Naomi

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Book Overview

A hilarious story of one man's obsession and a brilliant reckoning of a nation's cultural confusion--from a master Japanese novelist.

When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375724745
• ISBN13: 9780375724749
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A Glimpse of Japan in the 1920's

It is surprising that this first appeared as a newspaper serial. It had a reasonably long run (16 chapters) before it was cut or censored. I wonder how it would fare as a newspaper serial in western cultures of the time, especially with the cultural references were reversed. The first person protagonist, Joji, is a salary man who has moved from the countryside to Tokyo to a boring job with an electric company. He is very conscious of being short and having bad teeth and seems to be socially awkward. He is enchanted with the west and falls for a western looking girl. His goal is to raise her to be his ideal woman. Joji becomes obsessed with his creation. As she matures, he loses his grip on her. Losing her is so painful he will do anything to avoid it. Besides the psychological drama, Tanizaki provides glimpses of Tokyo in the 1920s. There is an unabashed fascination of with the west marking a time when most of the living population would not remember the seclusion and only the elderly would bear scars of the process of ending it. I was surprised about the mosquitoes and the need for mosquito netting in Tokyo. This short book is very different from Tanizaki's epic, The The Makioka Sisters which covers a different strata of society about 15 years hence. In both, the author introduces realistic characters and brings them alive with detail.

Western Fetish Through Japanese Eyes

This is my first time reading a novel by Tanizaki Junichiro and I think I picked a good one to start with. In the novel, Tanizaki creates a realistic character in Joji. I think that Joji mirrors aspects of Tanizaki life as well. Tanizaki was infatuated with the West and then suddenly he only wanted to be Japanese and immerse himself in Japanese culture. Joji is so preoccupied with the West that he chooses a young girl because of her Western sounding name. Then he pays for English lessons, takes her to American movies, goes out with her to trendy restaurants to indulge in steak, and buys expensive Western clothes. It almost as if Joji is pruning a bonsai tree as he carefully molds her into his ideal. But this tree has a wild root that grows up into his own worst nightmare. I do feel sorry for Joji always giving in to Naomi's seemingly endless demands. I actually think he should run off and start a new life anywhere else but Naomi has other twisted plans for whomever she decides to get involved with. I don't fault Naomi due to her background that is revealed as the story gets going. Actually, I think that the whole novel is a satire of all things Western by Tanizaki. Even for someone like me who spent time in Japan because I loved Japanese culture, there comes a period where you become disillusioned by whatever country that you think you love. The Japanese often tell Americans living in Japan that after 3-years you either love Japan or hate it and never want to go back. I had mixed feeling after the 3rd year too. I think this novel was written during Tanizaki's disillusion with the West and knowing that I'm not judging him for it. In fact, this novel was probably a way of allowing Tanizaki to express himself in a way to create a comparison between the West and Japan and how people view each other, stereotypes and all. I do the same thing myself. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in Japanese movies that when someone asked me about an American movie like Iron Man, I don't want to talk about it. So I'm looking at it from the prospective of a Japanese fan. Also, in order to explain Japan to other people, I often pick American pop culture because I know about it and it makes some things easy to explain. Nothing always translate so smoothly between east and west and that's where problems start. Anyway, I found Naomi to be an enjoyable read by a master storyteller who knows his characters with all their glorious faults intact. Truly great characters should have quirks and faults or the story isn't interesting. I will probably read The Key or The Makioka Sisters next.

The primer to Tanizaki's works, a must-read.

When I first picked up "Naomi", known as "Chijin no Ai" in Japanese, it was in a Japanese literature class at my University. My first exposure to Tanizaki came in reading a short story called "The Tattooer" ("Shisei", which can be found in another collection of his short stories called "Seven Japanese Tales" in English), so I knew he was a good writer with some perverse ideas. Little did I know what I was in for with "Naomi".We were to read it in a week, which is quite the task with a full schedule. I finished it in three days and reread it a week later. I was amazed at its intricacies.The story is set in early 1920s Japan, a period when the import of Western fashion, style and culture was at its height and every Japanese person found him or herself enamored with imported American and European literature, dance, clothing and people.Naomi is a young Japanese waitress with a Western look that a man named Joji finds himself obsessing over at first sight. Even her name, he remarks, resembles Western names. He adopts her and begins to mold her into his perfect woman. The story follows his continual perfecting of her behavior, and her treatment of him. The question soon arises, however, as to who is truly the dominant force in their fragile relationship.In what I've now come to find is Tanizaki standard, all is never as it seems, and the relationships established throughout the story are rarely as simple as they first appear."Naomi" serves as a primer to Tanizaki's entire body of work, being one of his earliest full-length novels and coming before his shift from an obsession with the West to a love of his own traditional Japanese culture. Since reading it, I've had the opportunity to read much of the rest of his work, and I'm thankful I started with "Naomi". Tanizaki is cited as shifting his views of the West soon after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and "Naomi", published in 1924, is his work at that tipping point. Although on the surface it seems to praise a Western infatuation, it throws into question what damage it's doing to the Japanese mind and culture.A powerful work of perverse fiction, and a great introduction to the twisted, cerebral world of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, I highly recommend "Naomi" to readers tired of the typical stories that are so prevalent in our modern literature and as an introduction to the world of one of the greatest 20th century Japanese authors.

Hate Naomi or Joji? Hmmm, I Hate Them Both!!

This is the first Tanizaki novel I've read, and I enjoyed it a greay deal, but I hate both of the main characters. The story starts off with Joji a 28 year old bachelor who falls for a pretty, quiet 15 year old girl named Naomi. Many things attact Joji to Naomi: her beauty, her Eurasian features, but the main thing is her name: Naomi. The name is written with three Chinese characters and it could also be a western name. Joji finds this very attractive. He starts to hang out with the girl going to Western restaurants and going to see Western movies. He eventually takes the girl in, wanting to make her a prop lady. He pays for her to take English and music lessons. This is when things start to go downhill. Naomi's english is very poor, and Joji makes her work very hard calling her an idiot when she doesn'yt understand passive voice. Naomi gets angry and very obstinate. As time goes on Joji marries Naomi, but keepos it secret from everyone else. He enjoys washing her body and playing horse with her, treating her like a play thing. They eventually go out and study dancing together, but this leads to more problems because of some of the men Naomi meets. I'm not going any further. Read the book and experience how a weak-willed man acts when the woman he loves cheats on him constantly, but can't get enough of her. See how a respectful business man is reduced to a submissive husband to his teenage wife. Very disturbing, but a good read nonetheless.

brilliantly written but infuriating

it's hard to imagine this book being written over 75 years ago. tanizaki writes with great clarity and precision, and like many japanese novels the use of language is wonderful.but the subject! naomi is the most vile, cruel, manipulative, evil creature he could have imagined. joji, her hapless benafactor and husband, starts of being somewhat sympathetic, but in the end it's tempting to strangle him just to put him out of his misery.this is all done with great style. at turns creepily erotic, hilarious and pathetic, it's difficult to come away from this novel feeling anything less than defiled. a scathing indictment of the 1920's japanese obsession with things western, i've trouble understanding why government censors briefly terminated newspaper serialization in 1924; it shows nothing even remotely appealing about western culture or lifestyle. a good tonic for this was peter mccarthy's "little bunny on the move".