Fetishism, Allegory, and Irony in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Historical Novella Bushūkō hiwa

This article analyzes Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s idiosyncratic historical novella from the 1930s, Bushūkō hiwa. Structured around the masochistic decapitation fantasy of a fictional sixteenth-century warlord, the work conspicuously incorporates fetishistic elements into the sexual history of its protagonist. By employing the logic of the fetish, which enables a subject to embrace simultaneously two contradictory beliefs, the tale affirms and deconstructs a multitude of binary oppositions, including past versus present, reading versus writing, first person versus third person, figurative versus literal, and sadist versus masochist. I also consider the narrative from a formalistic perspective and argue that the linkage of two central rhetorical devices in the narrative, allegory and irony, parallel the logic of the fetish. The novella’s allegorical framework suggests the text is a fetishistic displacement in response to the era’s imperial terror, and the novella’s ironic structure simultaneously undermines any authoritative reading.

䷃锣:

本稿では、谷崎潤一郎『武州公秘話』に見られるフェティシズムの意義を形式主義的観点、とりわけ、寓意的アイロニーとの関わりに注視しながら考察する。二元的表象を可能にしたこのフェティシズムは、執筆当時の帝国主義的脅威に取って代わるものであった。