ARCHIVED ONLINE EVENT - Japan Society Book Club: The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki

Date
Monday 10 January 2022
Time
7.00pm (GMT)
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Booking Details
Online event
Free for Japan Society Members

Book available from Amazon, Bookshop and Book Depository 
Japanese version available here

The activities of the Japan Society are made possible thanks to the support of its members. This event is free of charge and open to all. We realise that this is a difficult time for many people. However, if you are planning to attend and do not have a membership subscription as an individual or through your employer, please consider making a donation. You can find details of membership and how to join the Japan Society community here.

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. Translated by Howard Hibbert.

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886- 1965) was one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Soseki. Some of his works present a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions. Others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of “the West” and “Japanese tradition” are juxtaposed.

If you have any questions, please call the Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

Booking Info