A Portrait of Shunkin — Summary and Characters
A blind master, a devoted disciple
- Author
- Tanizaki Jun'ichirō
- Published
- June 1933
- First appeared in
- Chūō Kōron
- Form
- Novel
- Genres
- Romance
- Psychological
- Setting
- Osaka
- Length
- 46,331 characters
- Reading time
- About 1 hr 33 min
- Orthography
- Modern script and kana
About this work
One of Tanizaki's central works, published in the magazine Chūō Kōron in 1933. It takes the form of a biography of Mozuya Shunkin, a blind musician said to have really lived, assembling her art and her life from the recollections of an old man and the testimony of a disciple. Written in a distinctive style that dispenses almost entirely with punctuation, it presents a woman who dominates utterly and a man who submits utterly — the masochistic sensuality that runs through Tanizaki's work, carried to the furthest reach of Japanese aestheticism.
Summary
Mozuya Koto, daughter of a druggist of Dōshōmachi in Osaka, goes blind at nine and afterwards devotes herself to the shamisen and the koto, becoming a player of rare mastery. Sasuke, a boy in service to the house, acts as young Shunkin's guide, and, worshipping her art and her beauty, asks to become her pupil. Proud and highly strung, Shunkin treats him harshly; Sasuke gives her nothing but devotion, and in time, still master and pupil to the world, they are secretly joined and have a child. Shunkin puts the child out to be raised elsewhere and keeps up the appearance of the master-pupil bond. Then one night someone throws boiling water over her, and her beautiful face is left scarred. Unable to bear the sight of his master so changed, Sasuke puts out his own eyes with a needle, choosing to keep forever the beautiful Shunkin who lives in his mind. Blind together from then on, the two live bound the more deeply to one another; and after Shunkin's death Sasuke lived long in her memory, and died at eighty-three.
Characters
- Mozuya Koto (Shunkin) The daughter of a druggist of Dōshōmachi in Osaka. Blind from the age of nine, she becomes a player of rare mastery on the shamisen and the koto, proud and beautiful
- Nukui Sasuke From servant to Shunkin's guide, and in time her pupil and common-law husband. He serves her devotedly all his life
- Teru (Teru-jo) The maidservant who attended Shunkin and Sasuke for many years. She watched their life at close hand and in later years passed on her recollections
Chapter-by-chapter synopsis
The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).
- 1. About This Work
- 2. Main Characters
- 3. Major Supporting Characters
- 4. Two Graves and "A Life of Mozuya Shunkin"
- 5. Blindness and a Meeting — Koto at Nine, Sasuke at Thirteen
- 6. Darkness in the Closet — Becoming a Pupil, and Fierce Practice
- 7. A Marriage Refused — Joined While Still Master and Pupil
- 8. The Plum-Blossom Viewing at Tengachaya and the Night of the Last Day of March
- 9. The Needle in Both Eyes
- 10. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing
The opening (original text)
Shunkin — her real name was Mozuya Koto — was born to a druggist's house in Dōshōmachi in Osaka and died on the fourteenth of October in the nineteenth year of Meiji; her grave is at a certain Jōdo-sect temple in Shitadera-machi in the city. Passing that way the other day I took it into my head to visit the grave, and when I stopped and asked, a temple servant said, "The Mozuya burial plot is this way," and led me round behind the main hall.
A Portrait of Shunkin by Tanizaki Jun'ichirō (Aozora Bunko)
The ending (original text)
When Gasan, the abbot of Tenryūji, heard the story of how Sasuke put out his own eyes, he is said to have praised the Zen insight of it — that in the turn of an instant he cut off the outer from the inner and turned ugliness back into beauty — and to have said that it came near the act of a man of true attainment; whether my readers will assent to this I cannot say
A Portrait of Shunkin by Tanizaki Jun'ichirō (Aozora Bunko)
Famous passages
Shunkin — her true name was Mozuya Koto — was born to a wholesale druggist's family on Dōshōmachi in Osaka; she died on the fourteenth of October, 1886, and her grave lies in a certain Jōdo-sect temple in Shitadera-machi, in that city.
An opening that lines up bare facts as though reading from a gravestone inscription. In a voice like an old document, it dispassionately opens the tale of a blind shamisen master and the extraordinary devotion of her disciple Sasuke.
Early one morning Sasuke secretly brought a maid's dressing mirror and sewing needle from the servants' quarters, sat upright on his bedding, and, gazing into the mirror, drove the needle into his own eyes
The scene in which Sasuke blinds himself so as never to see Shunkin's disfigured face. A style stripped of punctuation tells this extraordinary act of devotion in a single unbroken breath.
Read the original
The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.
More by this author
- Naomi March 1924
- The Makioka Sisters January 1943
Related works
- Sweet Beans for Two April 1940
- A Certain Woman March 1919
- Floating Clouds November 1949
- Light and Darkness May 1916
- Kokoro April 1914
- Tadare March 1913