Progress and Love Marriage: Rereading Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Chijin no ai

This article examines Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's Chijin no ai (A fool's love, 1924–25) and its conversation with the prominent cultural discourses of its time. I focus particularly on the ideas presented by writers such as Hiratsuka Raichō and Kuriyagawa Hakuson regarding "love marriage" (ren'ai kekkon), a practice idealized as both a marker for an advanced nation and a site enabling individuals to "progress" and heighten their characters (jinkaku). The novel parodically rewrites and actively reexamines these discourses in relation to contemporary values such as self-cultivation (shūyō) and cultural knowledge (kyōkō), asking what "progress" means within the rapidly changing social landscape of the 1920s.