Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: お艶殺し (A Spring-Time Case)

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s お艶殺し (A Spring-Time Case). This is the earliest of Tanizaki’s works to be translated into English, though the English text is very difficult to get hold of, having first been published in 1927 in Japan and never reprinted. This fairly short novel tells the story of Shinsuke, an apprentice pawnbroker, who is love with his master’s daughter, an only child. She – O-Tsuya – is also in love with him but it it is clear to him that he would not be acceptable to her parents. However, she persuades him to elope, something he is reluctant to do but his passion wins over. They are aided by a pleasure boat owner, Seiji, who agrees to put them up, while he negotiates with her parents. But Seiji is deceiving them and they stay at his house for a year, while he continues to tells them that negotiations are delicate. Finally, Shinsuke is tricked out of the house where he is set upon by Santa, Seiji’s assistant but manages to overcome and kill Santa and conceal the body. Meanwhile O-Tsuya has been kidnapped and, as we later learn, sold to become a geisha. Shinsuke finally tracks her own but finds that, while she still loves him, she also enjoys being a geisha. Despite the mounting body toll, Shinsuke wants her to return to her parents and is prepared to give himself up to the police but she drags him deeper into the mire. It is fine tale of a seductive and scheming woman dragging a (relatively) innocent man down, a theme we will find later in Tanizaki’s work.