Lit 231: Morrison

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965), “The Tattooer” (Shisei刺青, 1910)

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 谷 崎 潤 一 郎 (1886-1965): Edokko; born to wealthy

chōnin father (owner of publishing company) in Nihonbashi; a botchan in

early years, but family fortunes soon declined; had to drop out of 帝大 in

1911; literary career begins in 1909; married in 1915, but soon bores of

her; encourages her to have affair with Satō Haruo (Odawara jiken);

obsession with West, aestheticism; moves to cosmopolitan Yokohama in

1922: lives bohemian lifestyle; dabbles in film industry, script writing, 純映

画劇運動 (pure film movement); reputation really takes off after 1923 Kantō

daishinsai quake (old Tokyo disappears, never to return; his attention

moves from West to Kansai); between 1924 and 1934, writes Chijin no ai,

In’ei raisan, Manji, Tade kū mushi, Yoshino kuzu, Ashikari, Shunkinshō; this

period corresponds to the general trend of Nihon kaiki (yet maintains

modernist inclinations); during war: Genji monogatari gendaiyaku and

Sasame yuki (portrait of four daughters of a wealthy family slowing

slipping in stature); awarded bunka kunshō (order of culture) in 1949;

continues to pursue his favorite themes in later novels: longing for

mother/ideal woman; male masochism; sexuality/perversion; fantasy in old

age; his eternal ideal female archetypes: Western-ish femme fatale

throughout early period, then the traditional ningyō-like woman, then the

lost mother, then the noblewoman behind screen . . .

Terms/Particularities of Culture

1. Horimono / irezumi : traditional Japanese tattooing; can be traced back to

Jōmon period for religious purposes, then as punishment in Kofun period

(300-600AD); began to develop as art form during mid-Edo period,

influenced by popularity of Japanese translation of Suikoden (Water

Margin; 14th century; one of four great classical novels of Chinese

literature), which features heroes who have their deeds inscribed into their

bodies; flourished among merchant class, wealthy merchants; horimono

artists included many ukiyo-e artists; outlawed at beginning of Meiji, thus

outlaw associations of tattoos; legalized again in 1948.

2. “Cruel Empress Chou of Shang Dynasty” (1600-1047 BC): reference to

the sadistic and depraved King Zhou 商紂王 and Daji 妲己, who reigned from

1075-1046 BC and brought Shang dynasty to ruin. The empress is an

archetype in Chinese history of selfish, sadistic consort who controls

emperor through her charms, and leads the country to ruin.

3. Aestheticism , or “the Aesthetic Movement” (definition provided by

Professor Yiu): A European phenomenon during the latter nineteenth

century that had its chief philosophical headquarters in France. Its roots

lie in the German theory, proposed by Kant (1790), that the pure aesthetic

experience consists of a “disinterested” contemplation of an aesthetic

object without reference to its reality, or to the “external” ends of its utility

or morality. Rallying cries included “poem per se”—a “poem written solely

for the poem’s sake,” (Edgar Allan Poe) and “art for art’s sake.” This

movement also stresses the “autonomy” and “all-importance” of art (M.H.

Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms).

Tanizaki’s story paved the way for other literary works that celebrated

art for art’s sake and the artist’s unwavering devotion to his craft. [This

story] and Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen” (Jigokuhen 地獄変, 1918) are often

grouped together as works of the Aesthetic School (tanbi-ha 耽美派) and are

seen not only as harbingers of modernism in prose but also as the

beginnings of opposition to the literary school of Naturalism (shizen-shugi

自然主義) and the narrative style of the I-novel, which emphasized flat,

unvarnished, and sincere depiction in contrast to the new, spectacle-driven

narrative style of the modernists (William Tyler, Modanizumu: Modernist

Fiction from Japan 1913-1938, University of Hawaii Press, 2008, p. 25.).

More on aestheticism: sensibility/philosophy of life and of art; English

literary and artistic movement culminating in 1890s (Oscar Wilde/Walter

Pater most extravagant proponent); a stage in development of

Romanticism; related to symbolism; reaction to Naturalism; generally anti-

commercial, anti-didactic, anti-democratic, anti-bourgeois, anti-“religion of

progress” tone, anti-bunmeikaika; tends to emphasize hedonism, occult,

and prefer spiritual, transcendental over material. Aestheticism has its

roots in Kant’s postulate from Critique of Judgment (1790) of the

“disinterestedness” (no personal interest) of aesthetical judgment, and the

irrelevance of concepts to the intuitions of the imagination (i.e. emphasizes

intuition/sense/imagination over rational intellect). Music is the ideal art

form, as it is most immaterial, removed from quotidian; “to become like

music is aspiration of all arts” says Schopenhauer, then Walter Pater)It

holds that the pursuit of beauty the main task in life; l’art pour l’art (love of

art for its own sake). Aestheticist writers usually regard themselves as an

alienated minority, scornful of masses (Seikichi is no exception).

4. Aesthetic Movement in Japan (tanbiha 耽 美 派 ): Poe, Baudelaire

influences; fin-de-siècle; diabolism (akumashugi); Tanizaki, Akutagawa,

Satō Haruo, Kajii Motojirō, Nagai Kafū, Edogawa Rampo; centered around

Keiō (Mitabungaku) vs. Waseda bungaku (Naturalists); urban,

cosmopolitan, sophisticated.

5. The Edo Period (1603-1868) , particularly t he decades of Bunka and

Bunsei (1804-1829):Tanizaki presents this as a time when wit and pleasure

were highly esteemed—as were women who were depicted on stage, for

example, in heroic roles in plays like The Female Sadakurō (Onna

Sadakurō), The Female Jiraiya, and The Woman Thunder. It was an age of

liberalism, affluence, and urbanity worthy of being reclaimed not in

xenophobic retreat to the past but through rediscovery of a modernity

latent and detectable within pre-Meiji history. Like many novelists writing

in the years following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-

1905, Tanizaki was disenchanted with the economic and human costs that

accrued to an imperial power intent on building an international empire. In

looking to the past for a different model of the future, he presents the

townsman culture of the Edo period as an artistic and societal alternative

to the policies of the Meiji establishment. Needless to say, in presenting

his view of Edo as far nobler, he erases any vestige of the feudalistic

authoritarianism historically associated with the samurai class, Neo-

Confucianism, and the Tokugawa shogunate (Tyler 2008, p.25).

B unka/Bunsei (1804-1829): the last great era before crisis decades of

Tokugawa era; Edo period’s second flourishing of urban cultural scene, the

first being Genroku (1688-1704) (a view contested by recent Tenmei-

focused literary historians); painters Shiba Kōkan, Sharaku; writers

Takizawa Bakin, Shikitei Sanba, Jippensha Ikku; arts of this period

characterized by down to earth, vernacular style; popular appeal; common

everyday themes; lavish habits of Tokugawa shogun Ienari spread to public

(post Matsudaira Sadanobu).

6. Fetish / Fetishism : A fetish is something, such as a material object or an

often nonsexual part of the body that arouses or gratifies sexual desire. A

fetishism is the displacement of sexual arousal or gratification to a fetish.

(1) broad definition in psychoanalysis: any activity that deviates from

heterosexual intercourse; (2) a non-sexual part of body or thing that is

highly charged with libido/sex drive (foot, pillow, ear, etc.). According to

Freud a fetish is a substitute for mother’s penis that boy/girl once believed

in (i.e. she lost it, got to find it, before I lose it too). Fetishism is usually

found in men, often accompanied by aversion to real female genitals. In

Shisei, Seikichi finds replacement for mother’s penis in girl’s foot.

7. Archetype: Applied to narrative designs, character types, or images

which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as

well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social behavior.

(Abrams, pp.11-12). A central term in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology,

introduced in his 1919 work. Based on idea that there are “primordial and

universal images that make up the contents of the collective

consciousness.”

8. Ero-guro-nansensu (Erotic-grotesque-nonsense): A spontaneous artistic

and narrative style, strategy and movement that came in vogue in the

1910s-1930s as a new form of expression in defiance of the introspective

nature and unadorned language of the Naturalist movement. Playful,

evocative, at times vulgar and absurd, it aims at entertaining and shocking

the reader and the viewer in an age of nouveau art and literary forms.

Literary and artistic movement in 1920s and 1930s Japan; “prewar,

bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to explorations of the

deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous” (Reichart); focus on eroticism,

sexual corruption, decadence; Taisho popular culture (roots in ukiyoe,

shunga). Challenged state ideology, bourgeois conservative values;

Edogawa Rampo; traces today in manga, anime, etc.

9. Femme Fatale (lit, “deadly woman”): Mysterious, charming, seductive,

often dangerous even deadly female archetype. Examples from

history/literature: Eve, Lilith, Delilah, Cleopatra, other “dark ladies” from

antiquity; film noir females.

10. Mimetic theory of art: Views/evaluates art in relation to real world; the

value of art is determined by the extent to which it accurately mirrors

reality.

11. Masochism/sadism: Tanizaki’s great theme; Krafft-Ebing first to provide

detailed account of masochism in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). Word itself

comes from Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus in Furs. Krafft-Ebing’s classic

study of sexual perversion was introduced to Japan in 1914, translated as

『 変 態 性 慾 心 理 』 and immediately banned. The modern use of the word

hentai began around this time. (An earlier translation had appeared in

1894, under the title Shikijōkyōhen.) What does masochist want?

→satisfaction through unpleasantness/pain). Freud’s gives three types of

masochist: erotogenic (sexual pleasure linked with pain), feminine

masochism (acting the subservient “bitch”), and moral masochism (desire

to experience guilt). Seikichi seems to be erotogenic (he wants her to

stomp on his face). Tanizaki’s great insight into human relations: romantic

relations are always negotiated in terms of power.

Study Questions

Answer all of the following.

1. Identify the age (time period) and place (setting) of the narrative. How

does Tanizaki comment on the Meiji period through evoking a different

time period?

2. What is the atmosphere of that specific age and place? How is that

atmosphere evoked or depicted?

3. Discuss elements of decadence, eroticism, exoticism, fetishism, and

sensuality in the text. In what sense does this work precipitate and

embody elements of ero-guro-nansense movement?

4. Discuss the image of the woman as a literary archetype. How is that

archetype constructed in the text? How does it serve as a generic

archetype as well as a Tanizaki archetype?

5. “Just as the ancient Egyptians had embellished their magnificent land

with pyramids

and sphinxes, he was about to embellish the pure skin of this girl” (p. 167).

What is the nature of this comparison? Discuss the relationship between art

(man-made/tattooing) and nature (not man-made/the woman’s skin) in the

text.

6. In insisting on inscribing (tattooing) on nature (the woman’s skin) to

create art, how does Tanizaki challenge the mimetic theory (art imitates

nature) of art?

7. What happens to the tattooer when his work is complete? Discuss the

relationship between the artist and the work of art. In what sense is this

work representative of the tanbi-ha (Aesthetic School)?