Jun'ichirō Tanizaki Quotes

Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.

We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.

The heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself.

The quality that we call beauty ... must always grow from the realities of life.

[…] we can’t make a decision between being sad for a little while and being wretched for the rest of our lives. Or rather we’ve made the decision and have trouble finding the courage to carry it through.

For a woman who lived in the dark it was enough if she had a faint, white face —a full body was unnecessary.

There are those who say that when civilization progresses a bit further transportation facilities will move into the skies and under the ground, and that our streets will again be quiet, but I know perfectly well that when that day comes some new device for torturing the old will be invented.

The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.

It’s odd, but even when I am in pain I have a sexual urge. Perhaps especially when I am in pain I have a sexual urge. Or should I say that I am more attracted, more fascinated by women who cause me pain?

In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.

Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness

If I've changed, I've changed." "Have you really changed, or are you only making a show?" "Making a show?" "Yes." "...I don't really know.

But does a decent man make promises just to please a woman? Isn't it more honest to refuse to?" "I don't like that sort of honesty. It's not honesty, it's lack of steadiness.

In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.

There are those who hold that to quibble over matters of taste in the basic necessities of life is an extravagance

After looking at myself in the mirror, I looked at Satsuko. I could not believe that we were creatures of the same species. The uglier the face in the mirror, the more extraordinarily beautiful Satsuko seemed. If that ugly face were only uglier, I thought regretfully, Satsuko would look even more beautiful.

The sun never knew how wonderful it was,” the architect Louis Kahn said, “until it fell on the wall of a building,

If indeed "elegance is frigid," it can as well be described as filthy. There is no denying, at any rate, that among the elements of the elegance in which we take such delight is a measure of the unclean, the unsanitary.

So benumbed are we nowadays by electric lights that we have become utterly insensitive to the evils of excessive illumination

You are being very demanding indeed. Where, I wonder, will we find the woman to satisfy you You really should have stayed single--all woman-worshippers should be single. They never find the woman who answers all the requirements.

My heart was full of the loneliness that follows merriment.

When I saw the illustration a new idea came to me. Might it not be possible to have Satsuko’s face and figure carved on my tombstone in the manner of such a Bodhisattva, to use her as the secret model for a Kannon or Seishi? After all, I have no religious beliefs, any sort of faith will do for me; my only conceivable divinity is Satsuko. Nothing could be better than to lie buried under her image.

But when Kaname asked: "Would you like to separate, then?" Misako answered: "Would you?" They knew that divorce was the solution, and yet neither had the courage to propose it, each was left face to face with his own weakness.

More than anything else, I love the sensation of the weight of the soup in my hand when I hold the soup bowl in my hand and the warm, fresh taste of the soup. It's like having the warmth of a newborn baby's squishy flesh in my hand.

We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive lustre to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity. . . . we do love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colours and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them".

Children retain a great deal, and when they grow up they start going over things and rejudging them from a grownup's point of view. This must have been this way, and that was that way, they say. That's why you have to be careful with children—some day they grow up.

I wouldn’t mind being injured if that would bring Satsuko pleasure, and a mortal injury would be all the better. Yet to think of being trampled to death, not by her but by her dog…

The conveniences of modern culture cater exclusively to youth, and that the times grow increasingly inconsiderate of old people

Perhaps I am already tired of life—I feel as if it makes no difference when I die. The other day at the Toranomon Hospital when they told me it might be cancer, my wife and Miss Sasaki seemed to turn pale, but I was quite calm. It was surprising that I could be calm even at such a moment. I almost felt relieved, to think that my long, long life was finally coming to an end.

When she treads on my grave and feels as if she’s trampling on that doting old man’s bones, my spirit will still be alive, feeling the whole weight of her body, feeling pain, feeling the fine-grained velvety smoothness of the soles of her feet. Even after I’m dead I’ll be aware of that. I can’t believe I won’t. In the same way, Satsuko will be aware of the presence of my spirit, joyfully enduring her weight. Perhaps she may even hear my charred bones rattling together, chuckling, moaning, creaking. And that would by no means occur only when she was actually stepping on my grave. At the very thought of those Buddha’s Footprints modeled after her own feet she would hear my bones wailing under the stone. Between sobs I would scream: “It hurts! It hurts! … Even though it hurts, I’m happy—I’ve never been more happy, I’m much, much happier than when I was alive! … Trample harder! Harder!

Teinosuke preferred not to be too deeply involved in domestic problems, and particularly with regard to Etsuko's upbringing he was of the view that matters might best be left to his wife. Lately, however, with the outbreak of the China Incident, he had become conscious of the need to train strong, reliant women, women able to support the man behind the gun.

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, ‘a physiological delight’ he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

I felt as though a sympathetic hand were tending the wounds where thorns had stabbed me. . .

My head was a stage wrapped in a curtain of black velvet, and on the stage stood a single actress, named Naomi.

THE KEY by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki:

...she basked gratefully in the warmth of her husband's love

Each part was a supreme delicacy, and I was insatiable.

My shoulders were light again, as though I'd been cured of the ague, and my tears stopped.

Si dice che un amore eccessivo susciti un odio cento volte più grande.

To Yukiko, however, drawn as she was to the past, there was something very unsatisfactory about this brother in law, and she was sure that from his grave her father too was reproaching Tatsuo.

My darling Naomi, I don't just love you, I worship you. You're my treasure. You're a diamond that I found and polished. I'll buy you anything that'll make you beautiful. I'll give you my whole salary.

When I compared them to Naomi, I sensed an unmistakable difference in refinement between those who are born to the higher classes of society and those who aren't... there's no concealing bad birth and breeding.

I know few greater pleasures than holding a lacquer soup bowl in my hands, feeling upon my palms the weight of the liquid and its mild warmth. The sensation is something like that of holding a plump newborn baby.

But it is on occasions like this that I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art - would they not have suited our national temper better than they do?

When he heard people with no knowledge of a cat's character saying that cats were not as loving as dogs, that they were cold and selfish, he always thought to himself how impossible it was to understand the charm and lovableness of a cat if one had not, like him, spent many years living alone with one. The reason was that all cats are to some extent shy creatures: they won't show affection or seek it from their owners in front of a third person but tend rather to be oddly standoffish. Lily too would ignore Shozo or run off when he called her, if his mother were present. But when the two of them were alone, she would climb up on his lap without being called and devote the most flattering attention to him.

When I was at the University I knew a law student named Yamada Uruu. Later he worked for the Osaka Municipal Office; he’s been dead for years. This man’s father was an old-time lawyer, or “advocate,” who in early Meiji defended the notorious murderess Takahashi Oden. It seems he often talked to his son about Oden’s beauty. Apparently he would corner him and go on and on about her, as if deeply moved. “You might call her alluring, or bewitching,” he would say. “I’ve never known such a fascinating woman, she’s a real vampire. When I saw her I thought I wouldn’t mind dying at the hands of a woman like that!” Since I have no particular reason to keep on living, sometimes I think I would be happier if a woman like Oden turned up to kill me. Rather than endure the pain of these half-dead arms and legs of mine, maybe I could get it over and at the same time see how it feels to be brutally murdered.

Often a hungry person will wolf down unpalatable food; but as his stomach swells, he'll suddenly notice how bad the food is and feel nauseated. I was experiencing something like this, and when I pictured myself lying face to face with this nose again tonight, I felt bloated, fed up. Enough of this feast.

En aquel momento tenía la sensación de haber accedido bruscamente a otro mundo, había ascendido a una altura vertiginosa, al cenit del éxtasis. Aquello era la realidad, y el pasado una mera ilusión. Estábamos solos, abrazados… Tal vez lo que estaba haciendo acabaría conmigo, pero esos momentos durarían eternamente.

Зная, что я фетишист женских ножек, зная, что её ноги дивно красивы (не поверишь, что они принадлежат сорокапятилетней женщине), нет, именно поэтому она старается, чтобы я видел их как можно реже. Даже в середине лета, в самую жару, она не снимает носков. Когда я умоляю позволить мне поцеловать ступни её ног, она не желает и слушать, говоря: "Какая пакость!", или: "Не смей ко мне прикасаться!

Western clothes were intended for healthy, robust men: to anyone in a weakened condition they were quite insupportable. Around the waist, over the shoulders, under the arms, around the neck - every part of the body was pressed and squeezed by clasps and buttons and rubber and leather, layer over layer, as if you were strapped to a cross. And of course you had to put on stockings before the shoes, stretching them carefully up on your legs by garters. Then you put on a shirt, and then trousers, cinching them in with a buckle and the back till they cut your waist and hanging them from your shoulders with suspenders. Your neck was choked in a close-fitting collar, over which you fastened a noose-like necktie, and stuck a pin in it. If a man is well filled out, the tighter you squeeze him, the more vigorous and bursting with vitality he seems; but a man who is only skin and bones can't stand that. [...] It was only because these Western clothes held him together that he was able to keep on walking at all - but to think of stiffening a limp, helpless body, shackling it hand and foot, and driving it ahead with shouts of "Keep going! Don't you dare collapse!" It was enough to make a man want to cry...

For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void.

Щоразу, коли в одному з храмів Кіото чи Нари я потрапляю до старосвітньої вбиральні, тьмавої й бездоганно чистої, вкотре подивляю довершеність японської архітектури. Краще від вбиральні пристосовані до душевного спочинку хіба що кімнати для чаювального чину. Несила описати відчуття, коли, віддалившись від головної зали в пропахлий листям і мохом затінок дерев чи просто в дальній кінець коридору, присядеш навпочіпки в напівсвітлі й поринеш у задуму, задивившись на яскраві прямокутники сьодзі чи на сад на подвір'ї, коли стулки сьодзі розсунуті.

And had we invented the phonograph and the radio, how much more faithfully they would reproduce the special character of our voices and our music. Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.

People called Mother a beauty, when she was young. I remember her very well in those days—until I was fourteen or fifteen she was as beautiful as ever. When I compare that memory of her with Satsuko, the contrast is really striking. Satsuko is also called a beauty. That was the main reason why Jokichi married her. But between these two beauties, between the 1890’s and now, what a change has taken place in the physical appearance of the Japanese woman! For example, Mother’s feet were beautiful too, but Satsuko’s have an altogether different kind of beauty. They hardly seem to belong to a woman of the same race. Mother had dainty feet, small enough to nestle in the palm of my hand, and as she tripped along in her straw sandals she took extremely short, mincing steps with her toes turned in. (I am reminded that in my dream Mother’s feet were bare except for her sandals, even though she was dressed to go visiting. Perhaps she was deliberately showing off her feet to me.) All Meiji women had that pigeon-like walk, not just beauties. As for Satsuko’s feet, they are elegantly long and slender; she boasts that ordinary Japanese shoes are too wide for her. On the contrary, my mother’s feet were fairly broad, rather like those of the Bodhisattva of Mercy in the Sangatstudo in Nara. Also, the women of their day were short in stature. Women under five feet were not uncommon. Having been born in the Meiji era, I am only about five feet two myself, but Satsuko is an inch and a half taller.

Paper, I understand, was invented by the Chinese; but Western paper is to us no more than something to be used, while the texture of Chinese paper and Japanese paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose. Even the same white could as well be one color for Western paper and another for our own. Western paper turns away the light, while our paper seems to take it in, to envelop it gently, like the soft surface of a first snowfall. It gives off no sound when it is crumpled or folded, it is quiet and pliant to the touch as the leaf of a tree.

Cuanto más le odiaba, tanto más intentaba amarle, y lo conseguía. Estimulada por el apetito sexual, no podía hacer otra cosa.

Quiero que ella me vuelva loco de celos. Deseo que me haga sospechar que ha ido demasiado lejos. Quiero que haga eso.

Era mortificante pensar que otro hombre había descubierto ese exótico aspecto de su belleza que a mí se me había pasado por alto. Supongo que los maridos no son tan observadores, porque miran a sus esposas de una manera invariable.

..., deseaba tomar una esposa y vivir como un hombre normal... no para engañar a otros, sino para engañarse a sí mismo, convencerse de que no era diferente en modo alguno de otros hombres.

He has no intention of being misled by her. On the contrary, he laughs to himself that he's deceiving her.

One summer evening during the fourth year of his search Seikichi happened to be passing the Hirasei Restaurant in the Fukagawa district of Edo, not far from his own house, when he noticed a woman’s bare milk-white foot peeping out beneath the curtains of a departing palanquin. To his sharp eye, a human foot was as expressive as a face. This one was sheer perfection. Exquisitely chiseled toes, nails like the iridescent shells along the shore at Enoshima, a pearl-like rounded heel, skin so lustrous that it seemed bathed in the limpid waters of a mountain spring — this, indeed, was a foot to be nourished by men’s blood, a foot to trample on their bodies.

Kedilerin asıl yüzünü tanımayan insanlardan, onların köpeklere nazaran duygusuz olduğunu, asosyal ve bencil olduğunu duymuştu.Ve o zaman içinden, siz bir kediyle beraber yaşanan yılları tecrübe etmemişsiniz, onların tatlılığını ne bileceksiniz ki… diye geçirmişti.

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves. As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.

Не знаю, как другие женщины, а моя жена так сотворена, что даже если она занималась этим днем и продолжила ночью, и так день за днем, ей все будет мало. После встречи с любовником проделать то же самое с ненавистным мужем должно быть невыносимой пыткой, но она - исключение. Даже, если я ей противен, её плоть не может мне отказать. Как бы ни пыталась она меня отвергнуть, вожделение возьмет верх, и она подчинится ему с еще большим самозабвением. Я забыл, что именно это делает шлюху шлюхой...

The evils of dancing? Perhaps there are some, but nothing is without its evils. In my case, anyway, it's entirely wholesome, because I go with my family―wife, sister, and daughter. It's preposterous for men who spend their time in teahouses to say that dancing is unwholesome. Dancing makes a person feel young, cheerful, and lively, which alone is enough to make it far better than a teahouse party. Besides, it's economical. Young and old alike should plunge into it. Whether people think dancing is good or bad, there's no going against the trend of times. No doubt dancing will grow more and more popular. I very much hope so.

Pero eso que generalmente se llama bello no es más que una sublimación de las realidades de la vida, y así fue como nuestros antepasados, obligados a residir, lo quisieran o no, en viviendas oscuras, descubrieron un día lo bello en el seno de la sombra y no tardaron en utilizar la sombra para obtener efectos estéticos. El elogio de la sombra

Un genio conversa con otro genio cara a cara, lo que no solo supone una alegría recíproca, sino también una dicha para el universo entero. Esa alegría existe y el universo existe también. El día que los genios no se reconozcan unos a otros, el mundo se oscurecerá y la Tierra dejará de dar vueltas sobre su eje

El muchacho le explicó, como pronunciando un sermón, que el mundo de los hombres era vil y estaba lleno de mentiras. En él, solo el arte conducía a la vida verdadera y eterna, y él mismo era grande porque sabía lo que se encontraba más allá de las puertas del arte. La muchacha no podía dudar de la nobleza de sus palabras.

Me gusta ver cómo se esfuerza por mantenerse sobria y pálida y por parecer fría. En esas ocasiones hay en ella algo tan seductor que desafía la descripción.

I believe that when Antony was conquered by Cleopatra, it happened this way: little by little he was stripped of his resistance and became ensnared. It's fine to give confidence to the woman you love, but as a result you lose confidence in yourself. And when that happens, there's no way to overcome her sense of superiority. This leads to undreamed-of misfortunes.

Again, and yet again, I looked back at the actor’s hands, comparing them with my own; and there was no difference between them. Yet strangely the hands of the man on the stage were indescribably beautiful, while those on my knees were but ordinary hands.

A igual blancura, la de un papel de Occidente difiere por naturaleza de la de un hosho7 o un papel blanco de China. Los rayos luminosos parecen rebotar en la superficie del papel occidental, mientras que la del hosho o del papel de China, similar a la aterciopelada superficie de la primera nieve, los absorbe con suavidad. Además, nuestros papeles, agradables al tacto, se pliegan y arrugan sin ruido. Su contacto es suave y ligeramente húmedo como el de la hoja de un árbol.

As he struck her, he felt his chest suffocating under waves of desperate sadness, like a child abandoned by its parents.

The people here had grown emaciated with hunger and toil, and the walls of their houses sighed with grief and sorrow. All the lovely flowers of this land had been transplanted to the palace to delight the eyes of the sovereign's consort, while the plump boars had been taken and served to please her sophisticated tastes. And so, the tranquil spring sun shone in vain on the grey, deserted streets of the city. And, perched atop a hill in the centre, the palace, shining with the five colours of the rainbow, towered over the corpse of the capital like a beast of prey.

At a certain time, the father of this prince had served at the imperial court in Beijing, where his talents had won for him the favour of the Qianlong Emperor as well as the envy of his peers. His reward was a vast fortune that ostracized him from society, and later, when his only son was yet in his infancy, he quit this world entirely. Ashort while thereafter, the boy's mother followed in the footsteps of the father, and so the Prince, having been left an orphan, found himself quite naturally the sole heir to this veritable mountain of gold, silver and precious stones.

At a certain time, the father of this prince had served at the imperial court in Beijing, where his talents had won for him the favour of the Qianlong Emperor as well as the envy of his peers. His reward was a vast fortune that ostracized him from society, and later, when his only son was yet in his infancy, he quit this world entirely. A short while thereafter, the boy's mother followed in the footsteps of the father, and so the Prince, having been left an orphan, found himself quite naturally the sole heir to this veritable mountain of gold, silver and precious stones.

À chaque fois qu'il m'est donné d'admirer pareilles beautés, je me dis en aparté que le créateur manque grandement d'équité dans ses différentes réalisations d'êtres humains.

Many novelists—including Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), Ishikawa Jun (1899–1987), Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), and Mishima Yukio (1925–1970)—were avid readers of the collection. Two of the tales inspired Mizoguchi Kenji’s cinematic masterpiece Ugetsu monogatari (1953; known to Western viewers as Ugetsu), which is widely regarded as “one of the greatest of all films.

The Westerner has been able move forward in ordered steps, while we have met superior civilization and have had to surrender to it, and we have had to leave a road we have followed for thousands of years. The missteps and inconveniences this has caused have, I think, been many. If we had been left alone we might not be much further now in a material way than we were five hundred years ago. Even now in the Indian and Chinese countryside life no doubt goes on much as it did when Buddha and Confucius were alive. But we would have gone only in a direction that suited us. We would have gone ahead very slowly, and yet it is not impossible that we would one day have discovered our own substitute for the trolley, the radio, the airplane of today. They would have been no borrowed gadgets, they would have been the tools of our culture, suited to us.

İkimiz de garip bir biçimde dünyayı umursamıyorduk.

Ben kendi ruh halimi insanların bilmesinden hoşlanmadığım gibi, başkalarının yüreklerinin derinliklerine dalmayı da sevmem.

Eso que generalmente se llama bello no es más que una sublimación de las realidades de la vida

I know of few greater pleasures than holding a lacquer soup bowl in my hands, feeling upon my palms the weight of the liquid and its mild warmth. The sensation is something like that of holding a plump newborn baby.