Born in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, and raised in a merchant house, he greedily read classics and Western literature. Childhood memories and longing for his mother became undercurrents of later work.
He debuted with The Tattooer in the second New Thought tide. A perverse aesthetic of men conquered by female beauty was the seed of themes lasting lifelong.
Works influenced by Western decadence were labeled diabolism. He boldly drew urban sensuality and perversion, drawing praise and blame.
After the Great Kanto Earthquake he moved to the Kansai. Enchanted by its climate, speech and feminine beauty, his settings and style changed greatly.
He published Naomi, depicting obsessive love for a modern girl, and caused a sensation. It vividly cut a slice of late-Taisho urban manners.
He published A Portrait of Shunkin. The strange love of a blind music mistress and her servant, in beautiful Japanese prose, is a peak of Tanizaki aesthetics.
He began serializing The Makioka Sisters but wartime censorship forced a halt. Completed after the war, it calmly depicts four sisters' daily life between Osaka and Kobe.
He finished The Makioka Sisters. Seasons and marriage talks of a prewar middle-class family, mixed with Kansai dialect, settled as his masterpiece.
He received the Order of Culture. After the war he also modernized classics and wrote essays, still probing Japanese aesthetics.
He died in Yugawara at seventy-nine. Literature shuttling between beauty and the senses, classic and modern, continues to be read at home and abroad.
Hiratsuka RaichōMatsui SumakoYamada KōsakuHagiwara SakutarōNakayama ShinpeiKikuchi KanKagawa ToyohikoKishida Ryūsei
People of the Taishō period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.