Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 24 July 1886 – 30 July 1965) was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern
Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative. (wikipedia)
"This story is called “ The Tattooer ”(1910)
and can be summarized as follows.
Seikichi, a famous tattooer, enjoys giving pain while creating his works of art on human flesh. For years he longs to find a beautiful woman upon whom he can work his masterpiece. Then one day he recognizes his desired beauty by her foot, which is protruding from a litter as it passes by. A half-year later the girl appears at his door
on an errand. Seikichi tells her of his search and shows her two pictures, one called “ The Victim.” In both pictures a beautiful woman is looking upon the man or men she has subjected to torture and death. Seikichi tells the teenaged girl that such a woman is inside her; a shudder of recognition passes through the girl. The tattooer bids her to stay so that he can make her a true beauty, an unattainable ideal beauty. He drugs the girl and works all night to tattoo a huge sprawling black-
widow spider on her back. The girl wakes, bathes to bring out the colors, and returns to the artist as a cruel woman, conscious of her beauty and her power over men; she tells Seikichi that he is her first victim. The story ends with the girl showing her tattoo to the artist:
"Just then her respendidly tattooed back caught a ray of sunlight and the spider was wreathed in flames" (Tanizaki 1967: 169). The tattooist, by his art, has been able to bring out the true nature of the girl. Before receiving the tattoo she had only vague perceptions
and fears about herself, but afterwards she is strong in her beauty. The story shows Tanizaki’s themes of pleasure and pain, of beauty and cruel strength. It also shows his notion of the power of art. According to Makoto Ueda, “ In Tanizaki’s view, then, a work of art
presents truths that, because they are nidden under the surface of ordinary life, can be grasped only by the creative imagination ’’ (Ueda 1976: 57)."
