Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi is both a hilarious story of one man’s obsession and a brilliant reckoning of a nation’s cultural confusion.
When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.
- ISBN10 0330296744
- ISBN13 9780330296748
- Publish Date 13 February 1987 (first published 12 September 1985)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 8 April 1992
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Pan Books
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 192
- Language English