Tanizaki Jun'ichiro

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro

(born July 24, 1886, Tokyo, Japan—died July 30, 1965, Yugawara) Japanese novelist. Though his earliest short stories have affinities with those of Edgar Allan Poe and the French Decadents, Tanizaki later turned to exploring more traditional Japanese ideals of beauty. His novels include Some Prefer Nettles (1928–29), which tells of marital unhappiness that is in fact a conflict between the new and the old, with the implication that the old will win; and his masterpiece, The Makioka Sisters (1943–48; film, 1983), which describes, in the leisurely style of classical Japanese literature, the inroads of the harsh modern world on traditional society. His writings are characterized by eroticism and ironic wit.