Discover the Best Books Written by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was a Japanese author considered one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. His work's tone and subject matter range from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle portrayals of the dynamics of family life within the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently, his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are juxtaposed. 

He was one of six authors on the final shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, the year before his death. Tanizaki was born into a well-to-do merchant-class family in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, where his uncle owned a printing press that his grandfather had established. His parents were Kuragorō and Seki Tanizaki. His older brother, Kumakichi, died three days after his birth, making him the family's next eldest son. Tanizaki had three younger brothers: Tokuzō, Seiji (a writer), and Shūhei, and three younger sisters: Sono, Ise, and Sue. 

Tanizaki described his admittedly pampered childhood in his Yōshō Jidai (Childhood Years, 1956). His childhood home was destroyed in the 1894 Meiji Tokyo earthquake, to which Tanizaki later attributed his lifelong fear of earthquakes. His family's finances declined dramatically as he grew older until he was forced to reside in another household as a tutor. Despite these financial problems, he attended the Tokyo First Middle School, where he became acquainted with Isamu Yoshii. 

Tanizaki attended the Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1908 but was forced to drop out in 1911 because of his inability to pay for tuition. Tanizaki began his literary career in 1909. His first work, a one-act stage play, was published in a literary magazine he had helped find. Tanizaki's name first became widely known with the publication of the short story Shisei (The Tattooer, 1910). In the story, a tattoo artist inscribes a giant spider on the body of a beautiful young woman. 

Afterward, the woman's beauty takes on a demonic, compelling power, in which eroticism is combined with sadomasochism. The femme-fatale is a theme repeated in many of Tanizaki's early works, including Kirin (1910), Shonen (The Children, 1911), Himitsu (The Secret, 1911), and Akuma (Devil, 1912). Tanizaki's other works published in the Taishō period include Shindo (1916) and Oni no men (1916), which are partly autobiographical.

Tanizaki married his first wife, Chiyo Ishikawa, in 1915, and his only child, Ayuko, was born in 1916. However, it was an unhappy marriage, and in time he encouraged a relationship between Chiyo and his friend and fellow writer Haruo Satō. The psychological stress of this situation is reflected in some of his early works, including the stage play Aisureba koso (Because I Love Her, 1921) and the novel Kami to hito no Aida (Between Men and the Gods, 1924). Even though some of Tanizaki's writings seem to have been inspired by these and other persons and events in his life, his works are far less autobiographical than those of most of his contemporaries in Japan. 

Tanizaki later adopted Emiko, the daughter of his third wife, Matsuko Morita. In 1918, Tanizaki toured Chōsen, northern China, and Manchuria. He became infatuated with the West and modern things in his early years. In 1922, he relocated from Odawara, where he had lived since 1919, to Yokohama, which had a large expatriate population, living briefly in a Western-style house and leading a bohemian lifestyle. This outlook is reflected in some of his early writings.

Tanizaki had a brief career in silent cinema, working as a scriptwriter for the Taikatsu film studio. He supported the Pure Film Movement and was instrumental in bringing modernist themes to Japanese film. He wrote the scripts for the films Amateur Club (1922) and A Serpent's Lust (1923) (based on the story of the same title by Ueda Akinari, which was, in part, the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's 1953 masterpiece Ugetsu Monogatari). Some have argued that Tanizaki's relation to the cinema is important to understanding his overall career.

Tanizaki's reputation began to take off in 1923 when he moved to Kyoto after the Great Kanto earthquake, which destroyed his house in Yokohama (at the time, Tanizaki was on a bus in Hakone and thus escaped injury). The loss of Tokyo's historic buildings and neighborhoods in the quake triggered a change in his enthusiasm, as he redirected his youthful love for the imagined West and modernity into a renewed interest in Japanese aesthetics and culture, particularly the culture of the Kansai region (around the cities of Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto). 

His first novel after the earthquake, and his first truly successful novel, was Chijin no ai (Naomi, 1924-25), which is a tragicomic exploration of class, sexual obsession, and cultural identity. Tanizaki made another trip to China in 1926, where he met Guo Moruo, with whom he later maintained a correspondence. He relocated from Kyoto to Kobe in 1928. Inspired by the Osaka dialect, Tanizaki wrote Manji (Quicksand, 1928–1929), exploring lesbianism, among other themes.