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A review by kamila79
Seven Japanese Tales by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
3.0
As much as I admire Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novels and his essay “In Praise of Shadows” (one of my favourite Japanese pieces of writing ever), as much as I think I could have been friends with him and we could have talked for hours and never exhaust the range of topics to discuss, I didn’t enjoy most of his stories in the collection “Seven Japanese Tales”. Five of them bore me, from slightly to terribly, but two stood out.
Many years ago, when I lived in London, I went to the Barbican to watch an amazing play - “Shun-kin”. It was directed by Simon McBurney, played by Japanese actors from Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre and included a puppet of a blind Japanese woman (Shunkin, the shamisen teacher) from Blind Summit. The spectacular combination of the short story “A Portrait of Shunkin” and the essay “In Praise of Shadows”, with beautiful live music, left me mesmerised. I yearned to read the story, on which the play was based.
It is, as most Tanizaki’s stories and novels, a tale of a sado-masochistic, manipulative, bizarre love relationship between a teacher and her pupil, with some not entirely plausible twists and turns. I feel that Tanizaki is best when he describes the dynamics of a relationship between a man and woman, which in his stories - be it the short stories or novels like “Naomi” or “Diary of a Mad Old Man” - is never equal but always includes an element of exploitation, domination and submission.
Another recurring theme of his work is the fascination with the West: fashion, cuisines, lifestyle, leisure pursuits. The second story in this collection which gave me a great pleasure to read, “Aguri”, is a simple tale of a shopping trip to Yokohama of a wealthy man and his young mistress to buy her a Western outfit and free her from “baggy, shapeless, unbecoming kimono”. The man fantasises about the girl dressed in Western clothes: “He would accentuate every curve and hollow, give her body a brilliant surface and lively flowing lines; he would fashion swelling contours, make her wrists, ankles, neck, all strikingly slender and graceful. Really, shopping to enhance the beauty of the woman you love ought to be like a dream come true”.
In the times Tanizaki wrote “Aguri”, Japan was swept by Westernisation and the development of the concept of the so-called ‘modern girl’ - a Japanese woman who preferred everything Western, also embracing features of personality mistakenly taken for Western ones: selfishness, blatant rudeness, frivolity and promiscuity. The fantasy of the metamorphosis of a timid, submissive girl into a sensual, provocative woman drives the male protagonist mad. This excitement, described in the story, of purchasing Western underwear, stockings, a dress, a hat, and shoes and discovering how they transform a young girl into a woman reminded me of my own trip to Tokyo’s department store Isetan with my Japanese friend and buying a yukata with all new and foreign for me accessories to reveal a different me: a woman who walks differently, sits differently, gesticulates differently, even moves her head differently, as the new outfit defines a new way of being. Just as thrilled but somewhat intimidated Aguri listened to the shopkeeper explaining how to fasten a bra or put on stockings, I listened to the explanations on what to do with datejime and obi-ita, and how to tie an obiage. Reading the story made me recall this kind of reverse experience.
Tanizaki is often praised for his subtlety, but I find him quite explicit, even vulgar sometimes in the way he describes emotions, sadistic tendencies of his characters and their actions. There is little elegance in his writing, which I find in Mishima. Overall, besides these two stories, I was quite disappointed and unmoved by the tribulations of his characters and felt Tanizaki’s prose sadly didn’t stand the test of time (the same what I feel with Osamu Dazai and Mori Ōgai).
Many years ago, when I lived in London, I went to the Barbican to watch an amazing play - “Shun-kin”. It was directed by Simon McBurney, played by Japanese actors from Tokyo’s Setagaya Public Theatre and included a puppet of a blind Japanese woman (Shunkin, the shamisen teacher) from Blind Summit. The spectacular combination of the short story “A Portrait of Shunkin” and the essay “In Praise of Shadows”, with beautiful live music, left me mesmerised. I yearned to read the story, on which the play was based.
It is, as most Tanizaki’s stories and novels, a tale of a sado-masochistic, manipulative, bizarre love relationship between a teacher and her pupil, with some not entirely plausible twists and turns. I feel that Tanizaki is best when he describes the dynamics of a relationship between a man and woman, which in his stories - be it the short stories or novels like “Naomi” or “Diary of a Mad Old Man” - is never equal but always includes an element of exploitation, domination and submission.
Another recurring theme of his work is the fascination with the West: fashion, cuisines, lifestyle, leisure pursuits. The second story in this collection which gave me a great pleasure to read, “Aguri”, is a simple tale of a shopping trip to Yokohama of a wealthy man and his young mistress to buy her a Western outfit and free her from “baggy, shapeless, unbecoming kimono”. The man fantasises about the girl dressed in Western clothes: “He would accentuate every curve and hollow, give her body a brilliant surface and lively flowing lines; he would fashion swelling contours, make her wrists, ankles, neck, all strikingly slender and graceful. Really, shopping to enhance the beauty of the woman you love ought to be like a dream come true”.
In the times Tanizaki wrote “Aguri”, Japan was swept by Westernisation and the development of the concept of the so-called ‘modern girl’ - a Japanese woman who preferred everything Western, also embracing features of personality mistakenly taken for Western ones: selfishness, blatant rudeness, frivolity and promiscuity. The fantasy of the metamorphosis of a timid, submissive girl into a sensual, provocative woman drives the male protagonist mad. This excitement, described in the story, of purchasing Western underwear, stockings, a dress, a hat, and shoes and discovering how they transform a young girl into a woman reminded me of my own trip to Tokyo’s department store Isetan with my Japanese friend and buying a yukata with all new and foreign for me accessories to reveal a different me: a woman who walks differently, sits differently, gesticulates differently, even moves her head differently, as the new outfit defines a new way of being. Just as thrilled but somewhat intimidated Aguri listened to the shopkeeper explaining how to fasten a bra or put on stockings, I listened to the explanations on what to do with datejime and obi-ita, and how to tie an obiage. Reading the story made me recall this kind of reverse experience.
Tanizaki is often praised for his subtlety, but I find him quite explicit, even vulgar sometimes in the way he describes emotions, sadistic tendencies of his characters and their actions. There is little elegance in his writing, which I find in Mishima. Overall, besides these two stories, I was quite disappointed and unmoved by the tribulations of his characters and felt Tanizaki’s prose sadly didn’t stand the test of time (the same what I feel with Osamu Dazai and Mori Ōgai).