The Labyrinth of Aestheticism: Tanizaki Junichiro and Showa Literature" - Early Showa Period

The Labyrinth of Aestheticism: Tanizaki Junichiro and Showa Literature" - Early Showa Period

Junichiro Tanizaki was born in Nihonbashi, Tokyo in 1886. In the 1910s, he shocked the literary world by depicting sensuality and aestheticism in "Shisei" and "Lover's Love". After the Great Kanto Earthquake, he moved to the Kansai region, where he deepened his devotion to classical beauty and mastered the Japanese aesthetic with works such as "Shunkinsho. His masterpiece from the early Showa period, "Hosoyuki," delicately depicts the lives of four sisters of the declining upper class, expressing beauty and fragility amid the looming shadow of war. While his contemporary Kawabata Yasunari loved "silence and blank spaces," Tanizaki pursued "rich and decorative beauty. Unlike Naoya Shiga, who developed an ethical realism, Tanizaki's subject matter was the conflict between desire and aesthetics. His post-disaster migration shaped his duality of Tokyo-style modernism and Kansai-style classical beauty.