Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/121

Rh for example, why Dr. Kushida is carefully described as being abrupt and short-tempered. Perhaps, we think, there will be a future moment at which the doctor’s abruptness will be the focal point of a great scene, but in so supposing we are mistaken. Tanizaki says that the doctor is abrupt because he is abrupt. When people in other novels fall ill, they are likely to die, or at least to reach the very brink of death, but in The Thin Snow people who are taken ill usually get better after a few days in bed. The effect of all this realism at the end of 1,400 pages is quite overpowering. We feel exactly as if we have lived with the family, and we are certain that we should instantly recognize any of its members if we met them again. I do not mean that we have any deep insights into the characters of the personages of the novel. Tanizaki does not claim any more knowledge of what they are really thinking than we should have had if we were living in the same house. If they smile on a sad occasion, we can infer that they do not mean it, but Tanizaki never informs us that the heroine’s heart was really breaking. In fact, we feel more strongly in this work than any other that there may be an emotional blank behind the Japanese. The author keeps nothing from us—not the brand of the toothpaste they use, nor the frequency with which they go to the lavatory—but when the lover of the fourth sister dies, a man for whom she was prepared to sacrifice everything, we have not the slightest indication of what she felt. Perhaps, we may end up by thinking, she did not feel anything at all.

The manner of The Thin Snow may not appeal to many Western readers, but we cannot fail to be impressed by the grand lines along which Tanizaki has conceived his story. It may be that Japanese literature, as exemplified by this novel, is entering a new period—one in which European influences have finally been absorbed into the native traditions, and techniques