Childhood Years: A Memoir - Tapa dura

Using a traditional, informal essay style, Tanizaki retrieves his childhood years in roughly chronological order and through deeply affecting character sketches, hilarious anecdotes and images of sensuous beauty, the texture of life in the Shitamachi area of Tokyo at the end of the 19th century. The main themes of his fiction are echoed in his memoir: the dominant mother figure, cruel destructive women, geisha girls, and the male actors who play female characters in the Kabuki theatre - one of Tanizaki's major interests. Some of his novels available in English include "The Makioka Sisters", "Naomi", "Some Prefer Nettles" and "The Key".