Study Of Jun Yichiro Tanizaki's Addiction For Beauty

JunYichiroTanizaki(1886-1965),the representative novelist of Aestheticism in Japan, best known throughout the world by his unique writing style. He dealt with the influence of the West on the old cultural heritage of his native country. In this thesis, to decode Tanizaki's strong addiction for beauty underlying his works, the author tries to take every aspect into consideration: the background of his day which features a mixture of eastern and western cultures, Tanizaki's distinctive and morbid personality, as well as his main theories and typical works.Based on an objective and profound analysis of the mentioned points, this paper argues that Tanizaki's theory derived from the thought"art for art's sake",and went to extreme. He denied the value of morality in his works, accordingly pursued the beauty mainly on a sensory and hedonistic belief. As a so-called"Satanism"in Japanese Literature, Tanizaki indulged in those purely related to human's perceptual dimension such as sexual desire, instinct and passion, delusion, hallucination and fantasy, etc.. He showed an amazing ability fusing exotic, erotic theme into orthodox narrative. All along the life in pursuit of art, he oscillated between the eastern traditional aesthetic and modern western culture. In a word, Tanizaki's addiction for beauty ultimately labeled him a quality of"sensory, too sensory", which at the same time gave him a half-and-half reputation in world literature circles.