The Tattoo and Other Stories (9784805319598)

"Tanizaki writes with an unabashed sensuality. Even his lighter-hearted fictions…make us hold our breath, and the endings don't let us quite exhale." —John Updike in The New Yorker

"Tanizaki's literature is, above all, delicious, like French or Chinese cuisine." —Yukio Mishima

"For the sheer entertainment value of a good story well told, none can match Tanizaki." —The Globe and Mail

This dazzling collection of short fiction by literary master Junichiro Tanizaki features three stories that appear here in English for the first time, plus fresh translations of his best-known classics. The writings span his career and include harrowing depictions of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the black-market economy that sprang up after the war.

Included in this volume are:

• The Tattoo: A sadomasochistic tattoo artist inscribes a spider on the object of his obsession, awakening her own sadistic impulses
• A Portrait of Shunkin: When a beautiful blind musician is mysteriously attacked, her lover responds with a shocking act
• An Account of Cruelty: A couple struggles with the intimate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
• Plus five other iconic Tanizaki tales

Award-winning translators Anthony Chambers, Paul McCarthy and J. Keith Vincent bring their consummate skill and knowledge of Tanizaki to the volume. Together, the stories reflect the author's lifelong fascination with the darkest passions of humankind and the full range of possibility in the Japanese language.


About the Author:
Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) is widely considered one of Japan's finest authors. Born in the heart of Tokyo as the city began to modernize, he studied Japanese literature at Tokyo University and made his debut with the acclaimed short story "The Tattoo." Following the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region, the setting for his masterpiece The Makioka Sisters. He is the author of Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles, The Key and the essay "In Praise of Shadows," among many other works of fiction and nonfiction. He received the Order of Culture in 1949 and is the namesake of the distinguished Tanizaki Prize for literature.

Anthony H. Chambers is the author of Remembering Tanizaki Junichiro and Matsuko and translator of many works by Junichiro Tanizaki, including Naomi and The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. For his study and translation of Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain, he received the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize. He is Professor Emeritus of Japanese at Arizona State University and has also taught at Wesleyan University and the Associated Kyoto Program.

Paul McCarthy has taught Japanese language, literature, and religion, as well as English language and literature and comparative literature, at universities in America and Japan. He is an emeritus professor of Surugadai University. He continues to translate and comment on Japanese literature, notably on Junichiro Tanizaki and Mishima Yukio. His translation of Tanizaki's A Cat, a Man, and Two Women won the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize in 1991.

J. Keith Vincent teaches Japanese, Comparative Literature, and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University, where he also directs the MFA program in Literary Translation. His translation of Okamoto Kanoko's A Riot of Goldfish won the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize, and his translation of Junichiro Tanizaki's novella Devils in Daylight was shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize in 2018. His retranslation of Natsume Soseki's novel Michikusa is forthcoming from Tuttle.