Tokyo – In May 1954, about nine months after Donald Keene began his new life as a researcher at Kyoto University, he had the chance to meet novelist Junichiro Tanizaki, who was living in Kyoto at the time.
Keene became friends with many famous Japanese writers throughout his life, but Tanizaki was the first literary giant he met. The two were brought together by Edward Seidensticker (1921-2007), who was studying Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo at the time. Keane and Seidensticker have known each other since their time at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School during World War II. Take a look at the passage from Keane’s autobiography below.
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I owe my encounter with Junichiro Tanizaki to Seiden Sticker. Seidensticker was asked to take part of the manuscript to Kyoto when he was translating Tadekuumushi. Of course, I was overjoyed at the prospect of meeting a Japanese artist who was familiar with the work.
Strange as it may seem, even before I came to Japan, I began discussing the differences between the Nijo and Kyogoku styles of waka poetry, the elements of Noh that Chikamatsu adopted in his joruri, and the distinctive style of Ten Deshi. I was able to. As for Basho, I had never even heard the names of Jun Ishikawa, Osamu Dazai, and Yukio Mishima.
But Tanizaki-sensei’s name was real. Not only did I read many masterpieces from the prewar period, such as “Tadekuumushi,” “Chinin no Ai,” and “Shunkinsho,” but I also read the copy that Tanizaki himself sent to Arthur Waley (although I was not good at speaking in the Kansai dialect). I was reading Sasayuki (Makioka Sisters).
I was very nervous when I visited Mr. Tanizaki’s house in Shimogamo. It was well known that he disliked visitors, and I was afraid that if I met him I would not be able to say anything that would attract his attention. (A few years ago, while in Paris, I did not use a letter of introduction from André Gide and Paul Claudel for the same reason. He answered the questions I asked him frankly: many Japanese critics, for example, highly praised the novel as a rare example of true fiction, but for example, Sasayuki was composed of autobiographical elements. Little by little, I learned to be
However, even in casual conversations with Professor Tanizaki, I felt his presence more than any other writer I know. Now he was invincible to criticism.
In an article I wrote for Magazine Literature, I expressed my disgust with his original translation of The Tale of Genji. But I got a reply that he hadn’t thought anything of it. When one achieves excellence, it makes no difference what anyone else says.
[Meeting With Japan]
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As a researcher, Keane had devoted himself to classical Japanese literature since his encounter with The Tale of Genji, and coincidentally, Tanizaki was one of the few modern authors whose works he read in the original language. During his time as a naval officer, he read Fool’s Love in Hawaii, and while traveling at Cambridge University, he read Sasameyuki. Keane must have felt an extraordinary attraction to Tanizaki. However, the age difference between the two was his 36 years, so the literary figure was old enough to be Keane’s father. In addition, Tanizaki was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit and was known to be loud and obnoxious among Japanese editors. Even so, Tanizaki seems to have frankly talked about his work without hesitation with Keane.
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Mr. Tanizaki was always a friendly husband, but I got the impression that he was basically indifferent to dating men. He once told me that he never made any male friends while in Kyoto. It may be an exaggeration, but I vividly remember him leaving a ryokan in Tokyo and being surrounded by seven women. It is no coincidence that the male characters in his novels, especially Sasayuki, are shadows compared to the female characters.
It seemed very appropriate for Tanizaki-sensei to live in Kyoto. seemed to call for a beautiful garden, where the bells rang regularly.
On my first visit, I wanted to know if the toilets in my house fit the description of the pine branch-scented, dark place in In Praise of Shadows. The disappointment was that the white tiles were shiny. The discrepancy between Tanizaki-sensei’s aesthetic tastes and his daily needs seems to have come as a surprise to the architect as well.
[Meeting With Japan]
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The Tanizaki residence was located near Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto and was called Senkantei at the time. The house is still standing today, and the name has been changed to “Sekisontei”. In the garden, there is a lion dance that Keen was interested in. It consists of balanced bamboo tubes that are gradually filled with water. The weight of the water eventually causes the tube to tilt and release the water, hitting a stone and snapping to restart the process. The Former Tanizaki House is currently managed as a cultural property as part of Nissin Electric’s social contribution activities, and is also used as a guest house for companies in Kyoto.
How did Tanizaki see Keane as a young scholar? If you read Tanizaki’s contribution in the preface to Keane’s first collection of essays, Aoi-me no Taro Kaja, you will find the whole picture. can grab It dates back to September 1957, so the commentary took place about three years after the two first met. Below is a translation of an excerpt from the preface.
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“We have high hopes for you, and while you are well versed in Western thought and literature, you have shown an extraordinary dedication to mastering our country, and we In addition to showcasing what our country has to offer, we thank you for your help. For example, when reading “Blue-eyed Taro Kaja”, he said, “It was said that Japanese people like nature, but there are few people in the world who dislike the countryside as much as Japanese people. There have been many books written about Japan by Westerners since the Meiji period, but Keane’s book is probably the first Westerner to write about Japan in Japanese.”
[From Junichiro Tanizaki’s foreword to “The Blue-eyed Tarokaja”]
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At this point Keane was still a newcomer to the study of Japanese literature, but Tanizaki singled him out and recognized his essence as a perceptive observer of Japan. Tanizaki concluded his preface by saying, “You reluctantly went to New York saying you’d be back next summer, but if you’re really talking about Japan, people like you worked more in America than in Japan. It might be better.”
Keene, who would later become a full-fledged Japanese researcher, established a lifestyle of going back and forth between Japan and the United States for more than half a century rather than immersing himself in life in Japan. In this way, he continued to watch over Japanese society from both an internal and external standpoint. He probably served as a mirror for the Japanese to see their alter ego in the eyes of the outside world.
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The series navigates the past century by tracing the life of the late Donald Keene, who contributed to the advancement of Japanese culture and literature in the world. Introducing the news of the Mainichi Shimbun, which was a hot topic during Keane’s era, along with Keane’s upbringing. The serialization began in 2022, the 100th anniversary of Keane’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the Mainichi Shimbun.
(This is the 24th installment in the series. The next installment, “Donald Keene’s Japan,” will be released on February 14.)
[Tadahiko Mori]Writer of My Diary, President of The Donald Keene Memorial Foundation
The original text of Donald Keene’s autobiography is used with permission from the Donald Keene Memorial Foundation. The Foundation’s website can be accessed at https://www.donaldkeene.org/.
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profile:
Donald Keane was born on June 18, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. He is a scholar of Japanese literature and professor emeritus at Columbia University. After completing postgraduate degrees at Columbia University and Cambridge University, he received a fellowship in 1953 to study at Kyoto University. Keen developed friendships with prominent Japanese writers such as Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima. For more than half a century, Keane has traveled back and forth between the United States and Japan, studying Japanese literature and culture while communicating its charms to the world in English. His major publications include the multi-volume history of Japanese literature, The Hundred-Year Traveler, and The Emperor of Japan: The Meiji Era and His World, 1852-1912. In 2008, Keane received the Order of Culture from the Japanese government. The scholars acquired Japanese citizenship the year after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. He died on February 24, 2019 at the age of 96.
