Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where his family owned a printing press. He attended Tokyo Imperial University, but dropped out due to financial difficulties. He began his literary career in 1909, publishing his first work, a one-act stage play, in a magazine that he had helped found. He soon gained fame for his short stories, which often explored themes of sexuality, eroticism, and cultural identity. He was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and the French Decadents. He also wrote novels, essays, and film scenarios. Some of his most acclaimed works include Naomi (1924), a story of a man's obsession with a Westernized woman; The Makioka Sisters (1943-1948), a saga of four sisters in pre-war Osaka; and The Key (1956), a novel of marital infidelity and voyeurism. Tanizaki also translated The Tale of Genji, the 11th-century classic of Japanese literature, into modern Japanese, a monumental task that took him 10 years to complete. He was considered one of the most prominent figures of modern Japanese literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. He died of a heart attack in 1965, at the age of 79. He was buried in Yugawara, Kanagawa, where he had spent his last years.