Ashikari has been read as a story of "women worship" based on Tanizaki Jun-ichiro's love relation with Nezu Matsuko and its consequences. It has also been understood in the context of "longing for mother," together with such stories as Yoshinokuzu, Sho sho Shigemoto no Haha, and The Yume no Ukihashi. In addition, the story has been commended for its techniques of evoking a dream world through the comparison with Yamato Monogatari, Masukagami, Fujoki, Eguchi, and Senjusho, the classical works to which Tanizaki's story alluded. Against these, this paper presents complementary notes toward an interpretation of Ashikari from different angles - the perspective of "Kuniakai," the fictitiously established "jugoya," the date of the story's composition, the factual histories of the construction on the Yodo river, inning of Ogura pond, the river traffic between Kyoto and Settsu, and the prostitution industry in Hashimoto. In this task, I have included the pieces of information which did not quite suit my own interpretation as well as those which did. That is because I have attempted to put Ashikari in the milieu of the boundary realm between Kyoto and Osaka "at the time of 1932," and induce another possibility of reading Ashikari.
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