Book description
Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining
fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. It is a loving and nostalgic
recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osaka
immediately before World War Two. With surgical precision, Tanizaki lays
bare the sinews of pride, and brings a vanished era to vibrant life.
Junichiro Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where his family owned
printing establishment. He studied Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial
University, and his first published work, a one-act play, appeared in
1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the
cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to
the gentler and more cultivated Kyoto-Osaka region, the scene of
The Makioka Sisters.
There he became absorbed in the Japanese past and all his most
important works were written from this point, among them Some Prefer Nettles
(1929), Arrowroot
(1931), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi
(1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji
(1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters
(1943-48), Captain Shigemoto's Mother
(1949), The Key
(1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man
(1961). By 1930 he had gained such renown that an edition of his
complete works was published and he was awarded an Imperial Award for
Cultural Merit in 1949. In 1964 he was elected an honorary Member of the
American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the
first Japanese citizen ever to recieve this honour. Tanizaki died in
1965.
