Complete review @ following URL:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/127424-book-review-naomi-by-junichiro-tanizaki
Junichiro Tanizaki's 'Naomi' is Better than Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita'
A number of years ago I reviewed Nabokov's Lolita and claimed it to be an overrated book. Not a bad book, but merely overrated. Comments were left calling me everything from a philistine to worse because how dare I disrespect Nabokov's "genius". Well, I still say Lolita is still an overrated book. Moreover, Tanizaki's Naomi (1925) not only deals with similar themes as Lolita, but it is also a richer and more complex work. In fact, I am baffled that more Westerners are not familiar with it.
Many of the ideas within Modern Japanese literature involve the shift from the old traditions of the East, to the more Westernized cultural influence one finds in Japan today. Following the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, the end of this period in Japanese history marked the beginning of these transitions, and writers like Natsume Soseki, Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima and Jun'ichirò Tanizaki continued to express the struggles that accompany such transitions. Tanizaki is one of the most well-known writers addressing this shift from old to new, for in Naomi, we have not only an insular, unhealthy relationship between a young girl and an older man, (ala Lolita), but there is also an obsession for the shallow aspects of Western culture that both characters share.
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This scene is not only hilarious, but it gives Joji a more relatable quality. Although he is driven by his shallow emotional longings and sexual weaknesses, one sort of feels sorry for him, especially following Naomi's poor treatment of him and her infidelities. There's a sense that Joji truly cares for Naomi, and wants to make her happy. In Lolita's Humbert Humbert, by contrast, he's not only an unlikable character, but also one not particularly relatable, unless one wants to admit to being an artsy wannabe with a fetish for young girls. Overall, Joji is not only more relatable for the average reader, but more real, because he's not emitting pretentious airs and thus he exposes his vulnerabilities more willingly.
Naomi and Joji are both doomed, for by the end, neither one has grown up or changed. The only thing realized is Joji's own contentment at being beneath Naomi's manipulative control. Oddly, once Naomi is an adult she tells him: "Disgusting. You shouldn't look at a lady's body," when she catches him looking at her figure. Tanizaki deliberately italicizes the word lady since their relationship only seems to work when she is playing the role of the child. Readers are given a sense that he is aware he is making the foolish choice of staying with her following her infidelities when he states: "For myself, it makes no difference what you think of me; I'm in love with Naomi."
Naomi is often called Tanizaki's "first important novel", because not only is the psychology behind sexual obsession uncovered, but it also exposes the contradictions of the culture during that time. Even engaging in Western dance lessons was considered risqué, even though such activities indicated an elevated class level. So within the historical context, as well as the masochism of their relationship, the layering within this "first important novel" is rich and, I declare, it's much better than Lolita.
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I am a fiction writer as well as book reviewer. I am the co-founder of the highly popular arts site http://www.Cosmoetica.com and have written for a number of newspapers and websites. I have a love for Japanese literature and film (but not just limited to that).
