Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Japanese novelist

• Born: July 24, 1886
• Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
• Died: July 30, 1965
• Place of death: Yugawara, Japan

Tanizaki admired Western literature early in his career but was drawn increasingly to traditional values and forms with the passage of time. His work is characterized by both intricate narratives and stylistic elegance.

Early Life

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (jewn-ee-chee-roh tah-nee-zawk-ee) was born to Sogoro Tanizaki, a rice merchant by virtue of his marriage into the Tanizaki family, whose name he subsequently adopted. It was Jun’ichirō’s grandfather, Hisaemon, who had built the business. Sogoro could not appropriate the Tanizaki business acumen as he had the name. When his father-in-law’s fortune came into his hands, he grossly mismanaged it. As a result, the performance of the business fluctuated wildly, the long-term effect being a steady decline in the family fortune. The death of an elder brother left Jun’ichirō heir to the dissipated Tanizaki wealth. Although he was a brilliant student, there was at one point a serious problem regarding his tuition fee at the Tokyo Metropolitan First Middle School. Later, he would observe, in his typically paradoxical fashion, that his rearing in Tokyo’s merchant class had left him with both a distaste for materialism and a strong sense of nostalgia.

Tanizaki studied classical Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University after first sampling English law and English literature. Very early, he had exhibited a talent for literary composition, and he published several pieces in small magazines during his years at the university. He was not graduated and, again, the lack of money was quite probably a contributing factor. In the autumn of 1910, he published two plays and two short stories in Shinshicho, a magazine that he and university friends were editing. The short story “Shisei” (1909; “The Tattooer,” 1956) introduced one of Tanizaki’s enduring themes the erotic power of feminine beauty. Seikichi, a tattooer, becomes obsessed with a young geisha. He drugs the girl and tattoos an enormous spider sprawling across her back. When she awakens, however, she announces to Seikichi that he has become her victim.

Life’s Work

In January, 1911, Tanizaki’s first paid piece, Shinzei, a play, was published in Subaru. In June and September, two of his stories appeared in the same periodical. The earlier of these, “Shōnen” (youth), attracted the attention of several prominent literary figures. In October, his first novel, Taifū (typhoon), appeared in Mita-Bungaku. He was married in 1915 to Chiyoko Ishikawa. The first decade of Tanizaki’s career was an exciting period in Japanese literature. Japan, by virtue of its victory in the Russo-Japanese War, was now a force to be reckoned with internationally. Western literary influences had been growing since the previous century, and the hold of ancient conventions had been loosening. A controversy was in progress between the naturalist writers, who had commanded the literary field, and their opponents. Tanizaki embraced Westernism and fell under the spell of Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Baudelaire, especially the mixture of sensuousness and morbidity in their fiction. The critic Gwenn Boardman Petersen argues, on the other hand, that Tanizaki’s Westernization has been overstated, that Japan’s long tradition of ghost and horror tales is sufficient to account for the bizarre elements in his early work. These elements had by 1920 caused some critics to label him a “Satanist.”

In 1923, a great earthquake struck Tokyo, and Tanizaki subsequently relocated to Okamoto, near Osaka. This move has been characterized as the turning point in Tanizaki’s career. His simpler way of life, as he left the great metropolis behind, brought with it a reexamination of traditional Japanese customs and a disenchantment with industrialization and Western values. Some critics suggest that at this point Tanizaki ceased to be merely a good writer and became a great one. Again, Petersen sounds a cautionary note, pointing out that Tanizaki’s residence in the Kansai area was not so very lengthy and that the writer, according to his own testimony, made no conscious break with Tokyo. Still, for whatever reasons, his writing underwent a noticeable change in the early 1920’s. His themes were more surely developed. His narratives became more realistic. His style became more descriptive, less sensuously suggestive (he had been accused of disguising a lack of content with a complex and urbane style). Chijin no ai (1924; Naomi , 1985), serialized in Osaka, reflects Tanizaki’s gradual disillusionment with Western culture.

Tade kuu mushi (1928-1929; Some Prefer Nettles , 1955), set in Osaka, dramatizes the clash of East and West through a failing marriage. The husband, whose position the narrative seems to favor, has become a traditionalist, while the wife is chic and Westernized. As a result, the two are drifting further and further apart. The novel also contains a strong autobiographical element. Tanizaki’s own marriage was failing. A choice bit of Tokyo literary gossip in 1928 had Tanizaki seeking to act as go-between in a proposed affair between his wife and the novelist Haruo Satō. In 1930, the marriage ended in divorce, and, in April, 1931, Tanizaki married Tomiko Furukawa. Within the next five years, he would be divorced and remarried again. Also by 1930, he had gained such distinction that his complete works were published.

An emphasis on physical mutilation and a strain of sadomasochism run through Tanizaki’s work. Blindness is featured in “Mōmoku monogatari” (1931; “A Blind Man’s Tale,” 1963) and “Shunkinshō” (1933; “A Portrait of Shunkin,” 1936). In the latter, a blind musician has such a profound effect on her student that he blinds himself to share her suffering. Their relationship, however, despite its intensity, is very ambiguous (another quality that is characteristic of Tanizaki’s fiction). Tanizaki’s repeated use of unreliable narrators, multiple points of view, and peculiarly Japanese symbols often give to his narratives especially for the Western reader an oblique and problematical tone.

In 1937, Tanizaki was elected to membership in Japan’s Imperial Academy of Arts. The coming of war had an effect on Tanizaki, as it did on all Japanese writers. Out of mixed feelings of nostalgia and despair, he began to re-create in Sasameyuki (1943-1948; The Makioka Sisters , 1957) the world that after the war would never exist again. The progress of the serialized version was long and difficult and involved more than one periodical. The first installment appeared in January, 1943, the last in October, 1948. In between, Tanizaki even published a part of the novel himself, in July, 1944, after it was censured. It appeared in book form in December, 1948. The Makioka Sisters is set in the Kyōto-Osaka region. The regional differences that supposedly affected Tanizaki so deeply are dramatized in the novel when one sister is forced to move from her beloved Osaka to Tokyo. The novel contains a wealth of detail about daily life in Japan. Tanizaki received two prestigious awards for The Makioka Sisters: the Mainichi Prize for Publication and Culture in 1947 and the Asahi Culture Prize in 1949. In the latter year, he was awarded the Imperial Cultural Medal.

In 1962, more than fifty years after the appearance of “Tattoo,” Tanizaki was still exploring the phenomenon of the self-willed victim of erotic desire in Fūten rōjin nikki (Diary of a Mad Old Man , 1965). The diary of seventy-seven-year-old Tokusuke Utsugi makes up the bulk of the novel, but it is supplemented by his nurse’s report, his physician’s clinical record, and his daughter-in-law’s note. These multiple points of view ambiguously interpret the old man’s relationship with his former-chorus-girl daughter-in-law.

Tanizaki was elected to honorary membership in the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1964. He died on July 30, 1965, and two months later his last piece of writing appeared in the journal Chūō Kōron.

Significance

Several themes recur in Tanizaki’s work throughout his long literary career: the artist’s search for beauty, the fascinating quality both erotic and aesthetic of womanhood, and the clash of cultures traditional and modern, Eastern and Western. However, often as Tanizaki has treated these themes in stories, novels, and plays, the reader must be careful in drawing generalizations from them. Tanizaki’s narrative technique is habitually ambiguous, oblique, and ironic. He may use narrators who are dishonest or naïve. He may use multiple narrators. The narrator sometimes uses the authorial voice but without comment, forcing the reader to interpret for him- or herself the actions, words, expressions, and gestures of the characters.

Tanizaki has been called the chronicler of modern Japan, but for a long period he devoted himself to retelling the tales of ancient Japan. The view from ten centuries past gave him yet another perspective for his fiction. His scenes of perversity, especially in the early stories, have led some to include him in the Satanist, or demoniac, school of writers. The autobiographical elements in his work have linked him to the “I-novelists,” the confessional school of writers. His emphasis on the erotic and his supposed worship of women have associated him with the “love-talk” school of writers. Tanizaki, though, cannot be fitted comfortably into any school or movement. The differences are always more striking than the similarities.

In his later years, Tanizaki was considered a strong and deserving candidate for the Nobel Prize. The rumor coming out of the Swedish Academy was that he was passed over because it was believed that too little of his work was available in translation. Still, he had succeeded in accomplishing what only the greatest writers can accomplish: He had converted his homeland, with all its cultural singularity, into a universal stage. Many agreed with the Asian scholar Donald Keene when he wrote in 1955 that The Makioka Sisters is “the most important Japanese novel published in the years following the war.”

Bibliography

Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, Fiction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. A massive study of the fiction produced since the Japanese enlightenment in the nineteenth century. Chapter 20 is devoted exclusively to Tanizaki, and he is mentioned in the introduction and in several other chapters in association with other writers and literary movements.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, Poetry, Drama, Criticism. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. In this companion volume, Tanizaki’s writing for the stage is discussed in part 3, “The Modern Drama,” and he is also mentioned in passing in part 2, “Poetry in New Forms” and part 4, “Modern Criticism.”

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Japanese Literature: An Introduction for Western Readers. New York: Grove Press, 1955. Unlike Keene’s other comprehensive treatments, this is a brief introduction to Japanese literature, designed for general readers. Tanizaki is only touched on in the introduction and in chapter 4, “The Japanese Novel,” but is discussed throughout chapter 5, “Japanese Literature Under Western Influence.”

LaMarre, Thomas. Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō on Cinema and “Oriental” Aesthetics. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005. English translations of Tanizaki’s film stories and essays about film, the majority of which were written between 1917 and 1926. LaMarre provides commentary on these pieces and maintains they demonstrate a theory of the cinematic in Tanizaki’s work.

Petersen, Gwenn Boardman. The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Mishima. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979. The first section of Petersen’s book, “Contexts,” is a brief summary of the rich literary tradition of Japan. The second section is a practical guide to the work of Tanizaki. Includes a partial chronology and a general bibliography.

Rimer, J. Thomas. Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions: An Introduction. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. Indicates certain structural principles important in the tradition of Japanese narrative fiction and also discusses in detail works for which the author has a profound admiration. Treatment of Tanizaki occurs throughout the entire text, and copious excerpts from his Seven Japanese Tales are given a close analysis.

Tsuruta, Kinya. “Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Pilgrimage and Return.” Comparative Literature Studies 37, no. 2 (2000): 239. Describes the evolution and maturity of Tanizaki’s ideas and writing resulting from his pilgrimage to the West and subsequent return to Japan.

Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976. A study of eight major writers of modern Japan, those writers whose work constitutes the bulk of modern Japanese fiction available in English. Chapter 3 is devoted to Tanizaki. The work is indexed, contains a selected bibliography, and furnishes extensive source notes for those who read Japanese.

Yamanouchi, Hisaaki. The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Tanizaki’s much discussed attitude toward women is examined in chapter 5, “The Eternal Womanhood: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō and Kawabata Yasunari.”