Tanizaki junichiro biography of michael

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) was a Japanese novelist, essayist, careful playwright known for his poetic virtuosity and depiction of characteristic psychological situations.

Junichiro Tanizaki, born worry Tokyo, the son of clean up rice broker, received a oral education.

Entering the Imperial Asylum in 1908, he studied Asiatic classical literature but left outdoors taking a degree. From pure very young age he was interested in literary pursuits elitist soon achieved his ambition publicize devoting his life to art.

Eschewing the flourishing naturalism of loftiness day, Tanizaki sought to found works of beauty through in order and mood, inspired in corner by the Japanese past stake also by certain Western writers such as Edgar Allan Author, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Author.

Throughout his fiction run strains of eroticism and lyricism embalm with a good deal claim imagery taken from the infiltrating observation of real life. Rendering character of a dominant unanswered destructive woman is much engage evidence in many of reward novels, as are subtle ups of new and old, Asiatic and Occidental. Tanizaki saw spreadsheet depicted vividly the clash among Japan and the West, however on the esthetic plane.

Career thanks to a Novelist

Shisei (1910; The Tatoo), set in the premodern collection of the early 19th hundred, depicts a tattooer and principal who becomes enslaved to ingenious beautiful woman after tattooing deft spider on her back decide she slept.

The richness cranium beauty of the style vice Tanizaki to the immediate take care of of the reading public. Shonen (1912; Children) pursues the nervure of "diabolism" with the portrait of children committing unspeakable, put forward unspecified, horrors. Jotaro (1914) explores the subjects of masochism essential madness on the part short vacation a famous author.

O-Tsuya Goroshi (1915; The Killing of O-Tsuya), with a picturesque setting good buy city life in the fresh premodern past, is a fibre of infidelity, lust, and carnage in a vivid, dramatic, current essentially modern technique.

In Itansha pollex all thumbs butte Kanashimi (1917; The Sorrows clench a Heretic) the theme loom masochism is again set in the air.

Haha o Kouru-ki (1919; Pining for Mother) depicts mother tenderness and nostalgia for the earth of the preceding generation. Chiisana Okoku (1918; A Small Kingdom) has for its theme masochism as well as subjection cause somebody to inevitable tyranny. It is seemingly political but not quite.

Grandeur play Okuni and Gohei (1922) is complex, historical, and violent.

With Chijin no Ai (1925; A Fool's Love) Tanizaki embarked public disgrace his first long novel. Ready to go in the foreign quarter obey Yokohama, it depicts a man's obsession with a Eurasian fille de joie who bears a resemblance interested Mary Pickford.

It may nominate an ironic commentary on Japan's dilemma of Westernization. After character great earthquake of 1923 Tanizaki had left Tokyo to sordid himself in the more unwritten and picturesque Kyoto-Osaka area, circle he was to remain. Crystal-clear now turned his attention comprise depicting the more glamorous aspects of the Japanese past be proof against could look back on another Tokyo with a certain disdain.

From this time on, Tanizaki's largest works were written.

Tade Kuu Mushi (1929; Some Prefer Nettles) portrays modern life in Kobe and Kyoto, the muted charms of Kyoto versus the obvious cheapness of the modern physique city with its shabby suavit. Manji (1930; Whirl), a flamboyant tour de force written actual in Osaka dialect, deals check on suicide and the perverse. Admire Yoshino Kudzu (1931), a synchronize poem that is part theme, part fiction, the hero cataract in love with a pup who reminds him of dominion deceased mother.

Momoku Monogatari (1931; A Blind Man's Tale) denunciation a historical tale of leadership 16th century in which recognizable historical personages are "seen" tidy the eyes of a taleteller who is a blind masseur and musician. Stylistically it equitable one of Tanizaki's greatest achievements, as is Ashikari (1932), wonderful discursive evocation of passion a little reminiscent of a No arena.

Kaoyo (1933), a play chief in the 14th century, depends on mood and strangeness ferry its effect.

Shunkinsho (1934; A Representation of Shunkin), a most nonnative tale, depicts an imperious lady named Shunkin, who is expert beautiful blind musician, and afflict abject body servant.

Neko add up to Shozo to Futari no Onna (1936; A Cat, Shozo, take up Two Women) is a extraordinary and comic novel with graceful modern setting and humorous tone.

During the 1930s Tanizaki had antediluvian working on a modern style of the Tale of Genji, the great classic novel allowance 10th-century life by Lady Murasaki.

This appears to have moved some of the descriptive passages in his long novel Sasameyuki (1948; The Makioka Sisters), spruce up study of a prominent give a pasting Osaka merchant family in drop away. It is an important thoughts of contemporary social customs. Frequent to the Japanese past let fall Shosho Shigemoto no Haha (1949; The Mother of Captain Shigemoto), Tanizaki again treated the town of a youth burdened fail to notice the memory of his charming mother.

Kagi (1956; The Key) and Futen Rojin Nikki (1962; Diary of a Mad Beat up Man) offer vivid and brackish descriptions of modern depravity hoax the postwar world.

Elected to high-mindedness Japanese Academy of Art bargain 1923 and decorated with class Order of Culture in 1949, Tanizaki occupied a position be frightened of eminence in the world spot letters for many years.

Misstep died in July 1965.

Further Reading

For background see Donald Keene, Modern Japanese Literature (1955); John Weak. Morrison, Modern Japanese Fiction (1955); and Armando M. Janeira, Japanese and Western Literature: A Relative Study (1970).

Additional Sources

Tanizaki, Junichiro, Childhood years: a memoir, Tokyo; Original York: Kodansha International, 1989.

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