Red Roofs and Other Stories

by Junichiro Tanizaki, Paul McCarthy (Translator), Anthony Chambers (Translator)

Overview

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965), the author of Naomi; A Cat, a Man, and Two Women; and The Makioka Sisters, was one of the great writers of the twentieth century. The four stories in this volume date from the first and second decades of Tanizaki’s long career and reflect themes that appear throughout his work: exoticism, sexuality, sadomasochism, contrasts between traditional and modern societies, disparities between appearance and reality, the power of dreams, amorality, an interest in cinema, and a fascination with the techniques of storytelling. The stories—translated into English here for the first time—are: “The Strange Case of Tomoda and Matsunaga” (“Tomoda to Matsunaga no hanashi,” 1926), “A Night in Qinhuai” (“Shinwai no yo,” 1919), “The Magician” (“Majutsushi,” 1917), and “Red Roofs” (“Akai yane,” 1925).
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472053278
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/22/2016
Series:	Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies , #79
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Paul McCarthy is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Culture, Surugadai University, Saitama, Japan
Anthony H. Chambers is Professor Emeritus of Japanese at Arizona State University

Editorial Reviews

We still have far too little of Tanizaki's work from the teens and twenties. The four stories collected here show the variety of exoticisms Tanizaki was critically exploring at this time. ‘The Strange Case of Tomoda and Matsunaga’ treats the contemporary fascination with the West, ‘Red Roofs’ is about youth culture in Tokyo, ‘A Night in Qinhaui’ trains an exoticist eye on China, and ‘The Magician’ is pure, unadulterated fantasy. The translations are flawless—no surprise coming from Chambers and McCarthy—and the selection fills an important gap in the list of available English translations of Tanizaki. They round out our picture of Tanizaki’s development as a writer, providing early sketches, as well as intriguing postscripts to some of his most important works.”
—J. Keith Vincent, Boston University, award-winning translator of Okamoto Kanoko’s A Riot of Goldfish

From the Publisher

2016-07-04
Four newly translated stories, written between 1917 and 1926, by one of the masters of 20th-century Japanese literature (The Makioka Sisters, 1957, etc.).The first and longest of the stories, “The Strange Case of Tomoda and Matsunaga,” mirrors in many ways Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 1920, the narrator, novelist F.K., receives a letter from a stranger who has found a letter from F.K. to his drinking buddy Tomoda in a satchel belonging to her husband, Gisuke. Since early in their marriage, Gisuke has divided his time in intervals: three years of quiet life at home, three years away and incommunicado. While Tomoda and Gisuke share no characteristics—Tomoda a portly sensualist of large and exotic appetites, Gisuke a thin, sickly traditionalist—the narrator is soon caught up in unraveling the question Gisuke’s wife raises: are Gisuke and Tomoda, who dominates the tale, the same man? After a dinner out while visiting China, the narrator of the brief, seemingly straightforward “A Night In Qinhuai” goes on a search of brothels, each more “gloomy” than the last. With the narrator torn between his distaste for the surroundings and his desire for the beautiful young prostitutes they house, Tanizaki creates an atmosphere both tawdry and ripe with desire. The narrator of “The Magician” finds the park he visits one summer evening “a bizarre blend of beauty and ugliness,” a description of the worlds Tanizaki creates as well. The narrator’s lover wants to test the power of their love against the power of the park magician who performs an act he calls The Art of Human Metamorphosis. Think Kafka despite the narrator’s references to Poe. The final story, “Red Roofs,” has a more contemporary feel, told from the perspective of a film actress juggling her multiple, sometimes perverse, sometimes oddly romantic relationships with men. Tanizaki combines understated realism with fabulism, sensuality, a fascination with the exotic (which, in a reversal of American and European literary clichés, here means things Western), and ambivalence toward traditional Japan.

Kirkus Reviews