Quicksand [Hardcover]

Junichiro Tanizaki (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 1994

A young, well-born Osaka widow, Sonoko Kakiuchi, describes her husband's humiliation and the influence of a beautiful and totally young art student on their lives in a novel set in the 1920s.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1947, this fine, startling novel by the renowned Japanese writer (1886-1965) appears for the first time in English. Sonoko Kakiuchi, the bored and willful upper-class wife of an Osaka lawyer, recounts the story of her desperate love in the year 1927 for a willowy young woman named Mitsuko. When Sonoko discovers the presence in Mitsuko's life of a man, the elusive Watanuki, she is surprised by enormous feelings of jealousy and soon finds herself "sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand" of the couple's lies. But Sonoko is no saint: in an attempt to gain time and attract sympathy she fakes a suicide attempt that draws her husband into the affair. The romantic quadrangle lurches to a tragic, quintessentially Japanese conclusion. Tanizaki's prose, seamlessly translated by Hibbett, is as icy and lovely as a winter morning. It's also interesting to note how the author propels the plot and develops characters through their use of pharmaceuticals, a device he later employed with great effect in his masterpiece, The Makioka Sisters . This novel will be published simultaneously with two Tanizaki novellas also previously untranslated (see below).
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Good news for Tanizaki fans: the master Japanese novelist, author of The Makioka Sisters and Some Prefer Nettles (both currently available from Perigee: Putnam. 1981) , is ably represented by two new translations. The two novellas, written in 1932 and 1949-50, explore Tanizaki's recurrent theme of obsessive love. Both are narrated in flashbacks by sons, as one retells with mounting suspense his father's unusual arrangement in the name of love and the other confronts issues of trickery and honor that force a man to give up what he treasures most, his wife. Both are suffused with the atmosphere and traditions of ancient Japan yet depict a decadent society that seems very modern. Tanizaki's last major novel, Quicksand, which is particularly difficult to translate, takes place in 1920s Osaka and describes love--heterosexual, lesbian, adulterous, conjugal--in its multifarious convolutions of impotence and obsession, frankness and shame, happiness and tragedy. The four main characters indulge in the games and schemes of the idle rich obsessively directed by one of them: the beautiful and cruel, yet loving and lovable, Mitsuko. Although not equal to his two finest novels, these long-overdue publications are highly recommended for admirers of Tanizaki's work.
- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First edition. edition (January 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039458547X
• ISBN-13: 978-0394585475
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,550,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very absorbing novel!, December 13, 2001

By 

Robert Ortiz (The Southwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicksand (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful work of literary fiction and in my opinion, one of Junichiro Tanizaki's best works. Here he weaves love, lust, deceit, extortion and human suffering into a compelling and gripping novel. The story centers around Mrs. Sonoko Kakiuchi a woman who is bored with her husband and has recently started taking courses at an art school. She eventually meets a beautiful student named Mitsuko and the two carry on an affair. Everything seems fine at first but Mitsuko soon starts acting strange and before Mrs. Kakiuchi knows it, she is thrust into a strange, surreal world filled with deception, suspicion, botched abortions, fake pregnancies, blood oaths and secret rendezvous. This is a fantastic book that will pull you right into the story. It almost makes one feel like they're a silent accomplice to all of secret goings-on while at the same time making them thankful that they're not involved at all. The story becomes more and more engrossing with each chapter. When a twisted love triangle and suicide pact are introduced, the situation takes a sinister turn until the entire affair ends in tragedy. The story has an interesting melodramatic, film-noir like quality that adds to the atmosphere. A highly recommended novel! Another recommendation is "The Key" also written by Junichiro Tanizaki.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insight into social warfare, December 14, 1999

By 

Michael E. Piston (Mercer Island, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicksand (Paperback)

I did not find this book as nearly emotionally involving as the book jacket suggested it would be - like other Tanizaki books I've read, the author describes very emotionally disruptive situations with intentionally cool detachment. What I found most interesting however was the curious social warfare depicted in the book, as each of the books characters try to best each other through more and more agressive lying and blackmail. One pauses to wonder - is this an accurate description of Japan in the 1920s - Japan today - Asia today - the entire world of human relations - or simply a product of Tanizaki's morbid imagination - no more (or less) an accurate description of his time and place than Kafka's of post World War I Prague. I certainly don't agree that Mitsuko is the best written femme fatale in literature, but some kind of award should be given to her first male lover for most agressively social warrior male I've seen depicted so far. If you want to read an intricate serious soap opera in a Japanese pre-War context, this is your book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oh, what a tangled web..., August 6, 2006

By 

David Bonesteel (Fresno, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicksand (Paperback)

Sonoko, a bored housewife in 1920s Osaka and the first-person narrator of this story, has a passionate affair with the beautiful Mitsuko. At first, this seems like a fairly straightforward account of forbidden passion, but then we discover the existence of Mitsuko's male lover, Watanuki. At this point, the figure of Mitsuko becomes increasingly enigmatic as the reader attempts to discern which of her actions are motivated by passion and which are calculated to keep herself enshrined as an object of desire at the center of a convoluted human drama. The schemes and manipulations become ever more outrageous until, by the end, we are forced to conclude that "Quicksand" is a very dark comedy, despite author Junichiro Tanizaki's cold, controlled style. The suspicions that the narrator reveals on the very last page of the novel shows just how tenuous her grip on reality has become.