The evolution of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō as a narrative artist
Creators: name: Merken, Kathleen Chisato
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: This thesis traces the growth of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro as a narrative artist through the three stages of his long career. A number of representative works are studied, with varying emphasis on narrative perspective, structure, character creation, and style, depending on the prominence.of these aspects of fiction in each work. Underlying the individual analyses is the basic question: how does the author resolve the problem of rendering himself in his fiction? Chapter I, covering the initial period (1910-1928), first deals with a split in the author's sensibility. The emerging storyteller is most successful as an anti-realist, in a small number of stories with idealized, remote settings, such as "Shisei." In contrast, he fails when seeking to represent himself and his immediate environment in the shi-shosetsu. Near the end of this period, with Chijin no ai , Tanizaki begins to reconcile his need for illusion with the rendering of mundane experience. Tanizaki's technical skills are in germ in this period. The author often demonstrates an ability to build firm structures, and to forge an elaborate style. He also establishes a conception of characters as powerful psychic forces, not as pedestrian, "realistic" creations. Chapter II shows the fully mature artist, in his second period (1928-1950), which contains most of his major achievements. The author's continuing attachment to distant, illusory worlds is fully expressed in works drawing on Japanese tradition, such as Momoku monogatari, a romance. He also resolves the dichotomy between the demands of the imagination and those of external realities; he projects himself into his fiction with complete success. He is able to represent everyday experience in Tade kuu mushi and Sasameyuki, but these are not novels of bourgeois realism. Idealization still moves below the surface, creating a balance between versimilitude and fantasy. The rendering of the characters as idealized types is explored particularly in the study of Sasameyuki. Tanizaki's enormous advances in method include an intricate treatment of narrative viewpoints, as in "Shunkinsho," a subtle approach to structure, notably in "Yoshino kuzu," and a new style unique in its fluidity and amplitude, as in "Ashikari." Chapter III treats the last phase of Tanizaki's writing (1951-1965), a period of renewal and purification. Abandoning the filter of history and romance, he now tends to observe and record contemporary circumstance. He also returns to the concerns of his first phase, most significantly the shi-shosetsu, fictionalizing himself in Futen rojin nikki; in the forceful portrayal of the protagonist of this novel Tanizaki reaches the climactic point in his characterizations. Sobriety of manner marks the writing of this phase. The characters often appear in distilled, stylized form, most remarkably in Kagi. The rich, full style of the second period disappears; instead, the author often uses notations, as in the diary form. He loses none of his skill in structure, as the two contrasting novels using the diary genre show: while Kagi is an obvious craftsman's triumph, Futen rojin is constructed with equal care but deceptive naturalness. It is hoped that this study, concentrating on the development of Tanizaki's techniques and of his outlook, helps to account for his singularly strong grip on the reader.