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 Japanese
novelist whose works deal with the tensions between the traditional
and modern culture of his native land. Tanizaki often uses irony
and the obsessive erotic desires of his characters to mirror the
influence of the West on the old cultural heritage. After publishing
novels written in a fairly orthodox style, Tanizaki fused traditional
Japanese storytelling and experimental narrative. He emphasizes
fabrication as the basis for fiction, stating that in both his reading
and his writing he is 'uninterested in anything but lies.'
Junichiro Tanizaki was born in Tokyo, where his family owned a
printing press. The family had once been wealthy but had fallen
on hard times. Tanizaki worshiped his mother who breast-fed him
until he was 6. Despite financial problems, his parents pampered
him and took him to countless theatrical performances, which gave
birth to the author's passion for drama and the traditional Japanese
arts.
Tanizaki's studies at the university of Tokyo ended in 1910 due
to a shortage of money - or according to some sources his non-payment
of fees was an act of rebellion. At the age of 24 he published one
of his best short stories, 'The Tattooer', which show the influence
of Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde and the French Decadents. Tanizaki
also translated Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray. In the story
the character of a young woman starts to change after she has a
tattoo. In Wilde's original novel the painting displays the decay
of the subject, in Tanizaki's tale the artist's design is the cause
of the woman transformation. The theme of feminine beauty and moral
integrity marks his following stories, among then 'Whirlpool' in
which an evil woman poses as a Buddhist saint for an artist's drawing.
...Standing aside, he studied the enormous female spider tattooed
on the girl's back, and as he gazed upon it, he realized that
in this work he had expressed the essence of his whole life. Now
that it was completed, the artist was aware of a great emptiness.
'To give you beauty I have poured my whole soul into
this tattoo,' Seikichi murmured. 'From now on there is not a woman
in Japan to rival you! Never again will you know fear. All men,
all men will be your victims...'
(from 'Tattoo)
 The
turning point in Tanizaki's life was the great earthquake in Tokyo
region in 1923. His house in the fashionable residential area was
levelled by the quake. Tanizaki left his wife and child and moved
to the Osaka area which was much more old fashioned. There he stopped
using Western models and started to take an interest in traditional
literature, especially the classical Japanese tale GENJI MONOGATARI
(The Tale of Genji), written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu (c. 980-1030).
Tanizaki'a first novel from this period, serialized in the mid-20's,
was Naomi (trans. in English in 1985), in which a 28-year-old
engineer, Joji, has a love affair with a young femme fatale who
is totally immersed in Western culture. In TADE KUU MUSHI (Some
Prefer Nettles, 1928-29) Tanizaki continues the theme and makes
Tokyo and Osaka symbols of the conflict between traditional and
modern culture in Japan.
At the time of writing 'Professor Rado' (1925-28), an erotic story
about an eccentric bachelor professor, Tanizaki's second marriage
was ending. Her third wife, Matsuko, become for the author a target
of worship, as did many other women in his life.
Tanizaki's years of immersion in Japanese history produced some
of his finest works. The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi
(1935) is set in the 16th-century civil-war period. In the story
Lady Kikyo sets out to revenge the murder of her father and mutilation
of his face. But the culprit is not her husband, as she thinks,
but her lover, the Lord of Mushashi, whose bizarre sexual obsession
is behind the whole plot. Tanizaki's admiration for old Osaka is
seen in SASAMEYUKI (The Makioka Sisters, 1943-48), a recreation
of Osaka family life in the 1930s. The first chapters of the novel
appeared during World War II, but further publication was stopped
by censorship of the military government. Tanizaki continued writing
and published the first part at his own expense and delivered copies
to his friends. The second part appeared in 1947 and the third part
was first printed in a serialized form in a magazine.
Although Tanizaki's used his own wife and her three sisters-in-law
as models - and the author himself plays a small part in the middle
of the story - it is not a roman à clef. Tanizaki wanted
to record the vanishing cultural milieu of Osaka, its dialect, and
the daily life of a middle-class family. The story concerns four
sisters, who are trying to find a suitable husband for Yukiko, the
third sister. She is a woman of traditional belief and has rejected
several suitors, and remains unmarried. Until Yukiko marries, Taeko,
the youngest, the most Westernized must wait for her turn according
to social convention.
Tanizaki's nostalgic love for the traditions and remnants of the
past, even the rustic and worn-out, is expressed in the essay 'In
Praise of Shadows' (1933-34). In it Tanizaki juxtaposes harsh Western
light and the ''muddy'' Japanese complexion: ''I would call back
at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In
the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the
walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come
forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration.''
 Tanizaki's
famous post-war novels include FUTEN ROJIN NIKKI (1962, Diary of
a Mad Old Man), which depicts an aged diarist who is struck down
by a stroke caused by an excess of sexual excitement. He records
both his past desires and his current efforts to bribe his daughter-in-law
to provide sexual favours in return for Western baubles. In KAGI
(1956, The Key) the two protagonists use their diaries as a means
of communication by tacitly agreeing to read each other's diaries
while outwardly pretending that they do not. The diaries reveal
their problems in understanding each other and their isolation even
during the shared activity of sexual union. In the short story 'The
Thief' Tanizaki again studies the theme of fabrications and truth.
The narrator is a young student who is suspected of stealing from
his comrades. "It also struck me that if even the most virtuous
person has criminal tendencies, maybe I wasn't the only one who
imagined the possibility of being a thief." Finally the protagonist
admits his guilt but defends himself by stating that he told the
truth, albeit in a roundabout way.
Several of Tanizaki's stories have been made into films, in Japan
and other countries. He received the Imperial Prize in 1949 for
The Makioka Sisters. Tanizaki died in Yugawara, south of
Tokyo, on July 30, 1965. His childhood memoirs appeared serially
in a Japanese magazine in 1955-56 and were published in English
in 1988.
For further reading: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro ron by Noguchi
Takehiko (1973); The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki,
Kawabata, and Mishima by Gwenn Boardman Petersen (1979); Visions
of Desire: Tanizaki's Fictional Worlds by Ken K. Ito (1991); Three
Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata by C. Van Gessel
(1993); The Secret Window by Anthony Hood Chambers (1994); Tanizaki
Jun'ichiro: Kitsune to mazohizumu by Chiba Shunji (1994)
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