The Role of Cinema in the Development of the Creative Thought of the Japanese Writer Tanizaki Junichiro

Selimov Mazai ORCID: 0000-0001-6937-0948 Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Department of Asia and Africa Literatures 25a Povarskaya str., Moscow, 121069, Russia mazay_sv@yahoo.com

At the end of the 1910s, the urbanized Japanese population began to be actively interested in cinema. The writer Tanizaki Junichiro joins this discourse with his ideas about the role of cinema and its influence on the modern world. It was at this time that the heyday of glossy magazines, such as, for example, "Katsudo: kurabu" (), in which discussions were brewing, a new understanding of cinema as a special kind of art was emerging.

The writer's complete view on this issue was set out in the essay "The Present and the Future of Cinema", in which Tanizaki Junichiro elevated cinema above other types of art, extremely clearly expressed his attitude to modern technical capabilities – film lenses, cameras, editing capabilities, etc. – and their influence on art ^{[1, pp. 249-262]}. The work was born at a time when the Japanese dreamed that the craziest utopia could be realized thanks to progress.

I note that the writer Tanizaki Junichiro could not ignore this new cultural phenomenon, as he was in search of the ideal woman who was supposed to change the "genetic" code of the Japanese nation, transforming a person not only externally, but also mentally. And cinema was given a significant place in this mission – cinema was supposed to change the Japanese idea of the role of women in society. I would like to emphasize that the writer's thoughts throughout his creative life have been occupied with complex female images: the search for the ideal woman will become the main motive of the entire creative work of the writer, whose legacy contains quite a lot of texts, both artistic and essayistic, in which this topic is discussed.

Essay "Present and Future cinema"

In the first quarter of the XX century, modern Japanese culture received significant development, novelty was celebrated in everything (literature, theater, painting, philosophy, etc.), artists confidently stepped into the new modernist world. So in 1909, the famous Japanese writer, supporter of the German romantic school and translator of Goethe's Faust, Mori Ogai (, 1862-1922), demonstrated his interest in modernism. On the pages of the most influential literary magazine Subaru, he published his translation of Filippo Tommaso Marrinetti's The First Manifesto of Futurism. The work was presented to the Japanese public a few weeks after its appearance in the French newspaper "Figaro" ^{[2, p. 16]}. Tanizaki Junichiro also joined the process of modernization of social mores, who already in the early 1910s identified the most serious problem of Japanese society - the preservation of traditional morals, Confucian morality, which continued to subjugate the society of the "new" era.

Cinema, to which Tanizaki Junichiro openly demonstrated his interest in 1917, calling it the highest form of art, was to become, according to the writer, one of the main elements of the modernization of public consciousness. In the essay "The Present and the Future of Cinema", which is significant for the writer's work, he tried to indicate what place cinema should be given in Japanese art. Speaking about the supremacy of cinema over other types of art, the writer shares the following conclusions:

· Low cost for the viewer, the opportunity to enjoy the skills of foreign actors without leaving the country.

·       The absence of falsehood in acting.

·       The ability to visualize novels.

·       Simultaneous demonstration of motion pictures in completely different places an infinite number of times.

·       A filmmaker has more freedom of expression than a stage director.

· Close-ups allow the viewer to study the actors' faces in more detail ^{[1, 249-262]}.

The writer also emphasizes that cinema captures and preserves the acting of masters for future generations – this skill "will not be lost as theatrical or artistic" ^{[1, p. 252]}. Thanks to the film, this kind of art will gain immortality, will remain for centuries "as the works of great poets, calligraphers and sculptors" ^{[1, p. 253]}. Tanizaki also has no doubt that the time will come when "cinema art will rise above the art of theater" ^{[1, p. 253]}, since it does not cause a sense of falsehood that is inherent in the theater – "in the theater it is impossible to avoid such impressions at all" ^{[1, p. 254]}.

Praising cinema, Tanizaki Junichiro shares the idea that everything has its time: "Today, when the world is developing and feelings are becoming more acute, the theater inevitably feels fake" ^{[1, p. 254]}. The writer notes that the traditional Noh drama theater, valued for its symbolism, "seemed realistic to the people of the Ashikaga period (1338-1573)," and later the Kabuki Theater took its place. Cinema, according to the writer, will replace theatrical art. "A beauty should play a beauty, and an old man should play the role of an old man" ^{[1, p. 256]}, the writer emphasizes. I note that in traditional Japanese theater, all roles are performed by men – the role of a young beauty can be performed by an elderly man. 

Tanizaki Junichiro sees the advantage of cinematography in the fact that it allows people to witness firsthand events that previously a person could only get acquainted with in the form of a text. The writer says: "<...> cinema will make it possible to screen novels according to Western models, for example, the film adaptation of The Tale of the House of Taira (Heike Monogatari, XIV century) can compete with the painting Antony and Cleopatra of 1913" ^{[1, pp. 260-261]}. Admiring the actors' performance makes the writer involuntarily think about the realism of cinema, suitable for transmitting "both naturalistic and fantastic plots, giving the author more freedom than the theater stage ^{[1, pp. 261-262]}. Cinema becomes a "true art" for the writer.

The first attempts by the writer to introduce visual techniques of cinematography into his own texts are observed in the story "The Sorrow of the Mermaid" (, Ningyo no Nageki, 1917) - the main character of the work uses a glass as a film lens to see the mermaid in more detail – in which the writer uses the lens pointing technique, close–up, the significance of which is noted in the essay "The Present and the future of cinema".

The writer was amazed by the possibilities of modern technology, which allowed him to demonstrate enlarged images of movie characters, which helped the viewer to study the actors' faces and features of their physique in more detail. The writer reports that "those details that are overlooked in everyday life are perceived on the screen so acutely that it causes admiration, which is difficult to convey in words" ^{[1, p. 256]}.

I would like to emphasize that the interest of famous writers in cinematography did not go unnoticed, since new film companies saw practical value in hiring famous writers. An authoritative writer could attract public attention to the products of the film studio. Therefore, in 1920, Tanizaki Junichiro was attracted to cooperation by the Hollywood actor and director of Japanese origin Kurihara Kisaburo (1885-1926), who had returned to Japan two years earlier to found the Taisho Katsui film studio (, 1920-1923) in Yokohama. The Tanizaki took part in the creation of four paintings: "home club" (, Amatya kurabu, 1920), "night of the festival of dolls" (, Hinamatsuri-but ERU, 1921), "Snake vulgarity" (, Jasa-but John, 1921) and "the Sands of Katsushika" (, Katsushika sunaga, 1921).

To date, these films are considered lost. T. LaMarr, a researcher of Tanizaki Junichiro and Japanese cinema, notes that the writer was involved not only as a screenwriter and literary consultant, but directly supervised the cast ^{[3, pp. 29-31]}. This is also reported by the preserved photographs from the set and the fact that the script of the film "Amateur Club" was written by Tanizaki Junichiro for his beloved Hayama Michiko (Seiko), who played the main role in the film. I note that this is not the only example of the strongest attachment to his muse, their love will be reflected in Tanizaki's literary works of the early 1920s: "Blue Flower" and "Love of a Fool".

The reduction of the distance between the author and the actors allowed the writer, who had previously watched the faces of Hollywood actresses only on the screens, to come into direct contact with the new female image that he later brought into his texts – these women are dressed in European dresses, have a Western disposition. I would like to emphasize that in the early 1920s, the image of a modern woman tickling the imagination was widespread only in the publishing industry. This was due to the fact that only a small percentage of urbanized women followed Western fashion.

Mitsuye Wada-Marciano, a researcher of images of modern women in Japanese pre-war cinema, speaks of the "modern Japanese woman" as a rather late phenomenon that "was more common in cinema or literature than in real reality" ^{[4, pp. 68-112]}. And Miriam Silverberg notes that the modern Japanese woman is a very complex cultural construct, "created by journalists and writers" ^{[5, p. 51]}.

Among the writers who were involved in the process of creating a new identity for a modern Japanese woman was the writer Tanizaki Junichiro. The writer did not just become a popularizer of a new face, but created the image of the most famous "modan ga: ru" Naomi. The image of Naomi – the main heroine of Tanizaki's novel "The Love of a Fool" – has become so recognizable that the term "Naomism" () has become widely used to refer to Japanese women mimicking Western women. Accordingly, the image created by the writer penetrated into the fabric of Japanese culture, influencing reality.

Naomi as the embodiment of the ideal woman of the first half of Tanizaki Junichiro's creative life

The culmination of the aesthetic experiences of the first half of the writer's creative life was the novel "The Love of a Fool". In this work, the face of Naomi was created, which became the prototype of a Japanese woman of modern times. This image was written with an eye on the scandalous Hollywood actresses who attracted Tanizaki Junichiro with "sadistic" roles – the roles of seductive and fatal women. I note that in the 1910s and 1920s this archetype was quite common in Western cinema.

The connection of the novel with cinema art is stated from the first lines. Researcher of Tanizaki Junichiro Deborah Sheymun points out that the title of the novel "The Love of a Fool" is a reference to the famous film directed by Frank Powell "There Was a Fool" (A Fool There Was, 1915) ^{[6, p. 1070]}. The role of the fatal seductress in this movie was played by the sex symbol of that time, Ted Bar, who became one of the first actresses to try on the image of "femme fatale".

The roles of the film actress were not just frank for their time, but provocative, and Tanizaki Junichiro, a person familiar with the images of women with sexual deviations in Western literature and philosophy, in particular the work of Kraft-Ebing "Sexual Psychopathy" (Psychopathia Sexualis, 1886) ^{[7, p. 27.]}, could not leave the most popular movie "Once upon a time there was a fool" without attention. The writer's consciousness painted a Western reality overflowing with such women. The novel "The Love of a Fool" became the prehistory of the formation of a woman of a new era, the Japanese Teda Bara, exciting the public imagination, attracting the attention of the media.

Tanizaki Junichiro portrays his Naomi (a modern Japanese woman) as having an origin from the performers of fatal roles in Hollywood cinema, as the writer in the person of the narrator repeatedly reports in the novel. "The Love of a Fool" is the finale of the "Yokohama period", a collection of Tanizaki's ideas. It contains both the writer's attitude to cinema, especially to its technical capabilities – the ability to turn any sexual fantasies into reality, and the image of a modern Japanese woman (an ideal woman), which the writer painstakingly created for many years.

"The Love of a Fool" is a first–person confession by Kawai Joji about voluntary submission to a modern girl named Naomi. Speaking of confession, I would like to note that in the Japanese literature of the beginning of the XX century, the confessional genre "Ego-novel" (, Watakushi se:setsu) was born, in which the inner life of the hero was exposed as honestly as possible. Novels of this genre are partially or completely autobiographical, scrupulously describing the experiences, reflections and memories of their authors. Tanizaki Junichiro's works can be attributed to this genre to a greater or lesser extent, because they expose the inner state of the writer.

The protagonist of the novel is haunted by an irresistible desire to raise a femme fatale on Japanese soil, his ideal, so he takes up the upbringing of a girl who is not even fifteen years old, sexually liberates her, teaching her to dominate him. I will note that the precedent of taking a girl for upbringing in order to marry her takes place in classical Japanese literature. In one of the greatest works written in the Heian period (, 794-1185), the novel "The Tale of Genji" (, Genji-monogatari, early XI century.) Murasaki Shikibu (, 970/978 – 1019) in the chapter "Pavonia Pavilion" tells about the irresistible desire of Prince Genji to bring up the young granddaughter of a hermit to marry her in the future ^{[8, p. 9-24]}. Accordingly, this plot was not new to Japan. At least, it did not cause the public outcry that, for example, caused in the Western world the novel by V.V. Nabokov (1899-1977) "Lolita" (Lolita, 1955).  

The attention of Japanese society was focused on something else – the possibility of obtaining a new archetype of a Japanese woman through certain manipulations. Literary critic Michiko Suzuki notes that Naomi embodies all the modern girls who began to appear in Japanese literature since the 1890s: these are the images from the "German trilogy of Mori Ogaya, which included "The Dancer" (, Maihime, 1890), and the heroine from the work of Tayama Katai "Maiden's Illness" (, Se:jebe:, 1907)", which combined modesty with modernity, which made her an erotic and dangerous object of male lust" ^{[9, pp. 357-384]}.

When getting acquainted with the novel, the idea may creep in that Naomi is free in her decisions, but this freedom is only visible. Joji carefully makes sure that Naomi believes in her, for each new step, seeking her consent. However, the truth lies in the fact that the girl never had a choice, she was an object on which a complex experiment was being put to create the female image desired by the main character. According to the external and behavioral models that the main character provides for her, we determine what is the finished image of the ideal woman Tanizaki Junichiro in the first half of his creative life.

Hollywood cinema plays a primary role in changing the female mentality. It is with him that Naomi's "upbringing" begins – Joji takes her to the cinema, and when Naomi moves in with him, he decorates the house with photos of famous actresses to encourage Naomi to imitate them: "In the cinema, she closely followed the manners of actresses. At home, with her hair down, she took various poses in front of the mirror, imitated Mary Pickford's smile, moved her eyes like Pina Menichelli, bowed her head like Geraldine Farrar. She was surprisingly quick to adopt the gestures of these actresses.

— You're very capable. Not every actor can imitate like that. It's because you look like a foreigner!" ^{[10, p.]}.

Hollywood actresses, about whom Tanizaki Junichiro speaks, are more or less known for the roles of femme fatales. I note that Mary Pickford is not a “femme fatale” from the point of view of a Western audience, but the boyish aspects of her personality, the roles of bold and strong-minded women were in stark contrast to the quiet obedience expected from a Japanese woman.

Joji deliberately pushes Naomi to imitate certain Hollywood actresses in order to cultivate her ideal of a dominant sexual partner, thereby realizing her masochistic fantasies. By the end of the novel, we will notice that the hero would give everything he owns just to be able to obey the woman he managed to create.

It is also interesting that the personality that Joji constructs for Naomi should change her racial origin, so it can be noted that the theme of the bodily change of Japanese women is also reflected in this novel. Joji also uses the ambiguity of the name Naomi (this name is both Japanese and foreign) as an excuse to indulge in fantasies about her non-Japanese origin. These fantasies make her the object of his erotic obsession, which is played out in a kind of cinematic vision that allows deliberate seduction, role-playing, seduction in an unreal, fictional image created on the screen.

The novel indirectly mentions the famous film directed by Herbert Brenon (1880-1958) "Neptune's Daughter" (Neptune's Daughter, 1914), in which the main role was played by professional swimmer Annette Kelerman, known for her nude photo shoots. In the October issue of Katsudo Kurabu magazine, which was published under the title "Man or Mermaid?" (Hitoka Ningeka, 1920), a photograph of Annette with her hands raised above her head was published – the pose symbolized the moment of jumping into the water. This famous pose was depicted in the works of Tanizaki Junichiro twice – for the first time in the movie "Amateur Club" in 1920 and in the scene of the novel "Love of a Fool", when the main character brings young Naomi to the beach and encourages her to demonstrate one of the poses of Kelerman – to stand on tiptoe and stretch her arms over her head. I will note that the bathing suit is quite a revealing outfit, so Joji allows you to see the outlines of Naomi's half–naked figure - he proceeds to a detailed description of close-ups of parts of her body: emphasizes her straight legs, which, like white teeth, were signs of a Western body. Joji ceases to see Naomi as a Japanese woman, she is idealized by merging with Hollywood actresses, all this foreshadows the power that she will later have over him.

I note that the Europeans openly mocked the peculiarities of the Japanese body structure with ""short" and "crooked" legs, incorrigible thinness, considering any deviation from the European norm as "backwardness"" ^{[11, p. 249]}. After the Meiji Restoration, part of the population, following the imperial couple, stopped blackening their teeth, but the traditions were so strong that many continued to do so in the first half of the XX century. Thus, white teeth were associated with an attribute of the body of a Westerner. 

Tanizaki also describes the awe of a Western woman in the scene when Naomi takes dance lessons from Mrs. Schlemsky, a Russian immigrant. For Joji, she is a model of beauty, he draws attention to the purple veins on the pale skin of Mrs. Schlemsky and compares them to the pattern on marble. Her fingers, breasts, – all parts of her body make him anxious and experience the strongest discomfort associated with physical disability – skin color, crooked teeth – which he experiences while being near her. We also see a moment of awe before a Russian woman in the novel "Ave Maria", where Nina's white skin causes the hero to feel a sense of bodily inferiority. The appearance of Russian women in the works of Tanizaki Junichiro makes his characters think of themselves in terms of stereotypes common in Japanese society in the first half of the XX century.

Naomi's transformation takes place in the spirit of Tanizaki Junichiro's works – a weak Japanese girl at the beginning of the work is transformed into a fatal seductress at the end by means of a toilet and imitation of Western women: she is already capable of lies, manipulation and infidelity. The main character achieves what he has been striving for all this time: her new image destroys him, forces him to go through humiliation and worship her – the masochist's dreams are fulfilled.

The tendency to focus on the bodily changes of Japanese women in the early 1920s developed under the onslaught of Western cinema. Tanizaki Junichiro could not ignore this cultural phenomenon, starting with the first film that the writer mentions in his essay "Present and Future Cinema" – "Mark Antony and Cleopatra" (Marc'Antonio e Cleopatra, 1913), ending with a reference to the movie "Once upon a Time there was a fool" in the title of the novel "The Love of a Fool". Thus, in the writer's work of the early 1920s, modernized female images were constructed, gender plots were created with an orientation to Western popular culture.  

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