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193 One day around 1930, the prominent poet Hagiwara Sakutarō came to Ranpo’s apartment, which at that time was near Waseda University in Tokyo, to ask him about “secret clubs for massage” (massāji no himitsu kurabu).1 He had also brought the young, aspiring writer Inagaki Taruho with him, sparking a friendship that would continue off and on for years. In his essays, Ranpo recalls going a few times to visit Taruho’s “mysterious” home, which struck him as being “like a haunted house.” Their conversations ranged across many subjects, from “the tin- and silver-plated devices of astronomy” to the appeal of the Port Arthur Naval Battle Hall, a show in Nagoya they had both visited and that displayed large illuminated panoramas of the famous naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War. Perhaps most important of all, at least for the current discussion, were the conversations they had about the beauty of “Greek bishōnen” and other manifestations of love between men.2 Over the years, this was a subject the two would return to multiple times. In 1948, a few years after the war ended and the publishing industry had started to recover, Ranpo received an invitation to do a round-table discussion in a small magazine called Kuiin (Queen), financed by a whiskey company . Ranpo responded he would do it only if Taruho could be his partner. The publisher treated them to a meal in a restaurant recently constructed in what used to be a burned-out field, and for a few hours, the two avoided the realities of occupied Japan by engaging in a long conversation about love and eroticism between men.3 In this conversation, Ranpo talks mainly about the 5 Uninscribing the Adolescent Body Aesthetic Resistance in Taruho’s Writing 194 Uninscribing the Adolescent Body large number of titles he had uncovered during his bibliographic searches during the 1930s—especially Greek, European, and American works—and describes the highlights of a number of texts.4 The magazine was printed on the poor quality paper common in the immediate aftermath of the war; therefore, it was hard to read; shortly afterward, the magazine went out of print, and the essay fell into oblivion. Both Ranpo and Taruho felt this to be a shame, and so in 1951, Taruho summarized the conversation for the Nagoya-based literary journal Sakka (Authors) and published it under the title “E-shi to no isseki: Dōseiai no risō to genjitsu o megutte” (One night with Mr. E: On the ideals and reality of same-sex love). Taruho planned to writeafollow-upessay,drawingonRanpo’sprewaressaysaboutlovebetween men, but this plan never materialized.5 As mentioned in the previous chapter , Taruho also planned to create an anthology of world writings about love and eroticism between men and asked Ranpo for some Japanese renditions of Greek poems. Taruho intended to call the anthology Momoiro no hankachi (Peach-colored handkerchief) in reference to his own 1924 story about a boy who falls in love with a schoolmate with a lacy handkerchief of this color, but when the anthology finally did materialize many years later, it included only Taruho’s own writing from the 1920s onward, and Ranpo’s contributions were not included. In 1921, a few years before starting to write about boyish love, Taruho had come to Tokyo from his home near Kobe at the encouragement of the novelist Satō Haruo, who had read drafts of several of Taruho’s earliest stories and recognized in Taruho an astoundingly original voice. Once in Tokyo, Taruho not only wrote but tried his hand in the art world as well, submitting some of his own work to the Dai-ni-kai Mirai-ha Bijutsu Kyōkai-ten (Second Futurist Art Exhibition) held in Ueno Park in late 1921. Of the two paintings he entered, one entitled Tsuki no sanbun-shi (Prose poem about the moon) was selected to appear alongside the works of other artists ranging from the prominent Russian futurist David Burliuk (1882–1967) to the young, rising artists Ogata Kamenosuke (1900–1942) and Hirato Renkichi (1893–1922).6 Just a couple of years later, in 1923, Taruho published his first and perhaps most famous work, the collection of contes Issen ichi-byō monogatari (One Thousand and One-Second Stories).7 Borrowing inspiration for its name from the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Taruho’s stories are tales for a fast-paced age—little snippets of prose rarely requiring more than a few...

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