Longing and Other Stories (trans. Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy)
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Columbia University Press: 2022
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These three stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965), published in English for the first time, bear all the author’s devilish hallmarks: dysfunctional families, social transgressions, narcissism, confessionals, sexual fetishes and so forth. For anyone partial to a little schadenfreude, the torments to which Tanizaki subjects his characters, far from being triggers for depression, are central to the guilty pleasure of reading him. His characters display deep inner conflicts against a backdrop of early-twentieth century Japan as it struggles to deal with foreign influences. Redemption, if it comes, is bittersweet.

If Tanizaki enjoyed dishing out the suffering, he was not averse to a bit of self-abasement. When the first-person voice suggests the author himself, we can be sure his questionable behaviour will lead to some wry retribution. In ‘Sorrows of a Heretic’, the second story in the collection, Tanizaki takes himself as the model for the cynical and lazy protagonist Shozaburo. He is a student at a prestigious university who lives in a squalid Tokyo tenement, extracting every advantage from his miserable parents and peers. (A throwaway sentence delightfully flags his descent into depravity, as we learn, ‘Around that time, Shozaburo, being a masochist, found a prostitute who acceded to his every demand.’)

• Tags: Issue 26, Japan, Mark Robinson