Writing skin: esthetics and transcendence in Junichirō Tanizaki’s “The Tattooer”

Junichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965) is one of modern Japan’s most esteemed writers. With a career spanning five decades, Tanizaki evinces an exceptional versatility of themes compared to his contemporaries. While many writers who gained prominence during the Meiji Period (1852-1912) saw a steady decline in their art and influence toward the end of their careers,¹ Tanizaki’s deftness in moving “from subject matter to subject matter” continues to fascinate and disturb his readers in equal measure (Seidensticker, 1996, p. 251). This thus guaranteed his status as a canonical writer in Japanese literature, albeit one whose work is also unnerving to read because of the prevalence of the morbid and the perverse in his narratives. Nevertheless, his stories manage to capture the shifting attitudes toward modernization and Japan’s uneasy relations with the West. Sometimes, this relationship hints at an uncomfortable if positive negotiation (as evidenced in his earlier works). At other times it foregrounds an alleged repudiation of Western ideologies altogether in the attempt to reinstate the superiority of Japanese culture (apparent in his later writings). But through these shifts, there remains one constant theme in his stories: the link between pain and beauty.