RKS Japanese Literature: Tomada’s Transformation into a Westerner (Tanizaki Jun’Ichiro)

‘I was Japanese no longer! I had been transformed into a Westerner!

To get there (Japan) you’d have to travel down to Marseilles and board a ship for the Orient. Eastward and eastward you’d sail crossing the seas for six weeks or more until you’d finally reached a small island country called Japan, where the people have yellow faces and live in dark, gloomy houses. They speak in tiny, mumbling voices, and in the morning they sip miso soup out of wooden bowls coated in black lacquer. What a dank, colourless existence. And they don’t even have furniture in those shadowy houses. No beds, no chairs, nothing. They spend their lives down on the floor, crouching under low ceilings and sitting on their heels. Just imagining it made me feel claustrophobic.’ Tanizaki Jun’Ichiro, “The Story of Tomada and Matsunaga”