Jun'ichirÅ Tanizaki
Tanizaki Jun'ichirô (Japanese谷 崎 润 一郎; born July 24, 1886 in Nihonbashi, Tokyo city (today: Chūō, Tokyo ); † 30 July 1965) was a Japanese writer.
Life
His parents were both from old merchant families. Although the father brought by the assets accumulated by the grandfather and the family was therefore often buffeted by money problems, Tanizaki spent a carefree childhood. Tanizaki excited Meanwhile at school by stylistic feats attention. He took private lessons in English and classical Chinese and passed 1908, the entrance examination at the Imperial University of Tokyo. In addition to the study of English and Japanese literature, Tanizaki began to write at this time. In 1910 he founded with fellow students the magazine Shinshishō (新 思潮, new flow ), in which he also published his first story shisei (tattoo ). Without a degree, he decided on the career as a writer and had his first stories at once a great success.
In 1915 he married Chiyo Ishikawa, but he was soon tired of this marriage, and he lived for a while with his sister together. This coexistence was formed later the substance to his novel Naomi or an insatiable love. Tanizaki traveled twice in 1918 and 1926 to China. After Erbebenkatastrophe 1923 he settled with his wife and daughter in western Japan. Permanent change of residence and the tense financial situation led in 1930 to the dissolution of the marriage. The following year, Tanizaki married the publisher editor Tomiko Furukawa; but this marriage was already divorced two years later. His first wife and their three sisters formed the template for his later masterpiece The sisters Morioka ( 1944-1948 ).
Tanizaki was throughout his life an extremely prolific writer: he published 119 works, published in 1921 a first edition of his complete works in five volumes. He was for the Nobel Prize in Literature in conversation and has received numerous literary awards. He was a member of the Imperial and the Japanese Academy of Arts and recipient of the Order of Culture. His great novels that make the contrast between tradition and modernity in ever new problems, have been translated into many languages.
End of July 1965 Tanizaki died from acute heart and kidney failure at his home in Yugawara in Kanagawa Prefecture. In his honor, therefore, endowed with 1 million yen Tanizaki - Jun'ichirô Prize has been awarded since 1965.
Prizes and awards
Literature Historical classification
Tanizakis work spans the Meiji, Taishō and Shōwa eras. After Japan had an almost confusing number of literary currents from Europe reziperte the beginning of modernism in tremendous speed, the literary world began able to consolidate at the time of the Russo -Japanese War in 1905 in the Japanese naturalism. The medium par excellence of Naturalimus was the autobiographical shishosetsu (私 小说, I - novel). In search of the true nature of man, naturalism, like his European predecessors elevated the true reality image to the primacy of representation. In Japan, the predicate of mimesis led to a form of reality figure, which amounted to an autobiographical self-revelation of the author.
Not least because the Japanese literature developed since the Meiji period in wave-like phases of enthusiasm for the foreign West and return to their own traditions and roots, but also from the emerging social problems of the time out was at the same time next to the naturalism a counter-movement, which was composed of various streams. This includes the aestheticism, the Tanizakis work is to be assigned. Tanizaki, who often visited the Kabuki theater as a child and was excellent trained in Japanese, Chinese and European classical literature favored, contrary to naturalism to enjoy the creative act and the made-up story. Fascinated read Tanizaki not only the popular and fantastic narrative works Ueda Akinaris, Takizawa Bakins or Koda Rohan, he also deals with Plato, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare and Carlyle. Clearly, the influence of the western Symbolists Poe, Baudelaire, and Wilde is recognizable by his stories. Are the 20s his work still marked by a fascination for the West, the 30s are characterized by the search for the genuine Japanese tradition. Also Tanizaki became embroiled in the 40s, like almost all of his writing contemporaries in the propaganda of militarism.
His first story is about Seikichi tattoo, tattooing a spider on the back of a young woman. Already in this narrative unfolds Tanizaki a topic that is a leitmotif of his work: the subtle power game of ruling and being ruled becoming, mutual entanglements of desire through to bondage. Tanizaki draws to the versatility and the homophony of the Japanese language masterfully to compress allusions and to generate more complex associations. This linguistic sophistication makes it for every translator at the same time become a challenging task. The combination of idealized beauty and physical cruelty have Tanizaki also registered the attribute of the diabolical.
Works
Translations
- Tattoo. Translated by Heinz Brasch, in: Margaret Donath (ed. ), Japan told, Frankfurt / Main 1969.
- Gold and silver. Translated by Uwe Hohmann and Christian Uhl, Leipzig 2003.
- Naomi or an insatiable love. Translated by Oscar Benl, Reinbek 1970.
- Island of the dolls from the American Curt Meyer- Clason of Esslingen in 1957.
- Shunkinshō - Biography spring harp. Translated by Walter Donat, in: Walter Donat (ed.), The five -story pagoda. Japanese narrator of the 20th century, Dusseldorf, Cologne 1960.
- The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. Translated by Josef Bohaczek, Frankfurt / Main, Leipzig 1994.
- A cat, a man and two women. Translated by Josef Bohaczek, Reinbek 1996.
- The sisters Makioka. Translated by Sachiko Yatsushiro, Collaboration: Ulla stallion, Reinbek 1964.
- The key. Translated by Gerhard Knauss, Sachiko Yatsushiro, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1961.
- Diary of an old fool. Translated by Oscar Benl, Reinbek 1966
- A small kingdom. Translated by Jürgen Berndt. In: Dreams of ten nights. Japanese tales of the 20th century. Edited by Eduard Klopfenstein, Theseus Verlag, Munich, 1992. ISBN 3-85936-057-4
- In Praise of Shadows. Draft Japanese aesthetics. Essay, translated by Eduard Klopfenstein, Manesseplatz, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7175-4082-3
- Praise the championship. Essay, translated by Eduard Klopfenstein. Manesseplatz, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7175-4079-3
- Love and sensuality. Essay, translated by Eduard Klopfenstein. Manesseplatz, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7175-4080-9