Search results for ""Author Junichiro Tanizaki""

These two short novels, published in the early 1930's ranked high in Tanizaki's own estimation of his work. The contrast is stark, but in their controlled complexities of tone, both bear the unmistakable stamp of Tanizaki's hand. The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi deals with the dark sexual obsessions of a sixteenth-century warlord, accidentally initiated in his youth into the morbid rites attendant upon battle. Based on invented documents that overlap with historical reality, the story unfolds a masterly balance of irony and melodrama, elegance and brutality, civilised ritual and vengeful barbarity.Arrowroot too touches on the pursuit of legend. The narrative blends the stories of two friends on an expedition into the mountains south of Kyoto, one of them haunting the traces of a medieval myth, the other in search of a more recent and more private past.

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Hailed as the greatest Japanese novel of the Twentieth century, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS is a subtle tale of domestic oppression worthy of Balzac or Chekhov, In this saga of the once prosperous but now declining Makioka family struggling to marry off one of their daughters, Tanizaki presents the picture of a family and a society striving to preserve their self-respect as they come to terms with disturbing new ways in a classic confrontation of innovasion and tradition. A wonderful portrait of Japanese life in the first half of the twentieth century.

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An intimate reflection on Japanese art and architecture from one of the country's greatest novelists.This is an enchanting essay on aesthetics by one of the greatest Japanese novelists. Tanizaki's eye ranges over architecture, jade, food, toilets, and combines an acute sense of the use of space in buildings, as well as perfect descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure. The result is a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age.'Elegant...a delight to read' Independent on Sunday

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The marriage of Kaname and Misako is disintegrating: whilst seeking passion and fulfilment in the arms of others, they contemplate the humiliation of divorce. Misako's father believes their relationship has been damaged by the influence of a new and alien culture, and so attempts to heal the breach by educating his son-in-law in the time-honoured Japanese traditions of aesthetic and sensual pleasure. The result is an absorbing, chilling conflict between ancient and modern, young and old.

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This is the diary of a middle-aged man who is deeply in love with his younger wife, Ikuko. In spite of that love, the pair have grown physically apart, each unsure of the other's desires...until the day Ikuko discovers her husband's diary with its desperate hints of jealousy and voyeurism. Ikuko realises she has found the key to his very soul.

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A fully illustrated, beautifully produced edition of Junichiro Tanizaki's wise and evocative essay on Japanese culture. ‘We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.’ This book is in fact a portal. Reading it, you will be led by Junichiro Tanizaki’s light touch into a mysterious and tranquil world of darkness and shadows, where gold flashes in the gloom and a deep stillness reigns. If you are accustomed to equate light with clarity, the faded with the worthless and the dim with the dreary, prepare for a courteous but powerful realignment of your ideas. In Praise of Shadows is a poetic paean to traditional Japanese aesthetics – in a free-ranging style that moves from architecture to No theatre, and from cookery to lighting, Tanizaki teaches us to see the beauty in tarnished metal, the sombre dignity in unglazed pottery, the primacy of organic materials that bear witness to the regular touch of human hands. It is also astonishingly prescient, offering a gentle warning against the quest for airbrushed perfection, and reminding us that too much light can pollute and obscure our natural world. In this special edition, the text is accompanied by specially selected images to complement Tanizaki’s reflections and further illustrate the pattern and beauty of shadows.

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While recovering from a stroke, seventy-seven-year-old Utsugi turns to his diary to wryly record his struggle with his ageing body and his growing desire for his beautiful daughter-in-law Satsuko, a chic, Westernised dancer with a shady past. Shining with a self-effacing humour, Tanizaki's last novel is a tragicomedy about desire and the will to survive.

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An exquisite novel about four sisters living though a turbulent decade...I'd put it in the 10 greatest books of the 20th century' David Mitchell 'A near-perfect novel' Hanya Yanagihara In the years leading up to the Second World War, four sisters live in dilapidated houses in Osaka and Ashiya, and each navigate their own complex, personal relationship to the fading lustre of the Makioka family name. Rich with breathtaking descriptions of ancient customs and an ever-changing natural world, Junichiro Tanizaki evokes in loving detail a long-lost way of life even as it withers under the harsh glare of modernity. TRANSLATED BY EDWARD SEIDENSTICKER VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.

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Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. It is a loving and nostalgic recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osaka immediately before World War Two. With surgical precision, Tanizaki lays bare the sinews of pride, and brings a vanished era to vibrant life.

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A seductive psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and deceit, and a Japanese classic Sonoko Kakiuchi is a cultured Osaka lady in an uninspiring marriage. When she decides to take an art class in town she meets the extraordinary Mitsuko, a woman as beautiful and charismatic as she is cunning. They begin a passionate affair and Sonoko soon finds herself infatuated by Mitsuko, and ensnared in a web of sex, humiliation and deceit. With an introduction by Kristen Roupenian, author of 'Cat Person'

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