3 Review(s)

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki is a masterful examination of a country's cultural ambiguity as well as a funny tale of one man's passion. The young waitress Naomi immediately captures the attention of twenty-eight-year-old Joji due to her unique, almost Western appearance. Joji adopts Naomi, who he eventually marries, and pays for the English and piano lessons that would make her into the ideal wife he has always dreamed of having. Joji is determined to make Naomi into the ideal wife and to whisk her away from the seedy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo. Nevertheless, as she gets older, Joji realises that Naomi is not the innocent child of his visions. And in Tanizaki's masterwork of vile obsession, fervour turns into humorously helpless masochism rather rapidly.