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Japan’s National Daily Since 1922
(Mainichi Japan)
Japanese version
TOKYO — It was in May 1954, around nine months after Donald Keene started his new life as a researcher at Kyoto University, that he was blessed with the opportunity to meet the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, who lived in Kyoto at the time.
While Keene later became friends with many famous Japanese writers throughout his life, it can be said that Tanizaki was the first literary giant he encountered. The two were brought together by Edward Seidensticker (1921-2007), who at this time was studying Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo. Keene and Seidensticker knew each other from their time in the U.S. Navy’s Japanese language school during World War II. Let’s take a look at a passage from Keene’s autobiography below:
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It was thanks to Seidensticker that I first met Tanizaki Junichiro. Seidensticker, at the time translating Tade kuu Mushi (Some Prefer Nettles), asked me to take a section of his manuscript to Kyoto. Of course I was overjoyed at the prospect of meeting the one Japanese writer whose works I knew well.
Strange as it may seem, even before I arrived in Japan I was capable of discussing the differences between the Nijo and Kyogoku schools of waka, or the elements of No that Chikamatsu had adopted in his joruri, or the characteristic styles of the ten disciples of Basho, but I had never even heard the names of Ishikawa Jun, Dazai Osamu or Mishima Yukio, all of whom I was to translate in a few years.
But Tanizaki sensei’s name was a reality. Not only had I read Tade kuu Mushi (Some Prefer Nettles), Chijin no Ai (A Fool’s Love), Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin), and many other representative pre-war works but (despite my difficulties with the Kansai dialect) I had read Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters) in the copy Tanizaki himself had sent to Arthur Waley.
When I visited Tanizaki’s house in Shimogamo I was extremely nervous. His dislike of visitors was well known, and I was afraid that once I met him I would have nothing to say that could possibly engage his attention. (A few years earlier, while in Paris, I had failed to use letters of introduction to Andre Gide and Paul Claudel for the same reason.) When I actually met Tanizaki sensei, however, conversation proved not only agreeable but easy. Unlike some writers, who are reluctant to discuss their own works, he answered directly any question I asked. Bit by bit I learned, for example, how much of Sasameyuki consists of autobiographical elements, though many Japanese critics had acclaimed the novel as a rare example of true fiction.
Even in the most casual conversations, however, I felt with Tanizaki sensei, more than with any other writer I have known, that I was in the presence of a master. By now he was invulnerable to criticism.
In an article I wrote for the magazine Bungaku I had expressed my dislike for the first of his translations of Genji Monogatari. Later, it occurred to me that he might be offended, and wrote an apology, only to receive the reply that he hadn’t thought anything about it. I am sure this was literally true. When a man achieves his eminence nothing anyone else states makes any difference.
[Meeting With Japan]
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As a researcher, Keene had focused solely on classical Japanese literature since his encounter with “The Tale of Genji,” but coincidentally, Tanizaki was one of the few modern writers whose works he had read in the original language. He read “Chijin no Ai” (A Fool’s Love) in Hawaii during his years as a U.S. Navy officer, and “Sasameyuki” (The Makioka Sisters) during travels when he stayed at the University of Cambridge. Keene must have been extraordinarily fascinated with Tanizaki. However, the literary luminary was old enough to be Keene’s father, as the two had an age difference of 36 years. Moreover, Tanizaki had been awarded an Order of Culture, and was known among Japanese editors as being fussy and disagreeable. Even so, it seems that with Keene, Tanizaki spoke openly about his works without holding anything back.
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Tanizaki sensei was always an affable host, but I nevertheless obtained the impression that he was essentially uninterested in the company of men. He once told me he had not made a single male friend during his years in Kyoto. This may have been an exaggeration, but I have a vivid memory of him leaving an inn in Tokyo surrounded by seven women. Probably it is no accident that the male characters in his novels, Sasameyuki especially, are only shadows when compared to the women.
It seemed eminently appropriate (that) Tanizaki sensei should live in Kyoto. The appreciation of traditional Japan revealed in his In Praise of Shadows seemed to demand the old-fashioned architecture of a Kyoto house, a long path leading to the gate, and a beautiful garden in which a shishi-odoshi regularly clacked.
On my first visit I was curious to discover if the toilet in the house also lived up to the description in In Praise of Shadows of a dark place scented with pine boughs, but when I paid a visit to the place in question I found to my disappointment it was gleaming white tiles. The discrepancy between Tanizaki sensei’s aesthetic preferences and his daily needs apparently also came as a surprise to the architect who, to Tanizaki sensei’s dismay, proposed building a house for him in Atami exactly in conformity with the descriptions in In Praise of Shadows!
[Meeting With Japan]
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Tanizaki’s residence was located near Kyoto’s Shimogamo shrine and was called Senkan-tei at the time. The house still stands today, with its name changed to “Sekison-tei.” In the garden remains the shishi-odoshi device that caught Keene’s attention. It consists of a balanced bamboo tube that gradually fills with water. The weight of the water eventually causes the tube to tip and release the water, then fall back against a stone and clack to restart the process. The former Tanizaki residence is currently managed as cultural property as part of Nissin Electric Co.’s social contribution efforts, and is also used as a guest house of the Kyoto-based company.
So, what was the young scholar Keene like in the eyes of Tanizaki? One can grasp a good picture by reading Tanizaki’s contribution in the foreword to Keene’s first collection of essays titled “The Blue-eyed Tarokaja.” It dates back to September 1957, so the commentary was given around three years after the two met for the first time. Below is a translation of an excerpt from the foreword.
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“We have set our hopes on you and are grateful to you in that while you are well-versed in Western thought and literature, you show exceptional devotion to master that of our country, and in addition to introducing what our country has to offer to the Western world, you also open our eyes to the nature of our own people, which is unknown to us. For example, when reading “The Blue-eyed Tarokaja,” I am astonished to stumble upon great insight, such as, ‘It’s said that Japanese people love nature… but there are few people in the world who detest the countryside as much as the Japanese.’ Since the Meiji period (1868-1912), there have been quite a few books by Westerners who wrote about Japan, but perhaps, this book by Keene leads the way in Westerners writing about Japan in the Japanese language themselves.”
[From Junichiro Tanizaki’s foreword to “The Blue-eyed Tarokaja”]
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At this point, Keene was still a newcomer to Japanese literature studies, but Tanizaki picked him out and recognized his essence as a perceptive observer of Japan. Tanizaki concluded his foreword, “You left for New York with reluctance, saying you would come back next summer, but if one is truly speaking for Japan, it might be better that someone like you engages in work in the U.S., rather than Japan.”
Keene, who would later grow into a full-fledged Japanologist, established a lifestyle of traveling back and forth between Japan and the U.S. for over half a century, instead of completely immersing himself in life in Japan. In this way, he continued to constantly watch over Japanese society from standpoints both in and outside Japan. He was perhaps someone who acted as a mirror to help Japanese people catch sight of their other self, as they appeared in the eyes of the outside world.
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This series navigates the past century by following the life of the late scholar Donald Keene, who contributed to the elevation of Japanese culture and literature in the world. News from The Mainichi that made headlines in Keene’s time is introduced alongside Keene’s personal history. The series began in 2022, the 100th anniversary of Keene’s birth — also the centennial of The Mainichi.
(This is Part 24 of a series. The next “Donald Keene’s Japan” story will be published on Feb. 14.)
(Japanese original by Tadahiko Mori, The Mainichi Staff Writer and Donald Keene Memorial Foundation director)
The original text of Donald Keene’s autobiographies is used with permission from the Donald Keene Memorial Foundation. The foundation’s website can be reached at: https://www.donaldkeene.org/
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Profile:
Donald Keene was born on June 18, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. He was a Japanese literature scholar and professor emeritus at Columbia University. After earning postgraduate degrees at Columbia University and Cambridge University, he received a fellowship to study at Kyoto University in 1953. Keene developed friendships with prominent Japanese authors, including Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima. Over the course of half a century, Keene traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Japan, and continued to study Japanese literature and culture, while conveying their charms to the world in English. His main works include a multivolume history of Japanese literature, “Travelers of a Hundred Ages,” and “Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912.” In 2008, Keene received the Order of Culture from the Japanese government. The scholar obtained Japanese citizenship in the year following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. He died on Feb. 24, 2019, at age 96.
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