Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki.
Some of his works present a rather 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. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.
An important work for the understanding of Eastern aesthetic philosophy. I've read Tanizaki Runichiro's erotic novel before, which is so elegant that even hardly call that erotic. The shortcoming is that he always reviews and describes the details tirelessly, which makes reading a little boring. But this style of writing is perfect for cultural essays. The gloomy aesthetics of Oriental Minor are thankfully alive in Japan. As a Chinese, reading this kind of aesthetic theory is familiar and strange. Perhaps the beauties in their twilight old age still have some vague recollections of youth, which we are left with after one great misfortune after another. After all, beauty and elegance and decency are too strange to the Chinese people today. Thank God Japanese learnt from our ancestors well. Cause i'm so willing to believe this kind of beauty is very important and meaningful, which to what Nietzsche called 'Dionysian art'.
It's interesting to know from an influential writer his opinions on Japanese culture and traditions, sometimes in comparison with western culture and traditions as he experienced. It is the origin of so much idiosyncrasy that distinguishes the modern Japanese pop art - such as manga, novel, film, music, etc. - as one of a kind. A bit old but still relevant.
Unsurprisingly for Tanizaki this oscillates between extremely insightful and purposefully ignorant. A shadow/light interplay between arrogance and and reverence.
Insightful about architecture, fetishistic about the Nipponia I think would have mistaken for Bri'in for Bri'ish if I saw it earlier in my life.
This 3 is a mixture between a disappointed 1 and a joyous 5
oh, tanizaki. sometimes i hate you, sometimes i love you, and sometimes i just think you are freaking hilarious. my reaction to 陰影礼賛 was a combo of all three, though weighed towards the latter two. (there's some killer sentences here.)
“The lacquerware of the past was finished in black, brown, or red, colors built up of countless layers of darkness, the inevitable product of the darkness in which life was lived.”