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 1886 in the Nihonbashi district (present-day Chuo Ward) of Tokyo. In his debut novels of the 1910s, "Shisei" (A Tattoo) and "Lover's Love," he boldly depicted sensuality and aestheticism that were unique at the time, and made an impact on modern Japanese literature.

After the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923), Tanizaki moved to the Kansai region and was deeply influenced by its culture and aesthetic sense. In "Shunkinsho," Tanizaki expresses the Japanese "aesthetics of suffering" through the mad love between a blind female shamisen player, Shunkin, and her apprentice, Sasuke. During the prewar and wartime periods, his return to the classics became more pronounced, and he worked on a modern translation of "The Tale of Genji.

His masterpiece "Hosoyuki" is regarded as Tanizaki's culmination, depicting the delicate beauty and fragility of Japanese culture through the lives of four sisters in an old family in the early Showa period. The characters' daily lives are filled with tension as the shadow of war looms over them, and there is a hint of sadness in the elegance of the falling upper class. In the nationalistic atmosphere of the period, his sense of beauty depicted a closed world as if to keep the stormy waves of reality at bay, while his delicate pursuit of beauty was also tinged with criticism of the times.

While his contemporary Kawabata Yasunari loved the "silence and blank spaces" of Japanese culture, Tanizaki pursued a "rich and decorative beauty. Unlike Naoya Shiga, whose realism centered on "ethics and human behavior," Tanizaki's theme is the conflict between desire and aesthetics that lie deep within the human being.

This background of his birthplace, the urban culture of the Taisho and Showa periods, and post-disaster migration shaped the duality of Tanizaki's literature: Tokyo-style modernism and Kansai-style classical beauty.