Junichiro Tanizaki's "Secret" Book Review: A Look at the Demons - A Cursed Script and a Teenager's Fears

Tanizaki Junichiro's "Secret" is a collection of short stories newly translated and published by Xinyu Publishing House in 2020. I don’t know if it’s because of the upsurge of reasoning literature, so in recent years, as long as the books of many writers are related to crime, it is easy to be associated with the word “reasoning” in publicity. I was surprised when I was looking at the cover. I didn't expect Tanizaki to write a "speculation novel", and I read it excitedly.

Surprisingly, although it is called "The Secret", I can't think of the fact that it is not the novel "Secret" in the book, but the other two of the seven novels: "The Cursed Script". and "A Teenager's Fear". The "Secrets" article is good, though, with a compelling plot and a surprising, meaningful ending. But in comparison, the relationship and insight between the people and people it describes are still less profound and subtle than these two articles.

These two works, from a certain angle, are like the cover of the book, which makes people feel scary. But the horror is so heart-wrenching. As readers read it, it will be clear that Tanizaki is not actually trying to scare us at all. His words and plot are different from the ferocious ghosts or bloody corpses in ghost movies, horror movies, not only not scary but also beautiful and attractive. As we go deeper into the plot, we won't see anything scary, but we will slowly feel that the plot and characters in the story are slowly being tightened by what they are trying to hide, in a way that is not easy to detect. A terrifying atmosphere pervaded his body. At this time, readers may realize that what is really scary is not what people want to hide, but the superficial relationship between people that they want to hide but cannot completely pretend, and they tremble the most. In this, fear is not like a sudden shock, but a constant tension, like a rubber band that is constantly stretched at both ends, and we can't predict when it will be the moment of breaking.

This unpredictable, fractured moment, in "The Cursed Script", refers to the one where the protagonist Sasaki Hongka decides to follow the script he wrote - the plot of "Good and Evil" - to kill his wife Tamiko. moment. In "The Fear of a Teenager", it is the imaginary moment when the protagonist Yoshio can finally get rid of the mystery of the death of his brother and sister-in-law and reach a reconciliation with his eldest brother.

These two moments, to be precise, are not described in the book. Because we will see, for the protagonist, the reason why this moment can make them fall into an irresistible fascination and an inescapable entanglement. It is precisely because this moment is difficult to reach in reality, because it is difficult for them to confess their thoughts. But in the state of wanting to be freed in their hearts, they had to imagine this moment all the time. This moment is like an inner demon, parasitic on them in the form of imagination, constantly eroding their hearts.

In addition to the horror, perhaps it is more correct to say that this way of description gives the two works a continuous and uninterrupted suspense effect. Readers will keep struggling while watching, and keep admiring Tanizaki's writing, but keep wondering, curious and even afraid of the final outcome of the novel.

For me, "The Cursed Script" is an amazing work. Because what makes it suspenseful is not the crime of murder, but the ambiguous relationship between the hero's murder psychology, hatred, and his fictional protagonist in the script.

The protagonist Sasaki Honghua and his wife Yuzi have been married for a period of time. Although Yuzi is beautiful, diligent and thrifty, and loves Sasaki deeply, he always does not resist what he says, obeys his opinions, and then takes care of his daily life meticulously. However, perhaps it is precisely because Tamiko is such a standard and perfect wife that Sasaki feels a deepening but uncomplainable boredom and boredom towards his wife. At the same time, it also made him feel that the so-called marriage turned out to be such a boring life. So, he began to want to break off the engagement with his wife. However, he couldn't find any good reason because Tamago was such a perfect wife. Impeccable in every way. So he started to come back late, always picking on Yuzi's faults, and looking for a mistress. She wants to make Tamago hate herself, and there is a possibility of breaking the engagement. However, not only did Tamiko not hate herself, she also cared more for herself, crying her love for Sasaki by her husband's pillow every night. And no matter how late Sasaki came home, Yuko, who stayed on the bed and refused to sleep, would always wait until he came home, curled up, hugged Sasaki tightly, and complained about her loneliness and sorrow all day, to reflect her affection for Sasaki Love.

"Please be gentle with me at least on the surface! As your wife, I will do my best to do my part. At least admit my efforts, or pretend to coax me. Rather than face the pain of reality, I I want to live a little more happily in a complete lie... I hope you will continue to deceive me, even if everything is fake, I will consider myself a happy woman!"

Sasaki listened to these words, turned his head to the other side, and did not dare to face Tamiko on the bed. Not only did he not get angry right away, he even felt extremely remorse for himself and shed a few tears. But afterward he was very annoyed with himself. How can I do that! Didn't it say that there is no longer love between us! ?

He found himself increasingly unable to withstand the moral condemnation behind his wife's pleas. It's even frustrating to find out that he actually still loves her. But now he very much does not want to get along with her, and this anxiety cannot be eliminated even if separated. So he decided to break this bondage from now on: he had the intention to kill.

Tanizaki, who is the narrator, made some explanations here, which is very interesting. He believes that the reason why Sasaki wants to leave his wife is not because he doesn't love her, but precisely because he loves her too much and wants to escape the bondage of "love". From Tanizaki's point of view, many lovers don't realize that their happy love is actually a happy bondage, the perfect trap, and... the sweetest lie to form a close relationship with each other. It's just that we usually don't use the word "bond", but the so-called "bond", so this kind of "bond" is more romantic.

What is even more interesting is that Sasaki, who decided to kill his wife, did not immediately draw up an execution plan. Instead, he started writing a play -- Good and Evil. In this drama, a man who is also a dramatist like Sasaki intends to kill his wife. The dramatist also did not intend to draw up a plan immediately, but chose to write a play - "Good and Evil", which also has a dramatist who plans to kill his wife...and so on.

In the play, the man and his wife take a walk to the edge of a mountain and use their tiredness as an excuse to sit there and rest together. We can all guess that the man's real intention was to push his wife off a cliff and pretend it was an accident when she wasn't looking. Instead of doing this first, however, the man in the story takes out his own manuscript and says to read a newly written play to his wife. In the process of chanting, on the one hand, the man kept hinting that the relationship between the dramatist and his wife in his wife's text was very similar to the relationship between them. Not only are they similar in clothes and appearance, but even their conversations and reactions are very similar. And the one in the text is like his own dramatist, who is planning to kill his wife. The place to start is the cliff where they are walking now. However, when the wife is really frightened by the content of the script, thinking that the husband is going to push him off the cliff here, the husband will suddenly put away the evil appearance he pretended to be, saying that he just read out the content of the script, frightened her. The wife then calmed down again, saying that her husband's joke was really bad, and tried to laugh again. But the husband will immediately read a new line and ask his wife with a smile: Yes, but are you really not afraid that this joke will come true? I came to watch my wife's terrified face again, and then changed her words: Oh ~ I just read the lines in it ~ not what "I" said. After this non-stop show, the ending of the script finally came: the man pushed his wife off the cliff in a state of panic.

Needless to say, the man in the play is the symbol of Sasaki. Perhaps the most perverted thing in this is that before writing the script, Sasaki always tried to stay away from his wife, and contact as little as possible. But he discovered unexpectedly that when he started writing the play, like the man in the play, he called his wife to do some errands in the study from time to time, trying to get his wife to see the play again and again. plot and content.

Sasaki seems to be trying to turn the things that he has been repressed and unable to express in his heart into a puzzle of his own through writing, seducing people to read and unravel what he has always wanted to say to others but can't say. And letting the wife know this "secret" is even more important than killing her.

As we said at the beginning, the point is actually not how Sasaki actually killed his wife according to the script he wrote, but how he kept writing and thinking about how he killed him and loved him object of hate. In this constant imagining process, he must let the object of his love and hate, more or less have a sense of participation, to realize that he seems to have accidentally stepped into the script he planned. And then there is a floating fear. On the one hand, it makes one's imagination not just fantasy; on the other hand, it increases the stimulation of murder and crime.

The author once mentioned in the article discussing the three books "Book Building Hanging Hall", "Library Living" and "My Mystery" that sometimes I think about myself and the people I "see" in reading. When there is any relationship between them, you will find that the relationship may not be simple. It's a bit similar here, but it's not reading. Rather, it can be a little scary to think about how you relate to your own, fictional characters. Because there is often a reciprocal revealing relationship between myself and the characters I create. And what we reveal is often the face we least dare show to others.

And Sasaki's behavior is terrifying because he seems to be deliberately asking us: What do you think I have to do with a certain character in this script? (with a Thaad-like smile)

In turn, he would also ask: Do you think you have nothing to do with this script or novel? (with that weird smile again)

The curse of the cursed screenplay is that the author tries to make readers uneasy by showing off his relationship with the characters in the way of writing, breaking the line between fiction and the real world. From this point of view, Tanizaki's "The Cursed Script" is chilling, and some fragments are more reminiscent of Edogawa Ranpo's "The Human Chair" .

Tanizaki's other novel "The Fear of a Teenager" also has this phenomenon, but in a different direction. Due to the space, let the author talk about the "secret" in it next time~

(The article is simultaneously published on the square grid blog platform: the laboratory of literature )