Junichiro tanizaki biography samples

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is one of the most highly-regarded authors of modern Japanese literature. Longing and Other Stories collects three works from the first decade of his career, all originally published from 1916 to 1921.

Tanizaki’s career spanned Japan’s era of modernization through the decade after World War II. In these early stories, he takes what the translators identify as “the challenges that a rapidly changing society presents for traditional Confucian concepts of the family.” The tension is most marked in “Sorrows of a Heretic,” translated by Chambers. The protagonist, Shōzaburō, tries to pull away from Meiji Japan’s value system, but he cannot escape:

And so his heart was a prisoner to his parents; but the more aware he was of the depth of their bonds, the more he cursed and feared them. Unable to let go of his parents’ hands, even as he shunned them, he was furious at his own weak will.

Notable in both Tanizaki’s writing and the translations here is t

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Tanizaki Junichiro

I should save Tanizaki Junichiro (1886-1965) for January of next year, when he'll be a character in the story the countess tells in Bridge 13 of  my novel, but he comes second in this series of major 20th-century Japanese novelists, beginning in the generation following Soseki that he shares with the great short-story writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927--who died young, bygd committing suicide), and, since Tanizaki lived long, on into the generation he shares with Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972).

I'll discuss three of his novels briefly, recommending all: 1) his first, Naomi; 2) the one I read first, and still like best, Some Prefer Nettles; and 3) his longest, and the one considered best (perhaps even the best 20th-century Japanese novel) by most informed critics, The Makioka Sisters--a stunning film utgåva of which should also be available at your local mall.

I begin with Naomi,  not just because it was Tanizaki's first real novel

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Back in January 2018, I submitted an essay on the Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki to The Quarterly Conversation, an online journal run by Veronica Esposito that had a major focus on literature in translation.  My contribution took a look at Tanizaki’s work in an attempt to tease out common themes, particularly with regard to several books that had appeared in English around that time, either for the first time or as new translations.  Sadly the site appears to be offline now, so I thought it would be a good idea to bring my essay back here in case anyone feels like checking it out (all links will take you to reviews or pages on this site) – hope you like it 🙂

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Asking who Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is may seem a little bizarre, especially to those with any kind of interest in Japanese literature. Nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and even shortlisted the year before his death, Tanizaki is one of the more prominent figures in m