Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki

A poet, novelist, essayist and filmmaker, Tanizaki (1886-1965) is one of the greats of early modern Japanese literature, and this collection of short stories includes works from various periods of his life. Like many Japanese writers who would succeed him, much of Tanizaki’s writing was concerned with the effects of the West on traditional Japanese culture. Echoing that motif, his writing style was often a mix of traditional storytelling and experimental prose, a combination that proves refreshingly exotic yet comfortably familiar to a Western reader.

Indeed, this anthology is a fine introduction to Tanizaki and modern Japanese literature in general. There is the tale of the sadistic and beauty-obsessed tattoo artist who toils over his magnum opus of a gigantic spider on the back of a femme fatale in the subtly erotic “The Tattooer” (1910) or the vivid exploration of truth, fabrication and human nature found in “The Theif” (1921). In an ode to the lasting importance of Tanizaki, both stories contain similar themes found in the works of acclaimed Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro, who has himself admitted to the influence of Tanizaki on his own work, which is most evident in Ishiguro’s novel An Artist of the Floating World (1986).