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  • Published: 6 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780099289999
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $30.00

The Key



A seductive portrait of marriage and sexual passion.

This is the diary of a middle-aged man who is deeply in love with his younger wife, Ikuko. In spite of that love, the pair have grown physically apart, each unsure of the other's desires...until the day Ikuko discovers her husband's diary with its desperate hints of jealousy and voyeurism. Ikuko realises she has found the key to his very soul.

  • Published: 6 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780099289999
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $30.00

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.

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Praise for The Key

A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover

Time

At once sensational and serious... a middle-aged man's last bout of sexual passion

New York Times

That this is a work of rare art can never be in doubt

New Statesman

A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover

The Times

Tanizaki tells the delicate and, in the end, frightening story with great skill...this is not a book you will soon forget

Boston Herald