Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: 蘆刈 (Ashikari; later: The Reed Cutter) and 少将滋幹の母 (Captain Shigemoto’s Mother)

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The latest addition to my website is two novellas by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: 蘆刈 (Ashikari; later: The Reed Cutter) and 少将滋幹の母 (Captain Shigemoto’s Mother), both published in English in the same volume. The first is a short novella telling the tale of a man (the author) who decides to visit the Minase Shrine, site of an old palace. While there, he goes to the river where there is a splendid and famous view, to see the moon over the river. He meets a man there, who tells him a story about coming every year to see the moon with his father. The father would stop and look into a rich man’s house and tell him to remember the Lady Oyu. When he was bit older, the father told his son the story of Lady Oyu. He, the father, had remain unmarried till his late twenties. One day he went to the theatre with his sister and her husband and they sat in a box next to Lady Oyu and her sister. Lady Oyu had married an older man at a young age but her husband had died when she was only twenty-two. As she had a son, her husband’s family would not allow her to remarry but she was very much pampered. The story-teller’s father immediately fell in love with Lady Oyu but could not marry her. However, her sister, Oshizu, aware of the situation suggested that he marry her in name only, so he could continue a relationship with Oyu. This decidedly odd ménage-à-trois continued for a while till Lady Oyu’s son died, partially through her neglect. Things, of course, went wrong, though the whole scenario is, as is usual with Tanizaki, charged with eroticism. Both the narrator and the reader also want to know who was the story-teller’s mother – Oyu or Oshizu? Inevitably, there is something of a twist in the tale.

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少将滋幹の母 (Captain Shigemoto’s Mother) also has a strong erotic element. It is set at the beginning of the tenth century and features various historical and legendary Japanese characters. Heiju is a notorious womaniser. He is also on good terms with Fujiwara no Tokihira, an important and powerful man in Japan at the time. Heiju visits Fujiwara no Tokihira not just to gain influence but also because, nearby, he can have access to the very beautiful Jiju. However, Jiju spurns him though it appears that, later, they do have some sort of relationship. Meanwhile, Fujiwara no Tokihira also finds out about Jiju and also reveals that she is married to Fujiwara Kunitsune, his uncle. However, his uncle, though in his seventies, is of a much lower social status than he is, so Tokihira concocts a plan to visit his uncle and trick him into handing over Jiju, a trick which is successful. Jiju remains as Tokihira’s wife and her son by Fujiwara Kunitsune is separated from his mother. This is something the son, the eponymous Captain Shigemoto, bitterly regrets all his life but, once again, Tanizaki comes up with a clever twist to the tale. Though not his greatest works, these are both excellent tales, superbly well-told, erotic and with Tanizaki’s inevitable surprises.

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