FICTION

NAOMI by Junichiro Tanizaki; translated by Anthony H. Chambers (Knopf: $15.95). Junichiro Tanizaki fans will immediately note in “Naomi” a startling resemblance to his famous later work, “The Key.” Indeed, at first glance, this spare novel, written in serial form during the 1920s, seems like a stilted attempt at the same obsessive sensualism for which the author is best remembered. The story line is achingly familiar: a middle-aged salary man, reared in the countryside and recently moved to Tokyo, falls in love with a teen-age barmaid, only to discover that she is promiscuous. Although Naomi--with her passion for American dancing and clothes and movies--exercises mysterious control over Joji, it is somehow immensely satisfying, perhaps in the same way a cat seems satisfied to sit for hours in someone’s lap. On another level, however, Tanizaki clearly detests the appearance of weak-willed characters such as Joji, men so “consumed with love” as to lose all perspective in life. “Naomi” thus stands as a tawdry metaphor for the emasculation of Japan by the West.