Paper short abstract:

Modernism in Japan is characterised by the discontinuation from the past. Junichirō Tanizaki was the writer who reconstructed the lost history in his novella Yoshino-kuzu. His imagination is associated with Walter Benjamin's flâneur who appropriates public history for re-narrating private history.

Paper long abstract:

As modernism is best characterised by the keen sense of discontinuation from the past, so modernist novels tend to emphasise the sense of loss. Junichirō Tanizaki was a novelist who turned this sense of loss into a creative springboard for his novella, Yoshino-kuzu (1931). The story begins with the narrator's research trip to Yoshino for a new historical novel. However, the narrator's interest in history gradually deviates into the personal history of his fellow traveller, Tsumura, who, it turns out, has offerd to accompany the narrator to chase after the shadow of his lost mother.

In a sense, Yoshino-kuzu is Tanizaki's sentimental journey - in the fashion of Laurence Sterne - into the lost past. Tanizaki mourned the loss of his hometown after the major earthquake that hit Tokyo in 1923. As if to compensate for the devastation, the novelist turns to historical past in Yoshino, which boasts of many historical anecdotes and legends, only to find that all the relics it offers are of dubious authenticity. Curiously, though, this inauthenticity that shrouds the past inspires Tanizaki to change his path from a historical novel to the tale of Tsumura's personal search for his lost mother. While supposedly mediaeval relics can only indicate discontinuity, Tanizaki's association of ideas that is evoked from the scenery, the naïveté of the locals and the old tales he remembers leads to a strong sense of redemption. My presentation will argue that this modernist creative process can be redefined as Walter Benjamin's flâneur imagination which is eager to project private vision upon the "public" history.