Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

At an Average of 130 Pages per Sister, It Ran a Bit Long, 31 Jul 2008
Considered Tanizaki's best novel, this work has been called a textbook of Japanese behavior. The author began writing it around 1942-3 in the midst of World War II. Magazine publication in installments was banned after the early chapters were judged insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The work was finally published in book form a few years after the war's end, in 1948. The English translation came out in 1957.

The novel began in the late 1930s among a formerly wealthy merchant family from Osaka and ended around 1940, before the outbreak of war with the United States. The family consisted of two married sisters, with their husbands and children, and two younger, unmarried sisters. Much of the novel dealt with the family's concerns about finding a suitable groom for the third sister and determining whether the fourth sister should be allowed to travel abroad, take up a trade, and continue meeting a suitor from the past. There was seemingly endless description of these two concerns, mainly from the second sister's point of view.

Determining a proper marriage candidate for the third sister meant endless rounds of negotiation with each successive prospect. Each point of discussion was passed up through the hierarchy of the family ranks for decision, with soundings carefully taken of everyone's potential reaction, and any eventual decisions that resulted then passed back down. Any unexpected development restarted the cycle. Throughout, it was essential to show outward respect for the proper forms, maintain the face appropriate to one's place in society and keep the family's name unsullied. The sister herself, the one on whose behalf the entire family was working, showed the least interest of all in tying the knot and was content to remain dependent. Given all this, it was no wonder she was long past marriageable age.

With the fourth sister, by tradition her conduct was regulated by the family of the first sister. The family heads were so stuck in the past, however, that their decisions for her bore little relation to what realistically she needed to do. Ready to marry, she wasn't free to act until a groom for the third sister was chosen. The second sister, her go-between within the family, sympathized with the predicament but wished to avoid a family upset. This meant endless thinking about how to divine everyone's true motives and spin discussions, avoiding confrontation while protecting the family name. And continued reproaches to herself or others -- thought but unexpressed -- for hesitation or lack of proper consideration. What happened in effect was continued avoidance of any clear resolution until too late, when events forced the family's hands, so to speak.

The author was skilled at setting up contrasts between the actions of the two younger sisters or the two older sisters, and at establishing situations where a character would condemn another for something and behave later in a similar way. When action on a larger scale occurred from time to time -- a flood, a medical crisis -- his powers of description were memorable. And the irony of the conclusion, after the family's endless consideration of its good name, was very pointed. Not to mention the irony of having the novel conclude, after more than 500 pages, with hoped-for events still in the future.

At the same time, what I could appreciate was affected eventually by the book's seemingly interminable proceedings. One wondered sometimes whether the author was intentionally drawing out things to the point of parody. I also had trouble figuring out exactly where the author's sympathies lay. With Teinosuke, the second sister's husband? Not with any of the four sisters, it seemed, most of whom were described from the outside, none of whom received compassion unmixed with mockery. The characters were almost entirely closed to each other, rarely if ever sharing their deeper thoughts. And how class-bound they were, so much of the time.

For reasons like these, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. Another novel read recently that was set in the past and focused on the lives of women -- The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi - with a far narrower scope, less mastery and much less detail but with clearer, unalloyed compassion, was preferred.

The World in a Grain of Sand, 21 Oct 2006
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master Ea de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

At an Average of 130 Pages per Sister, It Ran a Bit Long, 31 Jul 2008
Considered Tanizaki's best novel, this work has been called a textbook of Japanese behavior. The author began writing it around 1942-3 in the midst of World War II. Magazine publication in installments was banned after the early chapters were judged insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The work was finally published in book form a few years after the war's end, in 1948. The English translation came out in 1957.

The novel began in the late 1930s among a formerly wealthy merchant family from Osaka and ended around 1940, before the outbreak of war with the United States. The family consisted of two married sisters, with their husbands and children, and two younger, unmarried sisters. Much of the novel dealt with the family's concerns about finding a suitable groom for the third sister and determining whether the fourth sister should be allowed to travel abroad, take up a trade, and continue meeting a suitor from the past. There was seemingly endless description of these two concerns, mainly from the second sister's point of view.

Determining a proper marriage candidate for the third sister meant endless rounds of negotiation with each successive prospect. Each point of discussion was passed up through the hierarchy of the family ranks for decision, with soundings carefully taken of everyone's potential reaction, and any eventual decisions that resulted then passed back down. Any unexpected development restarted the cycle. Throughout, it was essential to show outward respect for the proper forms, maintain the face appropriate to one's place in society and keep the family's name unsullied. The sister herself, the one on whose behalf the entire family was working, showed the least interest of all in tying the knot and was content to remain dependent. Given all this, it was no wonder she was long past marriageable age.

With the fourth sister, by tradition her conduct was regulated by the family of the first sister. The family heads were so stuck in the past, however, that their decisions for her bore little relation to what realistically she needed to do. Ready to marry, she wasn't free to act until a groom for the third sister was chosen. The second sister, her go-between within the family, sympathized with the predicament but wished to avoid a family upset. This meant endless thinking about how to divine everyone's true motives and spin discussions, avoiding confrontation while protecting the family name. And continued reproaches to herself or others -- thought but unexpressed -- for hesitation or lack of proper consideration. What happened in effect was continued avoidance of any clear resolution until too late, when events forced the family's hands, so to speak.

The author was skilled at setting up contrasts between the actions of the two younger sisters or the two older sisters, and at establishing situations where a character would condemn another for something and behave later in a similar way. When action on a larger scale occurred from time to time -- a flood, a medical crisis -- his powers of description were memorable. And the irony of the conclusion, after the family's endless consideration of its good name, was very pointed. Not to mention the irony of having the novel conclude, after more than 500 pages, with hoped-for events still in the future.

At the same time, what I could appreciate was affected eventually by the book's seemingly interminable proceedings. One wondered sometimes whether the author was intentionally drawing out things to the point of parody. I also had trouble figuring out exactly where the author's sympathies lay. With Teinosuke, the second sister's husband? Not with any of the four sisters, it seemed, most of whom were described from the outside, none of whom received compassion unmixed with mockery. The characters were almost entirely closed to each other, rarely if ever sharing their deeper thoughts. And how class-bound they were, so much of the time.

For reasons like these, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. Another novel read recently that was set in the past and focused on the lives of women -- The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi - with a far narrower scope, less mastery and much less detail but with clearer, unalloyed compassion, was preferred.

The World in a Grain of Sand, 21 Oct 2006
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master Ea de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions.,, 19 Jan 2003
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions., 22 Dec 2002
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity. Mary Whipple

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

At an Average of 130 Pages per Sister, It Ran a Bit Long, 31 Jul 2008
Considered Tanizaki's best novel, this work has been called a textbook of Japanese behavior. The author began writing it around 1942-3 in the midst of World War II. Magazine publication in installments was banned after the early chapters were judged insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The work was finally published in book form a few years after the war's end, in 1948. The English translation came out in 1957.

The novel began in the late 1930s among a formerly wealthy merchant family from Osaka and ended around 1940, before the outbreak of war with the United States. The family consisted of two married sisters, with their husbands and children, and two younger, unmarried sisters. Much of the novel dealt with the family's concerns about finding a suitable groom for the third sister and determining whether the fourth sister should be allowed to travel abroad, take up a trade, and continue meeting a suitor from the past. There was seemingly endless description of these two concerns, mainly from the second sister's point of view.

Determining a proper marriage candidate for the third sister meant endless rounds of negotiation with each successive prospect. Each point of discussion was passed up through the hierarchy of the family ranks for decision, with soundings carefully taken of everyone's potential reaction, and any eventual decisions that resulted then passed back down. Any unexpected development restarted the cycle. Throughout, it was essential to show outward respect for the proper forms, maintain the face appropriate to one's place in society and keep the family's name unsullied. The sister herself, the one on whose behalf the entire family was working, showed the least interest of all in tying the knot and was content to remain dependent. Given all this, it was no wonder she was long past marriageable age.

With the fourth sister, by tradition her conduct was regulated by the family of the first sister. The family heads were so stuck in the past, however, that their decisions for her bore little relation to what realistically she needed to do. Ready to marry, she wasn't free to act until a groom for the third sister was chosen. The second sister, her go-between within the family, sympathized with the predicament but wished to avoid a family upset. This meant endless thinking about how to divine everyone's true motives and spin discussions, avoiding confrontation while protecting the family name. And continued reproaches to herself or others -- thought but unexpressed -- for hesitation or lack of proper consideration. What happened in effect was continued avoidance of any clear resolution until too late, when events forced the family's hands, so to speak.

The author was skilled at setting up contrasts between the actions of the two younger sisters or the two older sisters, and at establishing situations where a character would condemn another for something and behave later in a similar way. When action on a larger scale occurred from time to time -- a flood, a medical crisis -- his powers of description were memorable. And the irony of the conclusion, after the family's endless consideration of its good name, was very pointed. Not to mention the irony of having the novel conclude, after more than 500 pages, with hoped-for events still in the future.

At the same time, what I could appreciate was affected eventually by the book's seemingly interminable proceedings. One wondered sometimes whether the author was intentionally drawing out things to the point of parody. I also had trouble figuring out exactly where the author's sympathies lay. With Teinosuke, the second sister's husband? Not with any of the four sisters, it seemed, most of whom were described from the outside, none of whom received compassion unmixed with mockery. The characters were almost entirely closed to each other, rarely if ever sharing their deeper thoughts. And how class-bound they were, so much of the time.

For reasons like these, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. Another novel read recently that was set in the past and focused on the lives of women -- The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi - with a far narrower scope, less mastery and much less detail but with clearer, unalloyed compassion, was preferred.

The World in a Grain of Sand, 21 Oct 2006
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master Ea de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions.,, 19 Jan 2003
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions., 22 Dec 2002
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity. Mary Whipple

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

At an Average of 130 Pages per Sister, It Ran a Bit Long, 31 Jul 2008
Considered Tanizaki's best novel, this work has been called a textbook of Japanese behavior. The author began writing it around 1942-3 in the midst of World War II. Magazine publication in installments was banned after the early chapters were judged insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The work was finally published in book form a few years after the war's end, in 1948. The English translation came out in 1957.

The novel began in the late 1930s among a formerly wealthy merchant family from Osaka and ended around 1940, before the outbreak of war with the United States. The family consisted of two married sisters, with their husbands and children, and two younger, unmarried sisters. Much of the novel dealt with the family's concerns about finding a suitable groom for the third sister and determining whether the fourth sister should be allowed to travel abroad, take up a trade, and continue meeting a suitor from the past. There was seemingly endless description of these two concerns, mainly from the second sister's point of view.

Determining a proper marriage candidate for the third sister meant endless rounds of negotiation with each successive prospect. Each point of discussion was passed up through the hierarchy of the family ranks for decision, with soundings carefully taken of everyone's potential reaction, and any eventual decisions that resulted then passed back down. Any unexpected development restarted the cycle. Throughout, it was essential to show outward respect for the proper forms, maintain the face appropriate to one's place in society and keep the family's name unsullied. The sister herself, the one on whose behalf the entire family was working, showed the least interest of all in tying the knot and was content to remain dependent. Given all this, it was no wonder she was long past marriageable age.

With the fourth sister, by tradition her conduct was regulated by the family of the first sister. The family heads were so stuck in the past, however, that their decisions for her bore little relation to what realistically she needed to do. Ready to marry, she wasn't free to act until a groom for the third sister was chosen. The second sister, her go-between within the family, sympathized with the predicament but wished to avoid a family upset. This meant endless thinking about how to divine everyone's true motives and spin discussions, avoiding confrontation while protecting the family name. And continued reproaches to herself or others -- thought but unexpressed -- for hesitation or lack of proper consideration. What happened in effect was continued avoidance of any clear resolution until too late, when events forced the family's hands, so to speak.

The author was skilled at setting up contrasts between the actions of the two younger sisters or the two older sisters, and at establishing situations where a character would condemn another for something and behave later in a similar way. When action on a larger scale occurred from time to time -- a flood, a medical crisis -- his powers of description were memorable. And the irony of the conclusion, after the family's endless consideration of its good name, was very pointed. Not to mention the irony of having the novel conclude, after more than 500 pages, with hoped-for events still in the future.

At the same time, what I could appreciate was affected eventually by the book's seemingly interminable proceedings. One wondered sometimes whether the author was intentionally drawing out things to the point of parody. I also had trouble figuring out exactly where the author's sympathies lay. With Teinosuke, the second sister's husband? Not with any of the four sisters, it seemed, most of whom were described from the outside, none of whom received compassion unmixed with mockery. The characters were almost entirely closed to each other, rarely if ever sharing their deeper thoughts. And how class-bound they were, so much of the time.

For reasons like these, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. Another novel read recently that was set in the past and focused on the lives of women -- The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi - with a far narrower scope, less mastery and much less detail but with clearer, unalloyed compassion, was preferred.

The World in a Grain of Sand, 21 Oct 2006
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master Ea de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions.,, 19 Jan 2003
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions., 22 Dec 2002
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity. Mary Whipple

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

Compelling In That Stark And Desolate Japanese Author Way, 27 Jun 1999
This book was a good read with a few compelling plotlines, but I didn't find Tanizaki's style particularly memorable because he so very much resembles Mishima.

Seven astonishing tales that capture my imagination forever., 29 Apr 1999
This book was my traveling companion during my solo exploration around Europe for two months. When I was on the trip, this book put me in perspective about life and the living experiences. Imagine, my only traveling companion is Junichiro Tanizaki. Wonderful book.

Fire and Ice, an emotional and intellectual experience., 28 Jan 1999
This book at times had me sitting on the edge of an emotional chair. Tanizaki in these tales has managed to communicate every emotion simply but clearly. For me at times it was like looking into a deep crystal clear lake, so clear every detail of the lake, to its bottom was vividly visible. It was quite a different reading experience. Sensuality is combined easily with prudence, and art, making for a simultaneously strong emotional and intellectual experience. I would definitely recommend this book to serious readers.

I found it fascinating and intriguing, 15 Jun 1998
Though some of the longer short stories got very tedious at parts, in the end they were worth reading. Very excellent stories to provoke thinking on human behaviors.

Beauty, Passion, Desire, Love, Sorcery, Violence, Death ..., 18 Apr 1997

Beautiful women, bold men, treachery, wars, rape, pillage, gruesome butchery ...the passions of the mankind are in these tales of ancient oriental tribes.

The writing is amazingly vivid. I could almost imagine a samurai jumping out of the page and plunging his sword into an enemy heart. The furtive passionate embraces are treated with a delicacy unlike the modern day novels where sex is like brushing one's teeth.

The apt analogy I can think of in the context of these stories are the celebrated movies by Kurosawa wherein the passions are not sterilized for the comfort of the watcher.

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

At an Average of 130 Pages per Sister, It Ran a Bit Long, 31 Jul 2008
Considered Tanizaki's best novel, this work has been called a textbook of Japanese behavior. The author began writing it around 1942-3 in the midst of World War II. Magazine publication in installments was banned after the early chapters were judged insufficiently supportive of the war effort. The work was finally published in book form a few years after the war's end, in 1948. The English translation came out in 1957.

The novel began in the late 1930s among a formerly wealthy merchant family from Osaka and ended around 1940, before the outbreak of war with the United States. The family consisted of two married sisters, with their husbands and children, and two younger, unmarried sisters. Much of the novel dealt with the family's concerns about finding a suitable groom for the third sister and determining whether the fourth sister should be allowed to travel abroad, take up a trade, and continue meeting a suitor from the past. There was seemingly endless description of these two concerns, mainly from the second sister's point of view.

Determining a proper marriage candidate for the third sister meant endless rounds of negotiation with each successive prospect. Each point of discussion was passed up through the hierarchy of the family ranks for decision, with soundings carefully taken of everyone's potential reaction, and any eventual decisions that resulted then passed back down. Any unexpected development restarted the cycle. Throughout, it was essential to show outward respect for the proper forms, maintain the face appropriate to one's place in society and keep the family's name unsullied. The sister herself, the one on whose behalf the entire family was working, showed the least interest of all in tying the knot and was content to remain dependent. Given all this, it was no wonder she was long past marriageable age.

With the fourth sister, by tradition her conduct was regulated by the family of the first sister. The family heads were so stuck in the past, however, that their decisions for her bore little relation to what realistically she needed to do. Ready to marry, she wasn't free to act until a groom for the third sister was chosen. The second sister, her go-between within the family, sympathized with the predicament but wished to avoid a family upset. This meant endless thinking about how to divine everyone's true motives and spin discussions, avoiding confrontation while protecting the family name. And continued reproaches to herself or others -- thought but unexpressed -- for hesitation or lack of proper consideration. What happened in effect was continued avoidance of any clear resolution until too late, when events forced the family's hands, so to speak.

The author was skilled at setting up contrasts between the actions of the two younger sisters or the two older sisters, and at establishing situations where a character would condemn another for something and behave later in a similar way. When action on a larger scale occurred from time to time -- a flood, a medical crisis -- his powers of description were memorable. And the irony of the conclusion, after the family's endless consideration of its good name, was very pointed. Not to mention the irony of having the novel conclude, after more than 500 pages, with hoped-for events still in the future.

At the same time, what I could appreciate was affected eventually by the book's seemingly interminable proceedings. One wondered sometimes whether the author was intentionally drawing out things to the point of parody. I also had trouble figuring out exactly where the author's sympathies lay. With Teinosuke, the second sister's husband? Not with any of the four sisters, it seemed, most of whom were described from the outside, none of whom received compassion unmixed with mockery. The characters were almost entirely closed to each other, rarely if ever sharing their deeper thoughts. And how class-bound they were, so much of the time.

For reasons like these, I didn't enjoy the book all that much. Another novel read recently that was set in the past and focused on the lives of women -- The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi - with a far narrower scope, less mastery and much less detail but with clearer, unalloyed compassion, was preferred.

The World in a Grain of Sand, 21 Oct 2006
The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master Ea de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions.,, 19 Jan 2003
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity.

Individual freedom vs. cultural traditions., 22 Dec 2002
Written in 1929, Some Prefer Nettles is as relevant and fresh today as it was more than seventy years ago. Illuminating the conflict between the old, traditional ways of Japan and western, "modern" influences, obvious in Tokyo even in the 1920's, this story of an unsuccessful marriage could be contemporary, except in the details. The social unacceptability of divorce in Japanese culture and the resulting tensions felt by three generations of a Japanese family allow the western reader to enter an emotional world, a world of conflict rarely shared with outsiders and almost never understood.

Kaname and his wife Misako "do not excite each other," but they are stuck, perhaps permanently, in their loveless marriage. If Misako leaves Kaname, she will have to return to her father's home, a social outcast, without her son, who will stay with his father. Kaname will also suffer--he has failed as a husband. Considering himself "modern," Kaname has allowed Misako to take a lover, while he finds satisfaction in geisha houses and with prostitutes. As we follow this unhappy couple, we watch Kaname come increasingly under the influence of his conservative, traditional father-in-law, becoming more and more fascinated with old traditions--wearing the kimono, visiting the Bunraku puppet theatre, and appreciating the behavior of O-hisa, his father-in-law's doll-like mistress--while Misako relentlessly pursues materialistic and selfish goals, presumably western.

Tanazaki creates beautifully realized domestic scenes, and his subtle dialogue reveals character by what is not said as much by what is said. Kaname is a sympathetic character torn by his culture and loyalties, a man at the mercy of a cultural tradition which he also embraces. The culture itself is presented lucidly, allowing the reader to admire both the depth of its traditions and the forms, artistic and otherwise, through which it is expressed. This fascinating novel offers a westerner much to contemplate as we see how our emphasis on the individual engenders inevitable conflicts with societies valuing tradition and cultural uniformity. Mary Whipple

Embrace the dark side!, 11 Jul 2007
This book has a foreword from someone at UCLA's School of Architecture - so perhaps that is a clue to where it is aimed.
Tanizaki makes a good argument that Japanese art (eg, lacquerware, calligraphy, gold statues, no and kabuki, etc.) cannot be best appreciated in bright, white and shiny surroundings, which he characterizes as Western. He prefers a natural diffused light, softer colours and the 'wear and tear' of wasi-sabi.
At this point in his life Tanizaki (1933) had turned against Western influence, so this is really "In Praise of All Things Japanese!" He does stray from his subject and ramble on like a 'Grumpy Old Man,' which he admits. Partly nostalgia - for he is really railing against the Japanese who had already embraced the 'bright lights' of the West, I'd say he crosses the politically correct line several times and made me feel uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, Tanizaki offers us a valuable link to a rich past, and there is still much we can learn from there. Like how a setting can enhance or destroy our appreciation of an object, a person or theatre. Or, why we should not be afraid of the dark!

Learning without realising you're learning!, 20 Apr 2005
This was a very erudite, neat essay. It taught me a lot about the world we live in, and how we live. It was a history lesson too, but surprisingly modern in its approach and the subjects it dealt with. If you want to know about Japan and Japanese design, its houses and its philosophy, this book will provide you with many interesting insights.
Written by a novelist, it is lyrical and poetic too, so you don't have to feel you're making a huge effort to sit down and read some non-fiction!

Illuminating and Brilliant, 21 Apr 2004
Recommended for anyone studying architecture, design, sculpture or art,but I've been giving it out as a general gift for years. Not a novel, butan elegant short essay regarding space, shadow, and light. Veryenlightening (pardon the pun) and will make you think about the space youoccupy in a new way, and may even encourage you not to switch the light sooften....charming and brilliant.

A poetic resume and down to earth approach to architecture, 06 Jul 2000
This is a wonderful account of the personal experience of the author with the interior architecture and the pleasure that the emplacement of objects and the light that they catch brings to him.

FOR THOSE WHO PPRECIATE SHADOWS, 01 Feb 1999
FOR ANYONE WHO APPRECIATES SHADOWS. THIS BOOK IS SENSITIVE IN NATURE, MANY FEELINGS & TEXTURES. IT WILL TOUCH YOUR SOUL

Compelling In That Stark And Desolate Japanese Author Way, 27 Jun 1999
This book was a good read with a few compelling plotlines, but I didn't find Tanizaki's style particularly memorable because he so very much resembles Mishima.

Seven astonishing tales that capture my imagination forever., 29 Apr 1999
This book was my traveling companion during my solo exploration around Europe for two months. When I was on the trip, this book put me in perspective about life and the living experiences. Imagine, my only traveling companion is Junichiro Tanizaki. Wonderful book.

Fire and Ice, an emotional and intellectual experience., 28 Jan 1999
This book at times had me sitting on the edge of an emotional chair. Tanizaki in these tales has managed to communicate every emotion simply but clearly. For me at times it was like looking into a deep crystal clear lake, so clear every detail of the lake, to its bottom was vividly visible. It was quite a different reading experience. Sensuality is combined easily with prudence, and art, making for a simultaneously strong emotional and intellectual experience. I would definitely recommend this book to serious readers.

I found it fascinating and intriguing, 15 Jun 1998
Though some of the longer short stories got very tedious at parts, in the end they were worth reading. Very excellent stories to provoke thinking on human behaviors.

Beauty, Passion, Desire, Love, Sorcery, Violence, Death ..., 18 Apr 1997

Beautiful women, bold men, treachery, wars, rape, pillage, gruesome butchery ...the passions of the mankind are in these tales of ancient oriental tribes.

The writing is amazingly vivid. I could almost imagine a samurai jumping out of the page and plunging his sword into an enemy heart. The furtive passionate embraces are treated with a delicacy unlike the modern day novels where sex is like brushing one's teeth.

The apt analogy I can think of in the context of these stories are the celebrated movies by Kurosawa wherein the passions are not sterilized for the comfort of the watcher.

Twisted, well paced and clever, 24 May 2007
I really liked this book. I thought it was well crafted, well paced and smart. It has you making assumptions and re-evaluating assumptions in the same breath. I would reccomend this as it's a very decent book.

Part of Tanizaki's trilogy of dirty novels, 11 Jan 2007
This, Naomi and Diary of A Mad Old Man, can be seen as Tanizaki's trilogy of perverted, sexually-explicit novels. This one isn't quite as good as those two, but it's still something special. This one is the most voyeuristic of the three and perhaps the most twisted.

Small but perfectly formed, 09 Mar 2006
Synopsis: The diary extracts of a middle-aged man and his slightly younger wife. They secretly read each other's diaries, using them to make up for their lack of face-to-face communication, possibly brought on by reticence, although the book leaves several other possibilities open to speculation.

Written beautifully, 'The Key' is a pleasure to read from the first page to the last. Can be read on numerous levels, although anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis will probably find more than your average reader.

Taniazaki's most stunning achievement with this book is the way he takes a complex web of relationships, a lot of bizzare sexual and mental traits, ill health and death, and wraps them all into one reader-friendly ball.

Even as things seem to come to some sort of resolution in the last 30 pages, the smallest of threads are left dangling by Tanizaki, who leaves it up to the reader whether to paw them like a cat or leave them alone.

Although a concrete conclusion is suggested, many other conclusions remain equally valid. I won't say more here for fear of ruining the book.

One thing I will say is that, while one of the central themes of the novel is sex, it is not particularly explicit. 'The Key' seemed to be more about a middle-aged couple's relationship in general (and their relationship with their daughter), rather than specifically about their sex life (but then maybe sex is 'The Key' to the door of love?). Yes, there is a lot of sex, but the author does not flim-flam all over it in the way that Anais Nin does. If you are a bit prissy, I wouldn't imagine that you would be massively offended by this; if you want erotica, you'll probably feel pretty unsatisfied after this.

Secrets in locked diaries, 15 Dec 2000
The old husband keeps a diary. He writes about his physical and emotional relationship with his wife, and would really like his wife to read it whenever he is away because that seems to be the only way he can communicate certain things to her. At least that's what he writes in his diary.

The younger and more energetic wife keeps a diary. She writes about her physical and emotional relationship with her husband. She does not want her husband to know that she keeps a diary, and certainly she does not want him to read it because she writes certain things she rather not let her husband know about. At least that's what she writes in her diary.

The Key is a short novel about a couple who have reached a certain point in their marriage where they have to try radically new things in order to feel that they love each other. It is written in the format of diary entries, a format which in Tanizaki's hands is used to craft a beautifully written novel. When I reviewed Ben Elton's Inconceivable I said that this format can be very powerful if used well. Tanizaki proved this point in this novel over 40 years ago.

This novel is unpredictable and full of twists and turns and kept me wondering what's going to happen next. Since both husband and wife know that their partner may be reading their diary, it is hard to tell how honest they are in their writing. Both funny and tragic, it is great fun to read.

The Key is a well written novel about individuals and relationships. I recommend it to all of you.

Bloody interesting., 30 Nov 1997
This is something of a demented romance novel (which is not the description of a novel that I would have expected myself to enjoy). However, the plot is so deceptively complex, and turns back on itself so deftly, that it is impossible not to be caught up in the deceit of the characters themselves. The apparent simplicity of the characters motivations and actions lead the reader into the same state of confusion that the characters appear to be experiencing. The ambivalence and ambiguity (two things that smack of a lack of conviction on the author's part in most novels) work marvelously in getting the reader as lost as possible in this ostensibly banal domestic story. Bet it's pretty cool in Japanese.