Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
| Tanizaki Jun'ichirō | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Native name | 谷崎 潤一郎 |
| Born |
24 July 1886 Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | 30 July 1965 (aged 79) Yugawara, Kanagawa, Japan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Genre | fiction, drama, essays, silent film scenarios |
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎 Tanizaki Jun'ichirō?, 24 July 1886 – 30 July 1965) was one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions. Others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed.
He was one of six authors on the final shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, but his death the following year meant he was not considered the following years.
Tanizaki was born into a well-off merchant class family in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, where his uncle owned a printing press, which had been established by his grandfather. Tanizaki described his admittedly pampered childhood in his Yōshō Jidai (Childhood Years, 1956). His childhood home was destroyed in the 1894 Meiji Tokyo earthquake, to which Tanizaki later attributed his lifelong fear of earthquakes. His family's finances declined dramatically as he grew older until he was forced to reside in another household as a tutor.
Despite these financial problems, he attended the Tokyo First Middle School, where he became acquainted with Isamu Yoshii. Tanizaki attended the Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University from 1908, but was forced to drop out in 1911 because of his inability to pay for tuition.
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