotic undertones. A young boy searches for and finds his dead mother in a dream sequence that is evocative, surreal, and nostalgic ("Longing for Mother"). Tsumura helps his friend gather material for a historical novel while actually pursuing a woman who resembles his dead mother (Arrowroot). Tadasu is raised by a stepmother who was instructed and encouraged by the father to be exactly like the dead mother ("The Bridge of Dreams," also the title of the last section of Genji). In all three stories the mother figure remains eternally young and beautiful, whether through dream, memory, or transference.

Tanizaki's carefully constructed fictional worlds expose the reader to exotic, erotic, and nostalgic fantasies, as they simultaneously reveal glimpses of a modernizing Japan. His insights into human psychology both delight and cause alarm. Tanizaki combines all this with a rich, imaginative style and succeeds in creating a distinctive and memorable body of literature.

—Dina Lowy

See the essay on "A Portrait of Shunkin."