These two novellas by the inimitable Tanizaki were among his favourites.
The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi recounts the dark sexual obsessions of a sixteenth-century warlord, accidentally initiated in his youth into the morbid rites attendant upon battle. Based on invented documents that overlap with historical reality, the story unfolds a masterly balance of irony and melodrama, elegance and brutality.
Arrowroot also touches on the pursuit of legend, but in a very different mode. Cast in the uniquely Japanese form of the `essay novel`, the narrative blends the stories of two friends on an expedition into the mountains south of Kyoto, one of them following the traces of a medieval myth, the other in search of a more recent, private past.
`After 20 years of writing novels in a fairly orthodox style, Tanizaki fused two interests - traditional Japanese storytelling and experimental narrative – into a unique style` New York
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