Présentation de l'éditeur
Seven Japanese Tales represents aspects of Tanizaki's prose art between 1910 and 1959. The four short stories have a strong concern with abnormal psychology. He tells of a tattoo artist who is obsessed with the desire to decorate the body of a supremely beautiful woman; a city man who is struck with terror when obliged to ride trolley cars. There is a study of the emotions of a schoolboy thief, and an account of a young man exhausted by months of passion for his mistress. The three longer tales, written in his maturity, tell the story of a famous blind woman who teaches the samisen and the koto, and of a pupil who becomes her lover. When she is disfigured by some unknown enemy, her lover blinds himself. There is an account of a young man's erotic confusions between his dead mother, his stepmother and his wife. Finally, a blind man tells of the ambitions and stratagems, loves and cruelties during the feudal wars of sixteenth-century Japan.
Book Description
In these seven stories, the author of The Makioka Sisters explores the territory where love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of refined cruelty.
