The Key (Vintage Blue) - Tapa blanda

'This year I intend to begin writing freely about a topic which, in the past, I have hesitated to mention even here. I have always avoided commenting on my sexual relations with Ikuko, for fear that she might surreptitiously read my diary and be offended-'So begins The Key - a forthright and moving tale of a middle-aged man deeply in love with his younger wife. In spite of that love, they have grown physically apart, each unsure of the other's thoughts and desires-until the day Ikuko discovers the key to her husband's diary with its desperate hints of jealousy and voyeurism. The key, she realises, to his very soul-

Junichiro Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where his family owned a printing establishment. He studied Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University, and his first published work, a one-act play, appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles, Arrowroot, Ashikari, A Portrait of Shunkin, The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, The Makioka Sisters, Captain Shigemoto's Mother, The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man. He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949. In 1964 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese to receive this honour. Tanizaki died in 1965.