Between Gods and Humans

Junichiro Tanizaki is the leading figure in Japan's "aesthetic school" literature. His works combine the aesthetic logic of devilish "ugliness as beauty" with aesthetic romanticism. It can be said that he threw a stone to break the water and the sky, causing a huge shock in the literary world. In particular, his creative view that "literature and art should not be constrained by the purpose of life and morality" directly influenced Chinese writers such as Yu Dafu, Zhou Zuoren, Ouyang Yuqian and Guo Moruo. The dramatist Tian Han was even more of his admirer. He once admitted: "I have been personally influenced by Junichiro Tanizaki for a long time, and I also have a 'scab addiction' to abnormal psychology such as 'sadism' and 'masochism.'" His translation of Tanizaki's works under the pseudonym "Li Shuquan" was the most important translation achievement in the Chinese literary world at that time, and it was from these translations that China's "Tanizaki Junichiro craze" began. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times in 1958 and 1960-1965.