Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's Dream of China

: “Birōdo no yume"

Abstract

　“Birõdo no yume" (Dreams of Velvet, 1919) is one of Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's works that is set in China. The story was written after Tanizaki came back from a trip to China in 1918. Previous research has argued that the work is set not in actual China, but in Tanizaki's fantasy world. However, the story is not pure fantasy; the setting is modeled on the country villa “Luo Yuan" and main residence “Hardoon Garden," both built by Silas Aaron Hardoon, a British real estate mogul of Jewish descent, who was active in Shanghai at that time. The story's heroine, the concubine of Wen Xiuqing, is thought to be modeled on Luo Lirui, who was Hardoon's Chinese wife. Hardoon also had many years of experience in the opium trade.

　This paper suggests that Tanizaki disguised his desires under the pretense of interest in Hardoon's private garden, and compares his story with other literary works about opium addiction, such as Thomas De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), Charles Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises (1860), and Satō Haruo's “Shimon" (Fingerprint, 1918). The paper highlights the actual conditions of the artificial garden that Tanizaki tried to create in “Birōdo no yume" and the dreams that he projected on China.

　Furthermore, at the same time this work was being serialized, Tanizaki was translating Théophile Gautier's work “Clarimonde" (1836) with Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. By examining the influence of “Clarimonde" on “Birōdo no yume," this essay also reveals Tanizaki's artistic interests at the time the story was written.