Name: Some Prefer Nettles
ISBN: 9780679752691

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Kaname's father-in-law plans to save Kaname's marriage by involving the couple in the classic traditions of Japan, especially the puppet theater

Some Prefer Nettles

Manu

Shreerag Plakazhi

Generally considered one of Tanizaki's finest works Some Prefer Nettles deals with the ramifications of a collapsing marriage. Kaname seeks escape from his vacuous domestic existence in the arms of a beautiful Eurasian, and closes his eyes to the possibility that his wife may take a lover. His father-in-law is a bourgeois of the old school, civilised, refined, trained in the elegant ambiguities of an ancient tradition. Instinctively the old man divines that his daughter's marriage has failed because the young couple have cut themselves off from the traditional Japanese roots of aesthetic and emotional fulfilment, and he tries to repair the breach by leading them back to the classical arts of the country. Beneath the calm, if shadowed, surface of the narrative there runs a violent and absorbing conflict between the debilitating indecision of the husband and the devious scheming of the older man.

lily lily 

Maureen

Elena Kuran

Joshua Line

The marriage of Kaname and Misako is disintegrating: whilst seeking passion and fulfilment in the arms of others, they contemplate the humiliation of divorce. Misako's father believes their relationship has been damaged by the influence of a new and alien culture, and so attempts to heal the breach by educating his son-in-law in the time-honoured Japanese traditions of aesthetic and sensual pleasure. The result is an absorbing, chilling conflict between ancient and modern, young and old.