Monday, Nov. 21st

This work has been read both as a straightforward exploration of Japanese aesthetics and as a parody satirizing those same traditional aesthetics. Which, if either, reading seems more liketly to you?

Beginnin in the Meiji period, there were two contrasting views of the difference between Japan and the West, one which placed the West ahead of Japan as more advanced in its accomplishment of "civilization and enlightenment" and one which praised the Asian character as spiritual and holistic in contrast to the West's materialism and attention to particulars at the expense of the whole. Where does Tanizaki's work fit in to this difference?

In the afterward to the book, an incident is described in which an architect offers to build him the house he describes, to which Tanizaki replies "But no, I could never live in a house like that." How does this anecdote affect your reading of the work?