Evan's Reviews > Naomi

Joji is a 28-year-old salaryman, a former country gentleman now in Tokyo, who becomes smitten with a 15-year-old "Eurasian"-looking cafe waitress, Naomi, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks whose neglectful parents seem to be involved in shady dealings. Her "western" features draw him. As it happens -- and like a lot of their contemporaries in 1920s urban Japan -- the two find themselves under the spell of western cultural influences; the clothes, the movies, the products and the mores and habits, including freer sexual expression and expanded possibilities for women. Joji, with the blase consent of Naomi and her family, marries Naomi and takes charge for her care and upbringing and the two set up a household that is chaste (though not without sexual tension) in which the two more or less "play house" rather than assume the traditional Japanese roles expected of husband and wife. There seems to be an emphasis on western-style conspicuous consumption, and the more Joji spoils Naomi with clothes and such the more difficult she becomes.
I won't spoil the story by telling you what happens to Joji and Naomi other than to say that Naomi becomes a bit of a nightmare, and Joji a bit of a wimp whose strong hand becomes weaker as the story progresses. There are elements of other books in this story, Leopold Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, Pierre Louys' The Woman and the Puppet, the movie The Blue Angel, etc., at least in terms of Joji's "downfall" as a pussy-whipped male. Joji ends up creating the monster that he wants, in the "be careful what you wish for" vein.
The book is written in fairly simple terms, and I wouldn't exactly agree with Booklists's testimonial on the back of the Vintage edition that the book is "in a class with Lady Chatterley's Lover and Lolita", certainly not in terms of literary skill, but the comparison to Lolita is sometimes apt in spots. I never was sure if Joji and Naomi ever actually had sex. It's kept pretty vague. I would have liked that to have been stated a little more directly.
The book kept my attention the whole way, though, and its insights into the changing culture of Japan were fascinating to me. I loved the description of Joji's nervousness and the environs of the dance studio as he approached his first dance lesson with Naomi.
Overall I found this odd romance and cautionary tale very satisfying, though I liked Tanizaki's more sexually explicit and complex story of kink and marital misunderstandings, The Key, far more. This novel is pretty commendable for a first effort.