FANTASY NOVELISTS.vp

by Rollyson, Carl E.

  focuses on the satire in his work, exploring how the writer uses allegory, parody, and

  irony to criticize abuses and foolishness.

  Lourie, Richard. Letters to the Future: An Approach to Sinyavsky-Tertz. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Lourie analyzes Sinyavsky’s novels, short stories, and

  other work, placing them within the context of Soviet history and Slavic literature.

  Compares Sinyavsky’s “philosophical satire” to the work of Nikolai Gogol. Includes

  notes, a bibliography, and an index.

  Mathewson, Rufus W., Jr. The Positive Hero in Russian Literature. 1975. Reprint.

  Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Mathewson includes an analysis

  of Sinyavsky’s writing in this examination of the “positive hero,” a character who sets

  an example for readers’ behavior. Describes how this model character was a long-

  standing source of controversy in Russian literature.

  Sandler, Stephanie. “Ending/Beginning with Andrei Sinyavsky/Abram Tertz.” In Com-

  memorating Pushkin: Russia’s Myth of a National Poet. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. Sandler analyzes Russia’s complex relationship with Alexander Pushkin, describing how his work has influenced Sinyavsky and other Russian

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  writers and how his legacy is reflected in museums and other Russian cultural

  institutions.

  Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Catherine. “Sinyavsky/Tertz: The Evolution of the Writer in

  Exile.” Humanities in Society 7, no. 314 (1984): 123-142. After providing a brief overview of Sinyavsky’s career during his first decade in the West, the author goes on to detail Sinyavsky’s concerns with the role of the writer in relationship to reality and society at large. Concludes with a discussion of Little Jinx.

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  JUN’ICHIRO TANIZAKI

  Born: Tokyo, Japan; July 24, 1886

  Died: Yugawara, Japan; July 30, 1965

  Principal long fiction

  Itansha no Kanashimi, 1917

  Chijin no ai, 1924-1925 (serial), 1925 (book; Naomi, 1985)

  Kojin, 1926

  Tade kuu mushi, 1928-1929 (serial), 1936 (book; Some Prefer Nettles, 1955) Manji, 1928-1930

  Yoshinokuzu, 1931 ( Arrowroot, 1982)

  Bushoko hiwa, 1931-1932 (serial), 1935 (book; The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, 1982)

  Sasameyuki, 1943-1948 (serial), 1949 (book; The Makioka Sisters, 1957)

  Shosho Shigemoto no haha, 1950 ( The Mother of Captain Shigemoto, 1956)

  Kagi, 1956 ( The Key, 1960)

  Futen rojin nikki, 1961-1962 (serial), 1962 (book; Diary of a Mad Old Man, 1965)

  Other literary forms

  The history of the novel in Japan is quite different from its history in the West, and the distinctions normally observed between the short story and the novel do not apply there.

  If, arbitrarily, one refers to Japanese works of fewer than one hundred pages of prose fiction as “short stories,” Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (tah-nee-zahk-ee) is as famous for his short stories as for his longer works. Typical of his early period, “Shisei” (1910; “The Tattooer,”

  1963) indicates his early interest in sexual symbolism. “Akuma” (1912; Satan) deals with male masochism, and “Otsuya goroshi” (1913; a springtime case) deals with murder and

  amorality in Tokyo. Later, Tanizaki wrote such remarkable stories as “Ashikari” (1932;

  English translation, 1936), “Shunkinsho” (1933; “A Portrait of Shunkin,” 1936), “Mo-

  moku monogatari” (1931; “A Blind Man’s Tale,” 1963), and the exquisite “Yume no

  ukihashi” (1959; “The Bridge of Dreams,” 1963).

  Tanizaki also wrote a number of plays, including Aisureba koso (pb. 1921; all because of love), Okumi to Gohei (pb. 1922), and Shirogitsune no yu (pb. 1923; The White Fox, 1930).

  In 1932, he began translating Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji monogatari (c. 1004; The Tale of Genji, 1936-1941, 1951-1954) into modern Japanese; over the years, he produced several revisions of it. Bunsho tokuhon (1934; a manual of style), in which he outlined his craftsmanlike attitude toward composing fiction, is often called a minor masterpiece of criticism. Although he published several highly accomplished reviews and essays, he seldom

  was persuaded to undertake them, believing that he ought to concentrate on his fiction.

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  Achievements

  Jun’ichiro Tanizaki was recognized as a remarkable talent even in his twenties and

  continued to be so recognized throughout a long and prolific career, which outlasted several publications of his complete works. At first, he was considered shockingly Western

  by his contemporaries; during the 1920’s, however, he gradually began to incorporate

  more conservative Japanese literary elements, implicitly warning his readers of the dan-

  gers of being overly Westernized. Late in his career, his characters are not endangered by Western culture, enjoying, for example, Western clothes and houses as everyday realities in modern Japan.

  Tanizaki’s mastery of a carefully composed style and his insight into the psychology of

  his characters place him among the great writers of twentieth century world literature. A slow, careful writer, Tanizaki argued that one of the most important elements of Japanese is its “vagueness” in comparison to other languages, a vagueness that allows the Japanese author to suggest motives, feelings, and details in delicate strokes rather than in precise exposition. Considering the imagination crucial, Tanizaki often dealt with sensational material and abnormal states of mind; by controlling his style, he did not allow his intensity to become hysterical. Despite their bizarre aberrations, his characters rarely become unbelievable as human beings, because of the objective manner in which he treats them. Like

  many great writers, Tanizaki was also able to assimilate opposing elements such as tradition and innovation, imagination and realism, and the influences of West and East.

  Biography

  Jun’ichiro Tanizaki was born in the heart of downtown Tokyo. For generations, his an-

  cestors had lived there as members of the merchant class engaged in rice-brokering and

  printing and had little of the traditional samurai-class interest in affairs of state. Despite the traditional male-dominated culture of Japan, Tanizaki’s grandfather and father were

  considered feminists, his father nearly worshiping Tanizaki’s mother. The boy, as a result, was drawn to his mother very strongly, thus establishing the reverential attitude toward women seen in so many of his works. Tanizaki was also a handsome boy, but not a strong

  one, and, consequently, was often bullied by older classmates, perhaps encouraging a

  masochistic streak.

  During Tanizaki’s primary education, a young teacher noticed the boy’s talents and

  gave him special instruction in Japanese and Chinese classics. It is often reported that Tanizaki became known as the brightest student ever to graduate from the First Municipal Secondary School of Tokyo. He entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1908, where he

  studied Japanese classical literature. He helped found the literary magazine of the university, Shinshicho, in which he published several short stories that received praise from older writers such as Mori Ogai and Nagai Kafu. After only a year, however, because he did not pay his fees, he left the university without finishing his degree.

  Tanizaki’s unfinished education did not hinder him unduly, because he was becoming

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  Critical Survey of Long Fiction

  known as a writer. A notorious frequenter of the “Bluff,” or foreign sections of Yokohama, he wore checked suits and gaudy ties and was strongly under the influen
ce of Decadent

  Western writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde; Tanizaki

  translated Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) in 1919. This lifestyle changed when he moved to Okamoto in 1923 after the Great Earthquake. In the Hakone mountains south

  of Yokohama, during the disaster, he first was delighted that all he despised of the old Japan had been destroyed. He predicted a new, modern Tokyo with wide boulevards, film

  theaters, and citizens wearing comfortable Western clothing. Yet, as time passed, he began to seek the traditional roots of Japanese literature and went, as is often asserted, from being merely a good author to being a great one.

  By 1930, Tanizaki was so famous that his complete works were published. His per-

  sonal life was almost as sensational as his fiction. After encouraging his wife, Chiyoko, to have an affair with his friend, Sato Haruo, they were divorced in 1930 after fifteen years of marriage. In 1931, he married Furukawa Tomiko, a literary student whom he divorced in

  1934. In 1935, he married his last wife, Morita Matzuko, formerly married to an Osaka

  millionaire and patron of several artists and writers, including Tanizaki.

  With the rise of militarism in Japan, Tanizaki’s work—with its interest in aestheticism

  and sexuality—was considered improper, and he was forced to suppress the amorous pas-

  sages of his translation of The Tale of Genji, which he had begun in 1935. His longest novel, The Makioka Sisters, was not published during the war because of the amorous content, but when it was finally released, it—along with his earlier works—established

  Tanizaki as possibly the most significant twentieth century Japanese author. In 1949, he received Japan’s Imperial Prize for Literature.

  During the 1950’s and 1960’s, Tanizaki returned to some of the themes of his earlier

  career. The publication of the first episode of The Key in the magazine Chuo koron in 1956

  created a sensation in Japan as customers snatched up copies, partly because of its sexual content. It also became well known in the United States, as did “The Bridge of Dreams”

  and Diary of a Mad Old Man, as a result of a new Western interest in Japanese films (such as Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 film of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Rashomon”) and literature

  (notably the works of Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima). In 1960, a film version of

  The Key was released in the United States as Odd Obsession. In 1964, Tanizaki was elected honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National

  Institute of Arts and Letters. He spent his last few years struggling with various illnesses and living in a Western-style house on the Izu Coast. At the time of his death, Tanizaki was one of the leading candidates for a Nobel Prize.

  Analysis

  Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s early literary career was characterized by a deep interest in Western literature. Although as a student he studied Japanese literature and had a nostalgia for classical Japanese works, he once commented that about 1918, “I had come to detest Ja-224

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  pan, even though I was obviously a Japanese.” Assiduously reading Baudelaire, Wilde,

  and especially Poe, he asserted the supremacy of the imagination in literature, as opposed to the naturalism of many of his contemporaries, arguing that even Gustave Flaubert and

  Émile Zola could not have produced their naturalistic works without being highly

  imaginative.

  Once using Wilde’s aphorism “Nature imitates art” as an epigraph to a story, Tanizaki

  believed that the representation of reality was not the primary function of literature; it was rather the presentation of truth. “The artist,” he wrote, “justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.” This truth, in Tanizaki’s view, was primarily psychological. Imagination allowed the author to see the subconscious depths of humanity. The writer perceived what people were, not what they could be. There was no need for a writer to justify his (or her) works for social or moral reasons, and Tanizaki was seen as an exponent of aestheticism.

  As might be expected, the early influence of the Decadent authors led to intense, maca-

  bre works. They are, by turn, gothic, grotesque, hedonistic, diabolic, and erotic. Tanizaki’s first important work, “The Tattooer,” is typical. Seikichi is a master tattooer who has become so great he only tattoos according to his vision of his client’s character. Further, he delights in the suffering his needles cause his clients. His obsession becomes the creation of a masterwork on the skin of a woman who meets his requirements of character as well

  as beauty. After four years, he sees the foot of a woman disappear into a palanquin, knows instantly that she is the one he has been searching for, but loses the palanquin in the crowd.

  The next spring, she appears at his house, and after he reveals her true, vampirish nature, he creates an exquisite tattoo of a black widow spider on her back and finds himself the slave of his own creation.

  There are several elements characteristic of Tanizaki’s work in this story. In most of his works, a man delights in his utter servitude to the woman he adores. Seikichi goes from sadist to masochist as the result of finding his perfect woman, and although Tanizaki devotes this work to the psychological and artistic obsessions of the tattooer, he was generally more interested in his women characters, because they expressed an ideal before which

  his men groveled. This subservient role has been frequently associated with Tanizaki’s attitude toward his mother, who died in 1917. One will also note the foot fetishism implicit in Seikichi’s first noticing the young girl. Throughout Tanizaki’s career, women’s feet

  play a large role in the sexual relationships between his characters. This is obvious in such works as “Fumiko no ashi” in which an old man is infatuated with the feet of his mistress and dies in ecstasy as Fumiko presses his forehead under her foot, but it reveals itself in other ways as well: Frequently, Tanizaki devotes more detail to his description of a

  woman’s feet than he does to his description of her face.

  Despite Tanizaki’s interest in Western writers, many elements of his early work were

  derived from traditional Japanese literature. Throughout his career, he felt no hesitation in setting his stories in the Japanese past. “The Tattooer,” for example, occurs in the

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  Tokugawa period of the seventeenth century. In 1919, in the middle of his Decadent interests, the same year as “Fumiko no ashi” and his translation of Lady Windermere’s Fan, he published a volume of erotic stories in the style of the Japanese 1830’s and two novellas in the Chinese style. As they are depicted in works by Tanizaki, women are often portrayed

  as treacherous, cruel creatures in classical Japanese literature. The seventeenth century novelist Ihara Saikaku wrote many risqué stories, in some of which the heroine’s insatiable sexual appetite exhausts the hero. Finally, grotesque and diabolic motifs are very common in classical Japanese literature, and it is perhaps too easy to overemphasize the influence of Poe’s and Wilde’s content on Tanizaki, when he was more interested in adapting

  their conception of art in his reaction against naturalism.

  There is no doubt, however, that Tanizaki’s work changed at the beginning of the

  1920’s, particularly after he moved from Tokyo to the more conservative Kansai (Kyoto,

  Osaka, and Kobe) region after the Great Earthquake. Although in his later work he re-

  tained his masochistic heroes, characters for whom there are few precedents in traditional Japanese literature, he began to acknowledge more strongly the values and practices of his culture.

  Naomi

  Naomi marks the division between Tanizaki’s Westernized period and his more tradition-oriente
d works from the 1920’s through the 1940’s. Although, like so many of his

  works, Naomi tells of a man’s quest for the ideal woman, there is much implied criticism of Japanese worship of the West, despite the fact that the novel seems to have been based on W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1915).

  Joji, the narrator in Naomi, is attracted to a European-looking waitress named Naomi.

  Her features make him think of Mary Pickford, and he asks her if she would like to go to a film. Instead of the usual polite evasions, she says (like Mildred in Of Human Bondage), “I don’t mind if I do.” Eventually, he takes her home with the intention of remaking her into his ideal of beauty—a woman he will not be ashamed of in front of blond foreigners—and

  marrying her within a few years. Naomi is given Western clothes, practices playing the piano, speaking English, and dancing. All of this merely encourages her decadent tenden-

  cies. He learns she has been unfaithful and attempts to leave her. He discovers he cannot, however, and gives in completely to her. She can do as she wishes, have whatever lover she wishes, as long as she remains his wife.

  Joji is a fool as much in his obsessive love of Western things as in his love of the girl. He is ashamed of his racial identity. His shortness, his protruding teeth, his dark complexion, and other typically Japanese features embarrass him, but he is proud of his European-style Yokohama house. He is degraded by his sense of both cultural and sexual inferiority. Often offended by Naomi’s crudity, he excuses it because of his fascination with her; to be humiliated by her is an honor. Even when she dresses and behaves like a prostitute, he is filled with masochistic pride that she is his.

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  Some Prefer Nettles

  Tanizaki’s next major novel, Some Prefer Nettles, deals with similar themes. This work tells of a character, Kaname, whose superficial Western tastes are gradually replaced by an appreciation of traditional Japanese culture. Kaname is unhappily married to Misako. He

  has lost sexual interest in her but is tormented by uncertainty over what to do about it. He encourages her to have an affair while he finds sexual satisfaction with a Eurasian prostitute. There is a superficial resemblance between this plot and certain events in Tanizaki’s own life. Bored with his first wife, Chiyoko, one night at dinner he calmly asked Sato