Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō_ Chambers, Anthony_ McCarthy, Paul - The Gourmet Club_ A Sextet

■ Introduction ■
The six stories in this collection are broadly representative of
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s long, varied, and brilliant career. The first two
come from 1911, just after the young writer’s debut, and their lush
style well represents the tambishugi, or aestheticism, with which he
was immediately identified— a kind of belated fin- de- siècle manner.
The next three stories date from the period between the mid- 1910s
and mid- 1920s when Tanizaki wrote in a somewhat more restrained,
realistic manner and explored themes described by Japanese critics
as ero-guro- nansensu: the erotic, the grotesque, and the “nonsensical,”
in the sense of wild or black comedy. (“The Two Acolytes” stands
somewhat apart from the other two, more typical stories, as does a
fantastical work like “The Magician” from the same period.) The last
piece dates from 1955, by which time Tanizaki was the grand old man
of Japanese letters, with ten active years of writing still before him
until his death in 1965. The collection thus spans virtually the whole
of the writer’s career.
I will not attempt to summarize each story or subject it to analysis
in this short introduction. Instead, I propose to point out certain
themes or motifs that run through the collection and indeed
through Tanizaki’s entire oeuvre.