Quicksand by Tanizaki Junichiro
translated by Howard Hibbett
Few writers are capable of penning an erotically charged story with as much searing simplicity as Tanizaki Junichiro. Like The Gourmet Club, Junichiro's collection of six bewitching stories, Quicksand makes a vivid impression in spite of a minimal amount of writing. At 223 pages, the book is slight, yet does not give the reader that innate dissatisfaction that comes from reading a novel that seems incomplete. The "quicksand" of the book's title serves as a visually stimulating metaphor for the vortex that pulls the cast of characters into its whirling midst. This dazzling array of characters include Sonoko, a married woman, her husband, and Watanuki, a young, effeminate man with a sexual inadequacy. But it is the seductive Mitsuko who is at the heart of this pernicious whirlpool, an eighteen-year-old girl who seems to bewitch all with whom she comes into contact. Referred to as "one of the most extraordinary femmes fatales in all of literature," Mitsuko first encounters Sonoko at the Women's Art Academy, where they are both taking classes. Sonoko is immediately struck by Mitsuko's appearance: "....you won't find another such dazzling beauty among all the young girls in Semba," she declares. Though the two women barely know one another, nasty rumors begin to spread around the art school. There is talk that they are having a lesbian affair, in spite of the fact that Sonoko is married. For some reason, these rumors draw the two of them together, and it isn't long before Mitsuko comes to Sonoko's house for a visit. While she is there, Sonoko suggests that she pose for her in the nude, as the models do in her "life" class. Reluctantly, Mitsuko complies, though she insists on being covered with a sheet. Sonoko recalls, "'....she went behind the wardrobe cabinet, took off her sash and kimono, let down her hair, combed it straight and smooth, and draped the sheet loosely around her naked body in the manner of a Kannon bodhisattva."*
Struck by the beauty of Mitsuko's body, tears come to Sonoko's eyes. She is beguiled. A frenzy comes over her, and she insists that Mitsuko remove the sheet. When she refuses, Sonoko begins struggling with her, attempting to tear the sheet off of her. After ripping it, she becomes even more frantic.
"...I bit a fold of the sheet, sinking my teeth into it and pulling hard, tearing it all the more....I felt a stab of pity for her, but when I glimpsed her plump white shoulders through the torn sheet I wanted to rip it off violently. Now I was really frantic and started stripping the sheet from her body....Then a smile at finally having had my way--a cool, malicious smile of triumph--came to my lips as I peeled off the remnants of the sheet. At last the sculptural form of a divine maiden was fully revealed, and my exultation changes to astonishment."
After a violent scene of tears and threats, Mitsuko and Sonoko make love, though the discretion that Junichiro uses lends a certain vagueness to their intimacy. Following this, the two women begin an amorous correspondence, in which they send letters to each other written on extraordinarily elaborate stationery. The stationery is, in fact, described in opulent detail by Junichiro, as are the varying styles of both Mitsuko and Sonoko's handwriting. It is a rarity to find an author so fastidious about seemingly insignificant details; yet, the fact Junichiro places importance on such trivial matters as the type of notepaper two of his characters use shows the amount of thought and consideration he puts into his writing. Often, in bi-sexual relationships portrayed in literature, one or both characters feel a certain amount of guilt. However, in Quicksand there seems to be no shame attached to the homosexual affair. "What is so bad about being in love with another woman?" Sonoko asks at one point, "someone of my own sex?" Sonoko begins to find that she longs for Mitsuko when the two are away from each other. She finds her husband boring, his conversation dull, and his company almost unbearable. But just when it seems the pair are destined to be each others' soulmates, a complication arises. Around nine o'clock one evening, Sonoko receives a phone call from Mitsuko. She says she is at a restaurant where she decided to take a bath. While she was bathing, she claims that someone took all her clothes. She implores Sonoko to bring her a kimono. When Sonoko hears a man's voice speaking in the background, Mitsuko tells her that she is with a friend, whose clothes have also been taken. "Could you possibly bring along one of your husband's kimonos, or a suit?" she questions, "It doesn't matter much." In spite of a certain degree of reluctance, Sonoko agrees to comply with her wishes. It is only later that she discovers that the friend who Mitsuko is with is a man whom she is romantically attached to named Watanuki Eijiro. Watanuki comes to see Sonoko, shortly after the bathing incident, and reveals the secret of his relationship with Mitsuko to her. "What this Watanuki told me," Sonoko relates, "was that while Mitsuko was still living in Semba, around the end of last year, he and Mitsuko had fallen in love and had even intended to be married...But gradually Mitsuko had been stirred by my own passion and had fervently returned my love, more than she ever loved him."
Watanuki says he feels "used" by Mitsuko now--that now that Sonoko has entered the picture he no longer has first place in Mitsuko's heart. Mitsuko claims to love both Watanuki and Sonoko, and she insists that she will not marry Watanuki unless he allows her affair with Sonoko to continue. "....married love is one thing and love for another woman is something else," she tells him, "so please realize that I won't give up Sister (her pet name for Sonoko) as long as I live." At one point she confesses to Sonoko, "I'd much rather be worshiped by someone of my own sex. It's natural for a man to look at a woman and think she's beautiful, but when I realize I can have another woman infatuated with me, I ask myself if I'm really that beautiful! It makes me blissfully happy!"
Gradually, as Sonoko begins to see traces of Mitsuko's duplicitous behavior, she starts to have second doubts about the sincerity of Mitsuko's affection for her. Sonoko has already revealed details of the affair with her husband, and, in spite of his attempting to dissuade her from continuing to see Mitsuko, she has remained steadfast in her devotion. However, she is not a fool, and she perceives that this devotion may well be one-sided.
"...I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, and although I said to myself I had to escape, by this time I was helpless. I knew I was being used by Mitsuko and that all the while she was calling me her dear sister she was actually making a fool of me."
As she starts to sense Sonoko's distrust, Mitsuko starts to come up with various ploys to keep her bound to her. She pretends to have a miscarriage, even using fake blood to make the "scene" more authentic. Although Sonoko ascertains that Mitsuko is deceiving her, she nonetheless allows Watanuki to persuade her that Mitsuko must care for her, if she would make such an effort to hold onto her. Watanuki himself is convinced that Mitsuko loves Sonoko. In fact, he tells Sonoko that the only way Mitsuko will marry him is if the relationship between Mitsuko and her continues. He composes a special document and insists that Sonoko sign it. It is a contract that will bind the three of them together in a menage-a-trois that must surely be one of the strangest in all of literature. The details of the contract are as follows. Sonoko and Mitsuko will carry on their lesbian love affair, in which they look upon each other as "sisters." Watanuki will be Mitsuko's husband and Sonoko's "blood brother." And the two of them, Watanuki and Sonoko, will unite to prevent Mitsuko's love from being transferred to a third person. Watanuki also agrees not to impregnate Mitsuko. "Even in the case of a pregnancy existing at the time of marriage," he writes in a "provision" added to the original contract, "all necessary means will be taken to terminate it, if possible, after the ceremony."
Shortly after this, the truth about Watanuki is revealed. It turns out that he is impotent and that his nickname is "the one-hundred-percent-safe playboy." And more revelations come to light. It was Mitsuko who began the lesbian rumors that began at the art school some time before. She confesses that she sent anonymous postcards to everyone implying that she and Sonoko were lovers, although, according to her, she only did this to avoid marrying a man whom her family expected her to be the wife of. Sonoko wants to believe her, but she cannot. However, she is too captivated by her to break things off with her permanently. Although she sees straight through Mitsuko's lies, her beauty continues to enchant her. "If she had implored me with her eyes alone," she says, "I couldn't have resisted their bewitchment."
Eventually, Sonoko's husband falls under Mitsuko's spell, as well. Not long after Mitsuko, following a brief absence from Sonoko, comes to pick up a parasol and pair of sandals she left at the latter's house, a relationship among the three of them develops. At first, they are merely keeping company with one another; but, one day when the three of them are sleeping in the same bed together, Sonoko's husband ends up making love to Mitsuko. Sonoko tries to make excuses for him:
"....I was able to sympathize with him....I knew we were hopelessly incompatible, as I'd told him over and over, and so, just as I was always seeking another love partner, he must have been unconsciously seeking one too. Besides, he didn't know how to fill that lack by drinking and amusing himself with geishas, like other men, and so he was all the more susceptible to being
seduced."
As Mitsuko ingratiates herself into the lives of Sonoko and her husband, she start to wield a strange power over them. The level of manipulation she manages to maintain is almost supernatural. As Sonoko admits:
"In the end, both my husband and I were like empty husks--she wanted us to seek no other happiness, to live only for the light of our sun, Mitsuko, with no further desires or interests in the world."
This is one book that should be read straight through, without taking a mischievous glance at the ending. So, I will certainly not give details of the startling finale now. However, I will say that it seems only befitting that a femme fatale as dangerous and psychopathic as Mitsuko should come to a tragic end. Were she to achieve immortality, it is frightening to think of what chaos she would bring about.
Yet again, Junichiro has created a masterpiece. Quicksand is both simple and complicated, with characters that come to life almost like figures in a dollhouse. They may lack the finely chiseled facets that writers such as Balzac and Flaubert are so noted for imbuing their characters with, but they are nevertheless sculptured with enough precision to draw you into their twisted world.
Quicksand is the last of Junichiro's significant novels to be translated.
The Howard Hibbett translation is based on ChuoKoron-Sha, Inc.'s
edition of Manji, which was published in Japan in 1947. Manji was first
serialized in Kaizo in 1928-1930.
My rating for Quicksand: ****0
~Titania
*a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order
to save others and is worshipped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism
translated by Howard Hibbett
Few writers are capable of penning an erotically charged story with as much searing simplicity as Tanizaki Junichiro. Like The Gourmet Club, Junichiro's collection of six bewitching stories, Quicksand makes a vivid impression in spite of a minimal amount of writing. At 223 pages, the book is slight, yet does not give the reader that innate dissatisfaction that comes from reading a novel that seems incomplete. The "quicksand" of the book's title serves as a visually stimulating metaphor for the vortex that pulls the cast of characters into its whirling midst. This dazzling array of characters include Sonoko, a married woman, her husband, and Watanuki, a young, effeminate man with a sexual inadequacy. But it is the seductive Mitsuko who is at the heart of this pernicious whirlpool, an eighteen-year-old girl who seems to bewitch all with whom she comes into contact. Referred to as "one of the most extraordinary femmes fatales in all of literature," Mitsuko first encounters Sonoko at the Women's Art Academy, where they are both taking classes. Sonoko is immediately struck by Mitsuko's appearance: "....you won't find another such dazzling beauty among all the young girls in Semba," she declares. Though the two women barely know one another, nasty rumors begin to spread around the art school. There is talk that they are having a lesbian affair, in spite of the fact that Sonoko is married. For some reason, these rumors draw the two of them together, and it isn't long before Mitsuko comes to Sonoko's house for a visit. While she is there, Sonoko suggests that she pose for her in the nude, as the models do in her "life" class. Reluctantly, Mitsuko complies, though she insists on being covered with a sheet. Sonoko recalls, "'....she went behind the wardrobe cabinet, took off her sash and kimono, let down her hair, combed it straight and smooth, and draped the sheet loosely around her naked body in the manner of a Kannon bodhisattva."*
Struck by the beauty of Mitsuko's body, tears come to Sonoko's eyes. She is beguiled. A frenzy comes over her, and she insists that Mitsuko remove the sheet. When she refuses, Sonoko begins struggling with her, attempting to tear the sheet off of her. After ripping it, she becomes even more frantic.
"...I bit a fold of the sheet, sinking my teeth into it and pulling hard, tearing it all the more....I felt a stab of pity for her, but when I glimpsed her plump white shoulders through the torn sheet I wanted to rip it off violently. Now I was really frantic and started stripping the sheet from her body....Then a smile at finally having had my way--a cool, malicious smile of triumph--came to my lips as I peeled off the remnants of the sheet. At last the sculptural form of a divine maiden was fully revealed, and my exultation changes to astonishment."
After a violent scene of tears and threats, Mitsuko and Sonoko make love, though the discretion that Junichiro uses lends a certain vagueness to their intimacy. Following this, the two women begin an amorous correspondence, in which they send letters to each other written on extraordinarily elaborate stationery. The stationery is, in fact, described in opulent detail by Junichiro, as are the varying styles of both Mitsuko and Sonoko's handwriting. It is a rarity to find an author so fastidious about seemingly insignificant details; yet, the fact Junichiro places importance on such trivial matters as the type of notepaper two of his characters use shows the amount of thought and consideration he puts into his writing. Often, in bi-sexual relationships portrayed in literature, one or both characters feel a certain amount of guilt. However, in Quicksand there seems to be no shame attached to the homosexual affair. "What is so bad about being in love with another woman?" Sonoko asks at one point, "someone of my own sex?" Sonoko begins to find that she longs for Mitsuko when the two are away from each other. She finds her husband boring, his conversation dull, and his company almost unbearable. But just when it seems the pair are destined to be each others' soulmates, a complication arises. Around nine o'clock one evening, Sonoko receives a phone call from Mitsuko. She says she is at a restaurant where she decided to take a bath. While she was bathing, she claims that someone took all her clothes. She implores Sonoko to bring her a kimono. When Sonoko hears a man's voice speaking in the background, Mitsuko tells her that she is with a friend, whose clothes have also been taken. "Could you possibly bring along one of your husband's kimonos, or a suit?" she questions, "It doesn't matter much." In spite of a certain degree of reluctance, Sonoko agrees to comply with her wishes. It is only later that she discovers that the friend who Mitsuko is with is a man whom she is romantically attached to named Watanuki Eijiro. Watanuki comes to see Sonoko, shortly after the bathing incident, and reveals the secret of his relationship with Mitsuko to her. "What this Watanuki told me," Sonoko relates, "was that while Mitsuko was still living in Semba, around the end of last year, he and Mitsuko had fallen in love and had even intended to be married...But gradually Mitsuko had been stirred by my own passion and had fervently returned my love, more than she ever loved him."
Watanuki says he feels "used" by Mitsuko now--that now that Sonoko has entered the picture he no longer has first place in Mitsuko's heart. Mitsuko claims to love both Watanuki and Sonoko, and she insists that she will not marry Watanuki unless he allows her affair with Sonoko to continue. "....married love is one thing and love for another woman is something else," she tells him, "so please realize that I won't give up Sister (her pet name for Sonoko) as long as I live." At one point she confesses to Sonoko, "I'd much rather be worshiped by someone of my own sex. It's natural for a man to look at a woman and think she's beautiful, but when I realize I can have another woman infatuated with me, I ask myself if I'm really that beautiful! It makes me blissfully happy!"
Gradually, as Sonoko begins to see traces of Mitsuko's duplicitous behavior, she starts to have second doubts about the sincerity of Mitsuko's affection for her. Sonoko has already revealed details of the affair with her husband, and, in spite of his attempting to dissuade her from continuing to see Mitsuko, she has remained steadfast in her devotion. However, she is not a fool, and she perceives that this devotion may well be one-sided.
"...I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand, and although I said to myself I had to escape, by this time I was helpless. I knew I was being used by Mitsuko and that all the while she was calling me her dear sister she was actually making a fool of me."
As she starts to sense Sonoko's distrust, Mitsuko starts to come up with various ploys to keep her bound to her. She pretends to have a miscarriage, even using fake blood to make the "scene" more authentic. Although Sonoko ascertains that Mitsuko is deceiving her, she nonetheless allows Watanuki to persuade her that Mitsuko must care for her, if she would make such an effort to hold onto her. Watanuki himself is convinced that Mitsuko loves Sonoko. In fact, he tells Sonoko that the only way Mitsuko will marry him is if the relationship between Mitsuko and her continues. He composes a special document and insists that Sonoko sign it. It is a contract that will bind the three of them together in a menage-a-trois that must surely be one of the strangest in all of literature. The details of the contract are as follows. Sonoko and Mitsuko will carry on their lesbian love affair, in which they look upon each other as "sisters." Watanuki will be Mitsuko's husband and Sonoko's "blood brother." And the two of them, Watanuki and Sonoko, will unite to prevent Mitsuko's love from being transferred to a third person. Watanuki also agrees not to impregnate Mitsuko. "Even in the case of a pregnancy existing at the time of marriage," he writes in a "provision" added to the original contract, "all necessary means will be taken to terminate it, if possible, after the ceremony."
Shortly after this, the truth about Watanuki is revealed. It turns out that he is impotent and that his nickname is "the one-hundred-percent-safe playboy." And more revelations come to light. It was Mitsuko who began the lesbian rumors that began at the art school some time before. She confesses that she sent anonymous postcards to everyone implying that she and Sonoko were lovers, although, according to her, she only did this to avoid marrying a man whom her family expected her to be the wife of. Sonoko wants to believe her, but she cannot. However, she is too captivated by her to break things off with her permanently. Although she sees straight through Mitsuko's lies, her beauty continues to enchant her. "If she had implored me with her eyes alone," she says, "I couldn't have resisted their bewitchment."
Eventually, Sonoko's husband falls under Mitsuko's spell, as well. Not long after Mitsuko, following a brief absence from Sonoko, comes to pick up a parasol and pair of sandals she left at the latter's house, a relationship among the three of them develops. At first, they are merely keeping company with one another; but, one day when the three of them are sleeping in the same bed together, Sonoko's husband ends up making love to Mitsuko. Sonoko tries to make excuses for him:
"....I was able to sympathize with him....I knew we were hopelessly incompatible, as I'd told him over and over, and so, just as I was always seeking another love partner, he must have been unconsciously seeking one too. Besides, he didn't know how to fill that lack by drinking and amusing himself with geishas, like other men, and so he was all the more susceptible to being
seduced."
As Mitsuko ingratiates herself into the lives of Sonoko and her husband, she start to wield a strange power over them. The level of manipulation she manages to maintain is almost supernatural. As Sonoko admits:
"In the end, both my husband and I were like empty husks--she wanted us to seek no other happiness, to live only for the light of our sun, Mitsuko, with no further desires or interests in the world."
This is one book that should be read straight through, without taking a mischievous glance at the ending. So, I will certainly not give details of the startling finale now. However, I will say that it seems only befitting that a femme fatale as dangerous and psychopathic as Mitsuko should come to a tragic end. Were she to achieve immortality, it is frightening to think of what chaos she would bring about.
Yet again, Junichiro has created a masterpiece. Quicksand is both simple and complicated, with characters that come to life almost like figures in a dollhouse. They may lack the finely chiseled facets that writers such as Balzac and Flaubert are so noted for imbuing their characters with, but they are nevertheless sculptured with enough precision to draw you into their twisted world.
Quicksand is the last of Junichiro's significant novels to be translated.
The Howard Hibbett translation is based on ChuoKoron-Sha, Inc.'s
edition of Manji, which was published in Japan in 1947. Manji was first
serialized in Kaizo in 1928-1930.
My rating for Quicksand: ****0
~Titania
*a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order
to save others and is worshipped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism
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