Japan

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 武州公秘話 (The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi). This is another thoroughly enjoyable Tanizaki novel. It tells the tale of the fictitious Terukatsu, who will later become a great general. However, instead of giving a conventional account of a great general, which would have invariably … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s お艶殺し (A Spring-Time Case). This is the earliest of Tanizaki’s works to be translated into English, though the English text is very difficult to get hold of, having first been published in 1927 in Japan and never reprinted. This fairly short novel tells the story of … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 蓼喰う蟲 (Some Prefer Nettles). This is wonderful little novel on the gradual falling apart of a marriage but one that it is falling apart without bitterness and recriminations but just because the couple are, as Kaname, the husband, says, no longer excited by one another. Misako, … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 卍 (Quicksand). This a very erotic novel, even by Tanizaki’s standard. Sonoko Kakiuchi is a widow, telling her story to the author. She had been married to a lawyer and had accompanied him into town to go to art school. There she had met Mitsuko, a … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 友田と松永の話 [The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga]. The narrator, a well-known novelist, receives a letter from Shige Matsunaga, asking him to help locate her husband. They have been happily married, living in the country. However, after a few years of marriage, when she was pregnant, he … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 痴人の愛 (Naomi). This was Tanizaki’s first full-length novel, written when he had moved away from Yokohama after the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. It tells the story of Joji Kawai, a serious young man with a good job in Tokyo who falls for a young woman … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 猫と庄造と二人の女 (A Cat, A Man and Two Women). I read some Tanizaki many years ago so now is the time to reread those ones I read before and read those, like this one, I had not read before. This is certainly not one of his greatest … Read more

The latest addition to my website is Minae Mizumura‘s 本格小説 新潮社 (A True Novel). This book has been very well received both in Japan and elsewhere and, perhaps not surprisingly, had appeared in other European languages before appearing in English earlier this year. It was worth the wait. It is a superb Japanese take on … Read more