I. Longing [c.1917] by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (trans. Paul McCarthy) – ★★★★

This is one dreamy, evocative and progressively eerie narrative of a seven-year-old boy on a journey through the dark countryside surrounded by “white, fluttering things”. He spots a house in the distance and thinks it is his home, only to be confronted with one nasty, unwelcoming version of his “mother”. Then, he hears the sound of a shamisen coming from somewhere deep inside the surrounding pine forest.

Though the end strongly suggests that this is a story of a boy/man who tries to come terms with a trauma surrounding his mother or her (new) attitude towards him, it may also be a story of a boy who tries to make sense of his new situation (his family got poorer and migrated to the countryside), or a parable of a child who first glimpses the frightening prospect of existence independently from his mother. Either way, there is certainly there a metaphor of a struggle one undergoes to find moments of hope and happiness in a life that presently appears full of heartache, confusion or despair. I read this short story in Longing and Other Stories by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki [translated by Anthony Chambers and Paul McCarthy, Columbia University Press 2022].

Continue reading “Japanese Short Stories from Tanizaki, Shiga, Seirai, Ogawa, & Nakajima” →