Shozo, a Cat and Two Women- A 1956 Movie Directed by Shiró Toyoda - Based on a Novel by Junichiro Tanizaki - 2 hours 16 Minutes

Shozo, A Cat and Two Women (猫と庄造と二人のをんな, Neko to Shōzō to Futari no Onna) is a 1956 Japanese comedy-drama film directed by Shirō Toyoda and starring Hisaya Morishige, Isuzu Yamada, and Kyōko Kagawa. It is based on the 1936 novella of the same name by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.

The film tells the story of Shōzō, a timid man who is dominated by his mother and his two wives. His first wife, Shinako, is boring and traditional, while his second wife, Fukuko, is trampish and crude. Shōzō finds solace in the company of his cat, Lily, who is the only one who truly understands him.

When Shinako moves out, Shōzō's mother, Orin, encourages him to marry Fukuko, the young daughter of his wealthy uncle Nakajima. Shōzō is initially reluctant, but he eventually agrees to the marriage.

However, Shōzō's new marriage does not bring him the happiness he had hoped for. Fukuko is just as demanding as Shinako, and she is also unfaithful and abusive  to him. Shōzō becomes increasingly isolated and withdrawn, and he finds himself turning to Lily more and more for companionship.

Shozo, A Cat and Two Women is a scathing satire of Japanese society and the traditional roles of men and women. It is also a moving story about a man's search for love and acceptance.

The film was critically acclaimed upon its release, and it won several awards, including the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film. It is considered to be one of the finest Japanese films of the 1950s.

As a lifetime cat lover I was deeply moved by this film. If possible read the short novel by Junichiro Tanizaki first.

I have located two  other movies on YouTube based on a novel by Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters and They Key which I hope to watch soon.

“The Gourmet Club” - A Short Story by Junichiro Tanizaki- 1920 - translated by Anthony Chambers

Information on The Japanese Literature Year 11 Event, hosted by Dolce Bellezza

Japanese Iiterature and history on The Reading Life

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 to 1965) is one of my “read all I can” writers.  Were he writing now, his every new  novel would be a bestseller, made into an international movie.  I have been reading his work for years.  Among my favourite of his novels are Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles and his most now read book, The Makioka Sisters, about four upper Class Japanese sisters in search of a husband, Austen fans love this book.  (Viking Press has very recently published his The Maids, told from the point of views of the maids of the four sisters.  As soon as this is out on Kindle I will read it!). 

“The Gourmet Club”  gives us a fascinating look at high end dining by the rich in Tokyo during the 1920s.  The Gourmet Club has five members, all idol rich men bonded by their love of sybaritic dining, with an occasional exquisite prostitute as a side interest.  A man, known as “The Count” is the head of the group, which meets at his mansion.   They roam the city looking for Gourmet delights.  One day The Count is out scouting around alone.  He smells something wonderful cooking from a simple Chinese restaurant in a new to him part of Tokyo.  This turns out to be a wonderful source of traditional Chinese food, lovingly described by Tanizaki, who had a reputation as a gourmet himself.  It is a magic place.  The story is very worth reading just for the very detailed descriptions of the menus.  I will leave for your imagination the recipe for and the rituals associated with “Fried Korean Woman”.

As far as I know this story can only be read in the collection pictured above.  I was kindly given a copy of this book, which is a great edition to Japanese Literature in Translation.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Born

in Nihonbashi,Tokyo, Japan

July 24, 1886

Died

July 30, 1965

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

Influences

Edgar Allan Poe, Sade, Oscar Wilde

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. 

Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in 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. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.  From Goodreads.

Mel u

"The Children" - one of Junichiro Tanazki's early short stories (1911, in translation by Anthony Chambers,)

The Japanese Literature Challenge 11- Hosted by Dolce Bellezza 

I am very glad my initial post for Japanese Literature 11 is upon one  of the very first short stories of one of Japan's greatest and most popular writers, Junichiro Tanazaki (1886 to 1965).  I have posted extensively on Tanizaki.  Up until about two months ago I thought I had read all his novels.  However, vintage has just published translations of two more of his novels. The Maids, his last novel, tells the story of The Makioka Sisters (itself a good choice for your first Tanizaki) from the point of view of the maids of each sister, I really want to read this soon.  

Sexual sadism, with the male on the receiving end from a woman is one of the consistent themes of Tanizaki.   Receiving pain and orgasm are tied together in the more than a bit disturbing and strange "The Children".  As it opens a young boy, maybe 14, is on a playground.  A boy his age, from a much wealthier family, invites him, through his yaya (applicable Tagalog word for a household helper dedicated to a child) to a party tomorrow.  He is very thrilled to be invited.  At first the party is more or less the rich family inviting the kids, rich and poor, of the neighborhood to a nice party. Tanizaki describes all the wonderful delicacies served, giving us a look at gourmet dining circa 1911.  The young host then tells the narrator they should retire to a western style house on the estate, getting away from the disgustingly poor children.  Anything western suggests decadence and depravity.  The sister of the host, a year older, will join them.   On the first of several encounters over a period of days, the two boys cover the sister in assorted filth.  As days go on the host begins to subject both his sister and his guest to physical abuse, done in a ritualistic fashion which seems to culminate with them lifting their kimonos followed by him nibbling on their private parts.  Tanazaki is vague on what happens but it appears they are experimenting with the opening stages of oral sex.  As they days progress roles are reversed and the sister becomes dominant.  In one funny interlude the boy's maid walked in on them and let out a scream to stop or she will tell his parents but she never does.  

The activity is quite rough, progressing to knife cuts which the narrator must hide from his mother.

"The Children" is a very interesting story, valuable as a cultural artifact from the start of the career of a great writer, and a thought provoking look at sexual sadism in children.  Ok and it is fun too!  

Incidentally Tanazaki was very much a cat lover and his novella, A Man, A Cat, and Two women is one of the all time great cat books.

I read this story in a new collection of his short fiction, The Gourmet Club and Other Stories, translated by Anthony Chambers and Paul McCarthy, with a very informative introduction.

In the interest of full disclosure The University of Michigan gave me a review copy of this book and an additional new collection.  If they had not, I would have bought them.  These two books are very valuable additions to Japanese literature in translation.  I hope over the course of Japanese Literature 11 (ending January 31, 2018 to post on all nine of the stories in this collection.

Mel u

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Junichiro Tanizaki: Three Stories of Erotic Obsessions

"The Tattooer" (1910, 5 pages)

"The Bridge of Dreams"  (1931, 25 pages)

"A Portrait of Shunkin (1959, 35 pages)

Sado-Masochism in the work of Junichiro Tanizaki

My Prior Posts on Junichiro Tanizaki

I really like Junichiro Tanizaki an awfully lot.   Prior to today I have posted on 12 of his novels and two longer short stories.    He is on all lists of best Japanese novelists and the venerable Harold Bloom includes his The Makioka Sisters  in his list of canon status works.   Juninchiro Tanizaki  (1886 to 1965-Tokyo, Japan-there is some background information on him in my prior posts) is also a lot of fun to read.    I think I have now read all of his translated novels and novellas and I am now happy to be starting on his short stories.

The three stories I will post on today are all reprinted in translations by Howard Hibbert in Seven Japanese Tales (1963).   The stories were written between 1910 and 1959.   Tanizaki had nothing to do with picking the stories for the collection.   

All three of the stories I will post on today are about erotic obsession, acts that many would condemn as immoral, and focus as do a number of Tanizaki's works on the erotic enslavement of men by women (in one case he does in Qucksand treat a lesbian relationship in similar terms.)   His descriptions of sado-masochistic relationships brings out the sheer power of eroticism in a truly artistic fashion.   He is a master at describing the beauty of the faces, bodies and feet of women.   The women in his stories are young by current standards.   Some have been sold by their families to be used however wanted by their owners.   The women have only one source of power.   Marriages were mostly arranged so they often lacked any real passion or emotion.   Their is a fascination with prostitutes and their sisters the Geishas throughout Japanese literature.     There are deep issues here but I will move on to the stories.

All three of the stories I have read so far are very good, totally brilliant works, each powerful and disturbing.   I will start with one of the most famous of all Japanese short stories, "The Tattooer".

"The Tattooer"   (1910, five pages) is set around 1850.   The central character is a very famous Tattoo artist.   Tattoo artistry was highly valued.   Men sought out courtesans and geishas with beautiful tattoos.    Women of the pleasure quarters fell in love with men based on the beauty of their tattoos.   The famous tattoo artist tries to inflict as much pain as he possibly can on the men that he tattoos.   He loves it when a Samurai warrior breaks and sobs under the pain and clearly loves the pain he inflicts. To him a woman is a canvas.    What loves most is inflicting pain on beautiful young (14 and up) women while he produces masterworks on them.   He begins to tattoo a spider in a marvelous web on a woman of transcendent beauty.   As he progresses he realizes he is in complete thrall to the woman.   We know this is but an ephemeral relationship and we do not learn what happens next.   This is a very powerful tale and I think those heavily into tattoos will find it of especial interest.   

"The Bridge of Dreams"  (1931, 25 pages)  is a very daring story.   It might be about incest or near incest between a man (who we first meet at age 8 or so and part company with in his mid-twenties) and his step-mother.   I do not want to tell to much of the plot of this really brilliant shocking story other than to say those who have a fetish for drinking breast milk will be in love by the time this story is over.    Flaubert and de Muappasant have nothing on Tanizaki!

"A Portrait of Shunkin" (1959, 35 pages-the most recent and longest story in the collection) is another story of erotic enslavement and sadism.   It also introduced another common element in the Japanese novel, blindness.   In this story we learn a lot about Japanese music.

In all of these stories there is a lot to be learned about Japanese culture.   His short stories can be compared on equal terms to any others I have read.   The sexual themes in the story are meant to make us uncomfortable and they do.    Women are treated as objects to be bought and sold and valued for their feel and looks.    People are fetish objects.     

There are four more short stories in the collection and I hope to read them soon.

Mel u

Junichiro Tanizaki: 谷崎 潤一郎 Two Short Stories about Professors

"The Little Kingdom" (1918, 32 pages)
"Professor Rado" (1925, 36 pages)

Two Very Different Professors

by Junichiro Tanizaki
谷崎 潤一郎 

The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

My Posts on Junichiro Tanizaki


The Japanese Literature Five Reading Challenge

I really like Junichiro Tanizaki an awfully lot.   Prior to today I have posted on 12 of his novels.    He is on all lists of best Japanese novelists and the venerable Harold Bloom includes his The Makioka Sisters  in his list of canon status works.   Juninchiro Tanizaki  (1886 to 1965-Tokyo, Japan-there is some background information on him in my prior posts) is also a lot of fun to read.    I think I have now read all of his translated novels and novellas and I am now happy to be starting on his short stories (I have texts of ten of his Short stories).  

Both "The Little Kingdom" and "Professor Rado"  are about teachers.    (Both stories were translated by Paul McCarthy.)    Both of the stories are well done and worth reading but I do not think they are quite up to the standards of his best work.

One think I have not found in my readings in the pre-WWII Japanese literature is a lot of interest in the lives of the poor, who would have been the vast majority of the citizens.    "The Little Kingdom" is the first work of Tanizaki where he focuses directly on people struggling on a day to day basis to survive.    The professor in this story has relocated from Tokyo to a smaller town in the provinces in the hopes that his expenses will be lower.  He supports his wife, seven children and his mother.    He teaches 5th grade boys  and is a highly regarded professional.   The scenes inside the class room are very well done.   Tanizaki does a great job of bringing the class room to life with his depiction of the personalities of  the boys and the professor.   There is an interesting development toward the middle of the story. I will leave the rest of the story untold.   I found this to be a good, though not great, short story.

"Professor Rabo" is a very different story.    As I read it I was pretty close to shocked by its depiction of a sexual fetish.   I admit I laughed out loud at some of the scenes.   Professor Rabo is a distinguished scholar and a  cultural magazine has sent  over a writer to interview him.    The reporter cannot get the professor to open up about anything.   He does notice something odd.   The 15 year old chambermaid has a sort of arrogant attitude for her station in life.  (The ages of some of the women in the works of Tanizaki and others give us trouble now.   In the times these works were written I think laws and attitudes were different.   Teen age girls were often sold by their parents as combination maids/concubines.)   The reporter comes for a second interview and hears some noises from the professor's study.   The door has been left open a bit and he sees the professor laying face down on his desk with his pants pulled down, the chambermaid is sitting on him and has a riding crop and beats him with it and sticks her hand in his mouth.    It is not explicit but the professor seems to have an orgasm during this experience.     The reporter is shocked.   He really wants to write an expose on this but his editor tells him he cannot.    One day the reporter sees the professor at a show that features a number of women in outfits that reveal their legs.   The reporter goes back to the professors house.   The professor asks the reporter to get him information on one of the women that he really is taken by.   The woman never seems to speak and always keeps her feet covered.   Now things get real strange, the professor begins to get data on the woman that makes him think she has leprosy, which is depicted as deforming the feet.   He assumes that is why the woman covers her feet at all times.    (spoiler alert.)  To telegraph things a bit, the reporter loses track of the professor until he hears he has married.   He goes back to his house.   He meets the chamber maid and she has lost her haughty demeanor.    Once again he hears some sounds from the study and peers through the door.   The woman's feet are deformed by leprosy and the professor has her big toe in his mouth and is also talking to the woman in baby talk.   When she responds she either has a bad speech defect or is meant to be a mentally challenged person.

Both of these stories were included in the Harper Collins Flamingo press edition of    A Cat, a Man, and Two Women.  

Mel u

A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki -谷崎 潤一郎

A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki (1935, 99 pages)

A Great Cat Story by a Great Writer

or

"Your cat means more to you than I do"

A Link to my posts on Junichiro Tanizaki

A Link to my posts on Japanese Literature

Yesterday I was lying in bed reading A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 to 1965-Tokyo Japan) laughing so loud at what I was reading that my wife came in to see what could be the source of such great hilarity.   I told her I thought somehow back in 1935  a great novelist must have been listening into one of our conversations.   Eighteen years ago Charles (my blog co-editor) joined my life along with his brother Yoda (who passed away at 16 and will always be greatly missed ) became part of my life.   Seven years ago my wife became part of my life.   She totally loves Charles and is more attuned to his emotions and feelings than I am at times and takes great care of him but, like many a cat or dog lover in similar circumstances we have had conversations exactly like this one from A Cat, a Man, and Two Women.

(To set the stage for the quote, the wife had just spent a lot of time fixing a special mackeral dish that her husband claims is one of his favorite.)

"That is just not true.   I always plan to eat them myself but Lilly (the cat) keeps after me, and I end up tossing them to her one at a time"  (the husband)

"What a liar!   You pretend to like them so you can give them all to Lilly.   Your cat  means more to you than I do!"  (the wife)

"How can you say that" (said with as much indignation as he could muster by the husband )

"Am I more important than your cat?" (the wife)

"Of course you are"  (said by the husband).

Junichiro Tanizaki is one of my favorite writers.   I have previously posted on eleven of his works and loved them all.   (There is background data on him in my prior posts for those interested.)   His best known work is The Makioka Sisters.  

I came to like him even more after reading the excellent short introduction to the book (it comes with two short stories) by the translator Paul McCarthy in which he reveals that Tanizaki was a total cat lover and lived with cats his whole life.   This really shows in A Cat, a Man, and Two Women.   It has the best descriptions of the emotional bond between cats and their people I have ever read.   Tanizaki does a truly wonderful job describing the movements, emotions, and attitudes of Lilly, the cat.   It really is a great cat book.   Tanizaki is famous for his brilliant treatment of women and this work is no exception.   The book is also a story of the man's relationship with the two women in the title and with his mother.   It also details the important part the cat plays in both relationships.   This is not just a cute lets gush about cats book, it is a wonderful book you make come to treasure as one of your all time favorite reads.

Of the characters in the book, Lilly is the only one that can be admired.   Her love is worth winning and taking pride in.    I think most readers will be disgusted with the man and the two women.    Lilly is by far the individual of best character in this story.   The book is also a good study of marriages and gives us a look at life in pre-WWII Japan.    Faced with the choice of either of the two women in this story or Lilly I would keep Lilly and you would also.

I really do not see anyone who likes a perfectly written story and is a cat lover not being crazy for A Cat, a Man, and Two Women.   It is out of print I think but you can buy it on Amazon.com for just a few dollars.

Mel u

"Diary of a Mad Old Man" by Junichiro Tanizaki

Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki (1961, translated  by Howard Hibbett, 197 pages)

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 to 1965, born in Tokyo)  is on my read everything they have written (or in this case, has been translated) list.    This will be the 8th work of his on which I have posted.    I first discovered his work about nine months ago and now I look at any list of great novelists of the 20th century that does not include him as reflective of the Euro-Centric limits of the education of the list maker.  

I have written at some length in prior posts explaining why I feel as I do about Tanizaki.   I will keep this post short.    Diary of a Mad Old Man is the diary of a man in his late 70s who is in the grip of the illnesses of old age.   He lives with his wife, son and daughter in law.   Even now he can still feel sexual stirrings brought on by the presence of his daughter- in- law.    The daughter- in- law functions on occasion as his care giver.    She begins to allow him minor sexual favors such as allowing him to kiss her neck and advances to letting him see her in the shower and wash her feet.   In exchange for this the man buys her western consumer goods.   The old man is very self aware and conscious of the impropriety in his actions.   This does not stop him from enjoying it all a great deal. The daughter-in-law may protest a bit but she enjoys the power this gives her over her father-in law.    One of the themes of Tanizaki is sexual fixation and we see this treated  in very intelligent fashion here.   We also get a look at the dynamics of the family relationships.  Diary of a Mad Old Man seems to be Tanizaki's last published work.   He was 75 when it was published.    

I am well past the mid-point in reading all of Junichiro Tanizaki's work.  I will be sad upon the completion of this reading project.   I think he has a number of untranslated works and perhaps more will be translated.   

"The Key" by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki (1956, trans. from Japanese by Howard Hibbett)

The Key is one of the last works of Junichiro Tanizaki 1886 to 1965).   It is the seventh of his works that I have now posted on since I first discovered him when I read his marvelous and amazing work The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.  

The format of The Key is extremely inventive and near unique.  It is in the form of two diaries, one might almost call them dueling diaries.    One is by the 55 year old man and the other is kept by his wife, age 44.    It is a very erotically charged book.    The long married couple have a strained relationship.   The wife says numerous times that she both loves and hates her husband.    She is very frank in her description of how she feelings about the declining physical prowess of her husband and about her growing revulsion toward his aging body.   The wife has a very powerful sexual hold over the husband, though his love for her has faded away over the years.   At age 44 she is still very attractive to the husband.    Her body is described in detail in the diary of the husband.    Part of the theme of The Key is sexual fetishism, the reduction by men of women to body parts seen apart from a human to which the parts belong.    This is one of the themes of the work of Tanizaki.   Sexual fetishism can be seen as like a metaphor for the reduction of the human to the mechanical.

As we read the two diaries (we read an entry by the man then one by the wife covering the same same time sequence) we see how each views the other.    We are given a deep look at a very flawed marriage with little but habit to hold the partners together.    We get to know the 20 year old daughter and a man of that age the parents think would make a good husband for her.   There are some very interesting and exciting plot twists here and it is a bit shocking to see how explicit this 55 year old novel is.    There are no extremes in the language but it is erotically powerful.   The ending came very much as a surprise to me.    Taniazki sometimes likes to completely turn us on our heads at the end of a novel and make us see that we got things wrong as we were reading.     The Key gives us great insight into its characters and the format is very interesting.   It is also a lot of fun to read.    Tanizaki is on my read everything they have written list (or in this case translated into English).   I am near to completing this goal now.   I will read next The Diary of a Mad Old Man, published by Vintage Press in the same volume as The Key.

There is in print (from Vintage) a collection of seven short stories as well as a work of artistic theory.    Another one of his novels has been translated into English, Two Women, A  Cat and a Man as well as a partial autobiography.    Both of these are available for low prices on Amazon.com sometimes and I will read them also.   There do appear to be numerous untranslated works also.   I am grateful to Vintage Press for the wonderful production quality of this book and for bringing so many works into English.

To me Junichiro Tanizaki should be on any list of great novelists.    Many consider him the greatest Japanese novelist (for sure in the top five).   His work is a world class cultural treasure.     He also translated a number of western classics into Japanese and was widely read in classical Japanese literature, American writers such as Faulkner (The Sanctuary is mentioned as being read by the husband in The Key) and European classics.

I wish to thank Michelle for suggesting this work to me some time ago.   I have found her blog  su (shu) a consistent source of great insight that has given me lots of good ideas.

"Captain Shigemoto's Mother" by Junichiro Tanizaki

Captain Shigemoto's Mother by Junichiro Tanizaki (1949, translated from Japanese by Anthony Chambers)

Captain Shigemoto's Mother is the 8th work I have posted on by Junichiro Tanizaki.   Tanizaki's wife Matsuko said it was her favorite of her husband's books.   Often by a happy coincidence something read in one book will give more life to your reading of a prior book.   This work is set among the middle ranking nobility in the first half of the 10th century in Japan.   I was so happy to see one of the lead characters was Heiju, the poet depicted in The Tales of Ise, a collection of 10th century courtly love poems.    The short poems and stories in this collection (called "dons") are very formal in structure and all seem pretty much the same to modern readers.    We do not get much of a sense of the characters and lives of the people in the dons. 

Captain Shigemoto's Mother essentially brings the people in these poems to life.    We see Heiju, portrayed as an assistant commander in the military guards of the court, who is a serial seducer of women ranging from wives of high ranking officials to servant girls.    Heiju is a seeker of sensation, a lover of beauty whether in a woman or 7th century poems.    He also seems a thrill seeker in that he takes a lot of chances in some of his seductions.    We see the ends and outs of court life and his use of servants as helpers in his efforts.    We also get to know three  high ranking officials of 10th century Japan.   We get a close up look at the arranged marriage of a 20 year old woman from a noble family to higher ranking man fifty years her senior.   Most of the characters are portrayed as skilled poets and full readers of the literary traditions that were dominant in 10th century Japan.

Captain Shigemoto's Mother is told very much in the style of another medieval story by Tanizaki that I really like The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.  

Both are written as if they were 17th century biographical narratives about great figures from history.   In the real histories, the central characters are all people of flawless character totally devoted to their tradition and leaders.   The people in Captain Shigemoto's Mother are real people, far from flawless.    I loved seeing that the central character, Heiju, was deeply into the reading life.   Sometimes it seems like he was interested in women almost as much as subjects to bring to mind poems he had internalized as much as for the women themselves.    As in other works of Tanizaki,  there is a focus on sexual fixations and fetishes.   There is one scene so flat out twisted I actually laughed out loud reading it which is not something one would expect would happen while reading a work set in  medieval Japan.   You can tell Tanizaki had a lot of fun writing this  novella (123 pages) and with a little bit of patience with all the literary references to works unheard of most readers will have fun reading it.   Part of the pleasure of this work is the contrast  of the courtly very much of another era style of the narration and the very strange and out of the moral high road events that are narrated.  

Obviously I like and admire Tanizaki's work very much.   He had an interesting life (1886 to 1965).   The Wikipedia article on him is very informative.    He is on my read everything they have written (or in this case has been translated) list.    I will soon read and post on two more of his works, The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man.   Besides this, Vintage Press has in print a collection of seven short stories and a work of aesthetic theory.    There appears to be one other novel translated, Two Women and a Cat, available used on Amazon.com sometimes and a another collection of short fiction (which may overlap the Vintage) that are no longer in print.    Not all of the translated works have prose of the same quality.   I prefer the translations of Anthony Chambers in terms the quality of the writing.    I am grateful to Vintage Press for keeping his work in print.    

I am including this book for these challenge

Tournament of Reading (Medieval)

POC Challenge

Mel u

"The Reed Cutter" by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Reed  Cutter by Junichiro Tanizaki (1932, 50 pages translated from Japanese by Anthony H. Chambers-1993-Vintage Publishing)

The Reed Cutter is the seventh work by Junichiro Tanizaki which I have read.   (It is published jointly by Vintage with Captain Shigemoto's Wife.)    The more of his work I read the more impressed I become by the range and versatility of his writing as well as his sheer intelligence and deep wisdom.   

The narrator of The Reeder Cutter, a man aged 45 to 60 (my guess) decides one day to go for a walk.    Like the narrator in Arrowroot and the father in law in Some Prefer Nettles he is deeply read in classical Japanese literature and often sees the world through the filter of these works.    As he goes on his walk he recalls works of literature he read many years ago.   He is walking on the banks of a river and he imagines a 9th century poet being inspired to write about the beauty he sees.    As the narrator walks further he comes to an area once famous for the quality of courtesans in the area.   The narrator begins to recall courtesans celebrated in the poetry of Tan Fu and Po Chu both from the 8th century.    In this area of the river it was said all of the females of age were available for sex for hire.   From courtesans celebrated in the poems only to the most elite down to ordinary women who went out on the river in small boats to attract clients.  Lest we think these women are regarded with contempt consider this

Where have these floating women gone?   It is said that they took professional names redolent of Buddhism in the belief that selling sexual pleasure was the act of a bodhisattva.   Would it be possible to raise them to the surface of this stream for a time, like bubbles forming on the surface-these women who likened themselves to avatars of Samantabharda and were even revered by a venerable sage?

As our narrator proceeds on he hears a rustling in the reeds, it is the reed cutter.   The narrator begins a very extended conversation with the reed cutter, a man he identifies with as they are about the same age.   The narrator begins to converse about aging with the reed cutter.  The reed cutter begins to talk about walks along the river he used to take with his father. (The reed cutter in fact comes from an aristocratic family and cuts reeds for pleasure and exercise.)  The father of the reed cutter wanted to marry a woman (this is a story of 25 years or so in the past of the reed cutter.    The woman he wants to marry is promised to another.    The father of the reed cutter ends up marrying the sister of the woman he loves, reasoning if he cannot be the husband of his beloved perhaps he can be her sister.   One of the themes of  the work of Tanizaki is erotic enslavement.   We have seen this theme brilliantly treated in Naomi and The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.   In one of the most striking parts of the book the woman the father loved, his wife, and he go on a trip along the river.   They stop at an inn.   The sister he loved had recently had a baby.   They employed a wet nurse who was left home with the baby.   Normally the wet nurse would also drain out the milk produced by the mother of the child.   She does not come along on this trip so the mother drains herself the milk, places it in a glass and the father drinks it.   The wife of the father of the reed cutter knows he loves her sister and married her only to stay close to her sister.   He is also offered the opportunity to nurse from the woman but he finds the power to decline this given his wife is in the room.   Like the protagonist in Naomi, we see male characters making women into fetish objects and investing them with great power through their erotic grips.   Of course in the dynamics of human relationships this is continually shifting and can easily be lost to the next woman or to the effects of aging.   This is one of the deeper themes related to women's issues in Tanizaki's work.

There are lots of interesting literary references, observations about poetry, the aging process, sex  and family life in the work.   Nothing really happens, just a two men talking next to a river.   For sure it is a beautiful story of a man deeply into the reading life whose view of the world has been hugely enriched  by the works that are part of his interior life.   We may not be able ever to enter deeply into the works that were part of his reading life but we can see a brother of the life in him.

This probably should not be your first Tanizaki  (1886 to 1965) but for sure it is a wonderful novella.  

I will soon read and post on The Key, Diary of a Man Old Man, and Captain Shigemoto's Mother, also by Tanizaki.   Tanizaki is on my "read all they have written list" (or in his case all translated into English-I am grateful to Vintage press for having the courage and I must say class to publish and keep in print so many of his works-12).  

  

As we grow older we come to a sort of resignation, a state of mind that lets us enjoy our decline in accordance with the laws of nature, and we come to wish for a quiet balanced life, do we not?

"Naomi" by Junichiro Tanizaki

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki (1924, 237 pages, translated from the Japanese by Anthony Chambers, Tuttle Publishing) is not a great Japanese novel, it is not a great 20th century novel, it simply is a great novel.  

Naomi was first published as a serial in a Japanese newspaper starting in 1924.  (I do not think there is any newspaper editor in The USA or Europe that could have published this work at that time without risking arrest.)    It is set in Japan in the early 1920s in Tokyo.   It is narrated by a male engineer named Joji.   At the start of the work he is 27.   It details his obsession with Naomi, who is 15 when he first meets her.   (It appears the age difference and the age of Naomi was not contrary to statute and custom in Japan at the time.)   Joji meets her where she works as a waitress in a coffee house.   He is mesmerized by her beauty.    Her family is quite poor and has a less than stellar reputation.   Joji offers to take her off her parents hands and raise her and they readily agree to relieve themselves of a burden.     Joji is very devoid of experience of romantic encounters of any kind but deeply desires Naomi.   He is a very decent man and he knows it is best that they live together as friends only, sort off, to start.   He sends her to school, buys her nice clothes and hires an English tutor for her.    He also loves giving Naomi her bath.   Naomi begins to realize the power she can obtain over Joji.   The bathing ritual goes on for a long time.   There is no sex at this point between Naomi and Joji but the bathing ritual is clearly very erotic for both of them.  We can feel the power of Naomi growing.   Joji begins to develop a fetish like obsession with Naomi's skin.   He begins to keep a log of the development of her body as she matures into a woman.    Naomi who was once an undemanding young woman begins to demand more material goods from Joji.   Joji begins their relationship worshiping her for her purity, as he perceives it.   As the narrative proceeds it is clear he is an unreliable narrator.   (I like to think that maybe Ford Madox Ford might have published Naomi in The English Review).    Naomi decides she wants to have  lessons in Western  style dancing.   Now  the real trouble begins.   The lessons are given by a White Russian woman who may have been a countess in  the old days.  (I notice in novels of the 1920s former Russian noblewomen often play the parts of the bringers of trouble.)    Naomi is about 19 now and she and Joji are married.    Naomi begins to occasionally mock Joji as an old man out touch with the then westernizing Japan.    He begins to compare her to Mary Pickford, something she finds very flattering.   There are young men her age in the dance class and to Joji's great surprise somehow Naomi seems to already know them.   When he asks her how she knows them, she tells him oh I just met them around.  There is also a Western man in the class.   Joji sees him as sinister figure of some sort in Japan as part of criminal enterprise.  Soon some really bad things happen.   I do not want to tell anymore of the plot action as the plot is so much fun and suspenseful as well.   We were really made to care about Joji even if our 21th century sensibilities are offended by his joy in bathing the 15 year old Naomi  which becomes full scale erotic enslavement.   (I admit as his enslavement to Naomi progresses I wanted to tell him go down to the pleasure quarters and get her out of your system before it is too late.).   The work is acutely perceptive in his portrayal of the characters.   We see slowly the dynamics of power change.   Joji thinks he loves Naomi but he actually has altered her into a fetish object.   Naomi is drawn to western culture and completely repelled by her own cultural roots.   In one purely masterful scene Naomi comes to visit Joji dressed in purely western clothes with matching make up and hair.    The revulsion felt by Joji nearly made my skin crawl.

Naomi has numerous thematic mines one could work.    It is a tale of the corruption of a culture by an outside force.   It is a story of the balance of power between a man and a woman.   It is a classic tale of misperception.   In Naomi we have a woman degraded by what she and others think exalts her.  It is also a story of what may be described without being judgmental as  a sexual perversion by which I mean turning in this case a woman, Naomi, from a person to a fetish object.   There are also lots of acute observations along the way.   It is a good look at Japan in the 1920s and the influence of western culture, mainly movies.  (For a time Tanizaki was a screen writer.)   I cannot judge if the translation is good or not but the prose is very well done and there are none of the "howlers" there are in some translated work.    It is a tragedy and a comedy of manners.    Most of all it is a lot of fun to read.   

This is the sixth work of Junichiro Tanizaki that I have reviewed for the Japanese Literaure 3 Challenge.    I have him on my "Read all they have written list-or in this case all that has been translated list."   I think he has four other novels translated into English that I have not yet read along with a collection of short stories and a work of artistic theory.

This will be my last review for the Japanese Literature 3 Challenge.   I give my sincerest gratitude to Dolce Bellezza for hosting it.   As The Japanese Challenge 4  begins I plan to do a post called "The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in the Japanese Novel" where I will give my ideas on the best 3, 6, 9 or 12 Japanese novels to start with and why one should read Japanese novels.   There are still, of course, huge holes in my reading.   One obvious one is that I have read none of the major works of Murakami.   I hope to read his major works in the next few months.    I also have two novels by Kenzaburo Oe waiting to be read soon and he has a brand new one coming out in March!-

Mel u

"The Makioka Sisters" by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (1948, 530 pages, translated by Edward Seidensticker) is the

longest work I have read so far for The Japanese Literature 3 Challenge.  It is the fifth book by Tanizaki  that I have read.   Vintage press has twelve of his works in translation in print and I will read them all.  

The Makioka Sisters gives us a very intimate look at the lives of four sisters living in Osaka Japan.   It is set from 1936 to 1940.   Tanizaki is said to have written it during WWII to distract himself from the war.   The book is considered his master work.    The basic plot is simple.   It is the story of a merchant family whose fortunes are not quite what they once were.   They decide to remedy the problem by finding a wealthy husband for the second youngest sister, thirty year old Yukiko.
She has  two older sisters.  Tsurko the eldest has traditionally authority over her sisters now that their parents have passed away.   Her husband took her last name when he was adopted by her family and he is, in theory, the head of the family.   Sachiko is the second oldest and is considered to have the most gentle and warmest nature.   Her two younger sisters live with her most of the time.   Yukiko also has  younger sister who is portrayed as distinctly more modern than her very traditional older sisters.   She has a man in her life that she very much wants to marry, and everyone in the family likes the match as he is from a very good family.   The problem is she is not allowed to marry until all of her older sisters have married.   The fun of the plot turns on a husband hunt for Yukiko.   Yukiko acts like the totally obedient sister she is supposed to be but some how every suitor presented ends up being rejected.   One is simply way to old, one has six children, one has a mentally ill mother and one is simply too ugly.   Along the way we get a very detailed look at life in an upper class family in Osaka.   One sees in the work that there was a lot of regional conflict in Japan.   People from Osaka looked at those from Tokyo as very ill mannered and money driven, people from the Nagasaki area were simply too country and so on.  Of course people from Tokyo looked at those from Osaka as living in the past.   One of the saddest moments in the book is when the older sister and her husband most move to Tokyo to pursue a business opportunity.   We see what the sisters eat, how they feel about their husbands and how they exert control over their families.  A very fun part of  the book for me was when the sisters became friends with a White Russian Family who fled to Japan after the Czar was displaced.   The sisters are amazed by the vitality of the grandmother of the family.   When the Russia family invites them all over for dinner I could not help but laugh as we see them trying to cope with the food.   I was happy to see the sisters said they had all read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.   When the Russian family expressed surprise at this they said that all educated Japanese had read them.  The sisters also become friends with some German neighbors.   One of the best moments in the book was when the Germans, who returned because of political events in 1939, sent them a letter.   There are several letters in the novel and each is marvelously done.   One oddity, to me at least, was the pride of the sisters in their ability to drink alcohol, mostly sake.    In fact it was sort of agreed that if a man was not a drinker at all he would not be considered an acceptable husband as he would simply be too dull.   The sisters hire private investigators to check out the back grounds of possible spouses.   A big issue seems to be how much time the men had spent in the pleasure quarters.   Too much and he was considered a reprobate but no visits there also was a point to ponder.   The sisters father was a habitual frequenter of gieshas after their mother died at an early age.   This seems to be a sort of socially acceptable as long as you do not talk about it.   We really are shown a lot about day to day life.    Each sister has her own  well defined personality and we really feel we know them.   I liked all the sisters.  One of the most suspenseful elements in the book concerned a dark spot that would come and go over the eye of Yukiko.   We get a good look at child rearing practices.   We hear a lot of gossip.   There is conflict among the sisters,  of course.   It was interesting that the husbands of the older sisters had both taken the family name.   Marriages were mostly arranged at the time and we get to see how that business works and meet the marriage broker.  (She knows the in the closet secrets of every well off family in Osaka.   Of course she is very discrete and only tells these secrets to the clients of her beauty parlor!)

Most goodreads commentators on this book have given it four or five stars.   I gave it five.   Some did say it was simply to dry and that it was boring. Those who disliked the novel seemed to feel it was too detailed in its treatment of the conversations and interior lives of  the sisters and their friends.  To me it was a wonderful book that took me into another world very much unlike my own.  Only a few passing references are made in  the novel to political events (the novel period is 1936 to 1940).   I wanted to believe the family would some how survive World War II without terrible suffering.  

This is my 3rd post for the Women Unbound Challenge.    The Makioka Sisters is a very closely observed look at four Japanese women, their families and their relationships with their husbands and how they raised their children.   We see how an unwanted pregnancy is dealt with.  We see the sisters having a great time just being sisters.   I could not help but smile when we slowly began to realize that maybe Yukiko did not want a husband to be picked for her by her older sisters or maybe she does not want one at all.  

The Makioka Sisters is to me a great joy and a master novel.   Readers of Jane Austin will at once relate to the themes of the book.   I would suggest that those wanting to get to know Tanizaki first read The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot, if you like that read Quicksand, then Some Prefer Nettles. if you like these three works then read The Makioka Sisters.   Tanizaki had an interesting life.   For a brief period he was a dramatist in silent films.   I could not help but think when I read this that if were with us now (1886 to 1965) he would be an ultra rich novelist whose every work is sold to Hollywood for millions.  

"Some Prefer Nettles" by Junichiro Tanizaki

Some Prefer Nettles is the fourth work by Junichiro Tanizaki  that I have read.   (It was first published in 1928 in serial fashion in a literary publication.   The version I read was translated from Japanese by Edward Seidensticker in 1951.)   Like Quicksand  it has as its center a failed marriage, though of a different kind and among people of a very different sort.

Misako and her husband Kaname got married at a time of matrimonial transition from arranged marriages through family connections or brokers to marriages of romantic love.    They are in their mid thirties and have a son, Hiroshi, about twelve.  They do not hate each other, plot against each other or have horrible fights.  The husband simply feels no sexual attraction for his wife.   They can and do have civil conversations but they are described as like two strangers in an inn sharing a bed when the inn is full.   The husband even encourages his wife to start an affair with a male friend of hers to ease her into another marriage.   The father of Misako is the third central character in Some Prefer Nettles.    He is refereed to simply as "the old man".   He has been a widower for a long time, has enough money to live a cultivated life of leisure and keep a mistress the same age as his daughter.   Misako, of course, is embarrassed by the fact

that her father lives with a woman her own age and  she treats the mistress with thinly disguised contempt.  She sees her as sort of like a maid that has promoted herself via extra duties to a position above her station in life.   Kamame and his father in law have a cordial relationship.   The husband does find the father in law intimidating and cannot relate to the highly refined interests of the very cultivated older man.   He is a bit bored by him.   The father in law is very much "old school".   He scorns what he sees as the decadent Hollywood movies that his daughter loves and the romance novels she reads.   He is totally into Bunraku, a form of traditional puppet theater founded in Osaka in the late 17th century.    Puppet theater goes much further back than that in Japan.   Great care is lavished on the costumes of the puppets.   There are 100s of plays.  The father in law loves to talk about the smallest details in the plays, being especially interested in the costumes worn by the dolls.   He and his son in law go to a festival where many plays will be put on over a three day period.   The father in law is not really judgmental when his son in law tells him of the divorce that may be coming.   He feels the problem is caused by western corruption bringing people to false expectations about marriages.


Unlike Quicksand, characters in this work are basically sympathetic.   There are no real villains.  It is a lot of fun to see what happens in the marriage and how everyone deals with events in their own way.  I do not want to give away any more plot details as it is terribly clever. 

There is an amazing two page description of a minor character, a fifty year old Canadian woman who owns and operates a number of brothels, that is an amazing literary jewel.

In Some Prefer Nettles  we see a classic Reading Life type in the father in law, a man who has sort of cultivated himself into a isolated corner.   His inner life has been totally enriched by things those around him do not fathom and frankly find a total bore.   I did not at all see the ending of this book coming.  Tanizaki sort of plots his books so you have to continually rethink what is happening.  

As I was writing this post in my mind I began to imagine Tanizaki reading one of Henry James 1000 word descriptions of the inner life of a character and saying "Not bad Henry, but here is what you missed and by the way I edited out 800 words for you".   I see him telling Flaubert "Sorry Gustav but the women in your books are really dullards".   I see him telling Joyce, "I could put hidden references to things nobody will understand in my books to prove how smart I am but I do not feel the need".   I imagine him telling D H Lawrence that he can create more erotic power with veiled suggestion than Lawrence  could with all the banned words that can be found.  This does not mean he would be right to say these things but the thought was there for me.

 I endorse this book without reservations.   It is not simply an historical curiosity.   All of the characters are perfect.   There are no trite plot lines.   The ending befuddled me and may do the same to others.   As a side benefit we learn a lot about Japanese life in the 1920s.


Mel u

"Quicksand" by Junichiro Tanizaki

Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki (translated from Japanese by Howard Hibbert in 1993, first published 1928)

Forget the leading ladies in "Melrose Place", "Desperate Housewives", or the female villains in the latest Korean soap opera.   None of them are half as devious, manipulative, seductive, or beautiful as Mitsuko in Quicksand.   (It should be noted that those  are Mitsuko's good qualities.)

Sonoko and Mitsuko meet at an art class.   Mitsuko is posing,  covered only in a sheet , as the Kannon Bodhisattva for the class.   Sonoko cannot help but notice what a beautiful delicate face Mitsuko has as well as her flawless body.   The two women get to know each other over the course of a few weeks in class and begin to spend some time together.    One day Sonoko asks Mitsuko to come back to her house and pose nude for her so she can complete her drawing of her as the Kannon Bodhisattva.

We begin to wonder now who is the deceiver and who the deceived, of course someone can be both.  A rumor begins to go around the school that the women are lovers.   At first both women are shocked.  Then they become lovers.   They begin to deceive Sonoko's seemingly naive husband, who owes his status in life to the parents of his wife, something she likes to throw in his face every once and a while.   Unaccepted turns of events are everywhere, manipulations within ploys with schemes at every turn.  There are no explicit scenes in Quicksand  but there is more erotic power felt than in D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, also first published in 1928.  

One day Sonoko learns under shocking circumstances that Mitsuko has a male lover also and might be pregnant.   Things begin to get really strange now.   A triangle of sorts develops between the man and the two women.   Then another triangle develops between the husband and the two women.   Then the husband and the man meet.   I was not able to see what was going to happen next and I think most readers feel the same way.   The plot is in no way cliched.   The characters are whole people, especially the women who are brilliantly realized.  

We get a good look at day to day life among financially comfortable (but not really rich) people in Japan in the 1920s.   We get a very good look a marriage in decline.   Quicksand does a great job with some family fight scenes.    We learn some things in passing.   We go alone when Mitsuko, who may or may not be pregnant, goes for a prenatal examination and we find out about a women's right to choose in prewar Japan.   I do not want to give away any more of the plot lines as the twists and turns are just so clever and so much fun.   The ending will make you rethink the whole book and wonder if maybe you got everything wrong as you were reading Quicksand.  

I really liked this book.   It is perfectly plotted and paced.   All of the characters, even the minor ones like Mitsuko's maid Una, are completely credible.   We see the dynamics of power in relationships.   We feel the beauty and erotic power of Mitsuko.

I have now created a new subcategory for my To Be Read List.  I call it my "read all they have written list".  Junichiro Tanizaki is now on this list along with Kenzaburo Oe.  I have already posted on his   Arrowroot and The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.   It appears he has 12 works in print in English by Vintage Press.  I plan to read all of them. 

I endorse this book without reservation.

Mel u

"Arrowroot" by Junichiro Tanizaki-

Arrowroot by Junichiro Tanizaki (1931, trans. by Anthony Chambers is kindly included by Vintage Press in the same book as The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.  (This is a decision of Vintage unrelated to the works or the intentions of the author but it does add a lot of value to the book and I appreciate it.)

Arrowroot is now the oldest Japanese work I have posted on, published for the first time 78 years ago.    It is about the search of a man whose parents died when he was quite young for his maternal roots.   The story is set in Japan in 1910 in Tokyo and Osaka.   The narrator is deeply involved in The Reading Life.   He sees the world through the classic dramas and epics of 15th to 17th century Japan.    Everything is somehow formulized through that prism for him.  When he sees something or meets someone he is reminded of a play he has seen or a poem he has read and then launches into an internal monologue linking one literary work to another then another.    We learn of a number of the great works of classical Japanese literature.  

The narrator is an extremely cultured man who can only marginally relate to those below his level.   When he does relate to them, he sees them as minor characters in a Kabuki play.   The narrator was orphaned and raised by relatives starting at a young age.   He decides one day to seek out his maternal roots in Osaka.    When he goes back he finds out that at about age 13 his mother was sold by her parents to a business he can identify only as being in the "pleasure quarters" of Osaka.   This might mean she was sold to a tea house as a kitchen worker or was to be trained as a Geisha but most likely it means she  became a prostitute at age 13.   Somehow through a great stroke of good luck his mother married a wealthy man.   She died only a few years after having her son, our narrator.   He finds out his family were makers of fine paper, from arrowroot.   He sees a girl in her late teens making paper and he tells her family he wants to marry her.    She reminds him of a selfless heroine in one of his dramas.  

To me the fun of this work is that it shows a man living completely The Reading Life in a literature in which I have no home but I can totally relate to the narrator nevertheless.   You feel his love for reading and you know it is the most important thing in his life.   Like other characters whose Reading Life I have posted on, he is both shielded from the world by his reading and allowed to experience the world more deeply by it.  

There is a good bit of information about Japanese religion in this story (40 pages).  We are treated to a wonderful series of fox images while being given an education in the role of the fox in Japanese culture.   The treatment of the religious beliefs of the common people of Osaka (I think Osaka was seen as more true to classical Japanese ideals than Tokyo in this narrative) also seems an oblique commentary on the sterility of Confucian dictates.   Magic permeates throughout the world of the story.   The extreme antirealism of classical drama in which the narrator is absorbed allows him not just to reinterprert events as a No Play but see them that way in the first place.  

Arrowroot a wonderful story about a lover of The Reading Life.    What our narrator reads maybe alien to most of us but he is a brother in the life.  Yesterday I bought three more novels by Tanizaki.  

He lived 1886 to 1965.   He published his first work in 1910 and at once was considered a major literary figure.   He even worked briefly in the silent films of the era as a dramatist.   He was exempt from military service in WWII due to his age.   At his death he was considered the greatest living Japanese writer.