Some Prefer Nettles

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki · 1886–1965 · Japan

Originally Tade Kuu Mushi (Japanese) · translated by Edward Seidensticker

Why it matters

A dying marriage suspended between Western modernity and the pull of old Japan: a puppet theater, an Osaka mistress, a choice deferred. Tanizaki's own conversion westward-to-eastward, staged as fiction.

At a glance

Quiet, restrained domestic realism with little structural complexity.