Seven Japanese Tales

Japanese fiction can get a little... odd for someone used to the traditional Western rising-climax-falling-conclusion plot set up. I rarely read Japanese novels for that reason. But Tanizaki is considered a master and father of modern Japanese fiction (“modern” here meaning World War I and II era), so I found a copy of his early short stories. Some of them did get a little long-winded, but Tanizaki has a real talent for narrating the strong and sometimes strange passions of his characters. His preoccupation with the control women have over his male protagonists is an absorbing thread that runs through the stories– in one a young man's obsession with his mother/stepmother brings him to ruin, in another a tattoo artist's drive to tattoo the most beautiful woman in Gion leads to his destruction by his most beautiful creation, in a third a servant blinds himself so that his mistress will not feel ashamed of a disfigurement. And yet the narration is always calm and measured, even when the emotions of the characters are roiling. This was not a set of easy reads, but they were good.