Naomi
  • Published: 10 April 2001
  • ISBN: 9780375724749
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $38.00

Naomi

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VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL PRESENTS A SELECTION OF MODERN JAPANESE CLASSICS
A classic work from Junichiro Tanizaki, the writer who launched Japanese literature into the modern era, Naomi is a Japanese Lolita, telling the story of an older man obsessed with developing a teenage girl into his dream woman.

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 Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.
  • Published: 10 April 2001
  • ISBN: 9780375724749
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $38.00
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About the author

Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.

All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.

portrait photo of Junichiro Tanizaki

Also by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Key & Diary of a Mad Old Man
In Praise of Shadows
The Secret History Of The Lord Of Musashi
Some Prefer Nettles
Diary of a Mad Old Man
The Key
The Reed Cutter and Captain Shigemoto's Mother
See all

Praise for Naomi

  • "Hilarious ... gleeful.... [A] shrewd commentary on Japan's infatuation with the West." --The New Work Times Book Review
  • "Tanizaki's prose is clean and inviting, and the character of Joji exquisitely drawn, his uncomprehending guilelessness the perfect tool for the author's deft cross-cultural thrusts." --The Washington Post Book Review
  • "In a class with Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita.... Powerfully erotic, directly funny, a great novelist's masterpiece." --Booklist
  • "Tanizaki writes with an unabashed sensuality." --John Updike