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Paper short abstract

This presentation sheds light on the unstudied synergies between sexuality and aesthetics in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s (1886–1965) literary fiction. It argues that, in his writings, art is identical to masochistic and sadistic erotic pleasure, of which the core is male-male sexual pleasure.

Paper long abstract

This presentation seeks to bring to light the unstudied synergies between art, perversion, and male-male sexuality in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s (1886–1965) literary fiction as an entryway to a larger project investigating the intersections of aesthetics and sexuality in modern Japanese literature. I primarily focus on “Kin to gin” (“Gold and Silver,” 1918) and “Aozuka-shi no hanashi” (“Mr. Aozuka’s Story,” 1926), two early stories by Tanizaki about artist protagonists that, although little-discussed, exemplarily bring to focus these synergies and thus allow for a new understanding of his oeuvre more broadly. Whereas previous scholarship has largely discussed Tanizaki’s well-known writing of perversion in terms of male-female desire, I argue that, in his fictions, art is identical to masochistic and sadistic erotic pleasure, of which the core is male-male sexual pleasure. I start by examining Tanizaki’s homosocial plots where art as queer perversion alienates the artist from the community of his peers, highlighting what Eve Sedgwick has described as the traumatic rupture in the male homosocial continuum—the exclusion of male-male sexuality from homosociality. Tanizaki’s narratives dramatize this exclusion through pleasureless interactions between men defined by masochistic suffering and sadistic violence, what I call sadomasochistic homosociality. Sadomasochism here is not a sexual practice, but a social and psychological dynamic. As I demonstrate next, however, art has the potential to transform this toxic homosociality into masochistic and sadistic sexual pleasure. In what I describe as Tanizaki’s masochistic and sadistic aesthetic, respectively, art and sexuality are indistinguishable. Art is both an aesthetic and a sexual practice, and aesthetic pleasure is sexual pleasure. Art thus allows the male artist to experience the erotic pleasure that was absent from his toxic homosociality. At the same time, art homosocially empowers him through its prestige and value, even if this empowerment remains imaginary. Tanizaki’s fictions thus showcase how, by encompassing queer pleasures and homosocial empowerment, art—perhaps more than any other cultural practice—could restore the homosocial continuum and, at least vicariously, redress the trauma of modern male sexuality.