Tanizaki\'s Naomi: The Modern Girl

Tanizaki's Naomi: The Modern Girl In 1920s Japan

Junaichir Tanizaki's Naomi represents the common theme that was prevalent around Japan in the early part of the 20th century post-World War I: the attempt to Westernize. In this respect, the characters in this novel, particularly the protagonist and the young woman he is enthralled with, the titular character, are representative of ideals larger than themselves. Jogi represents Japanese male fascination with Western ways. Naomi, for the most part, represents the incongruence of conventional Japanese culture with those ways. The result is a preoccupation with Westernization that never quite comes to fruition, which is ultimately shaped by Naomi's inability to fulfill her potential as a Westernized woman.

In this respect, the Modern Girl that Naomi is emblematic of is quite distinct from the conception of the New Woman that was prevalent in Japan prior to the writing of this specific novel of Tanizaki. The New Woman may have borrowed certain notions of independence from Western sources. However, the New Woman herself was not Westernized to the extent that the notion of the Modern Girl was. In many respects, modernization is merely a euphemism for Westernization, both within Tanizaki's novel and within the larger macrocosm of 1920's Japanese culture in which this novel takes place. Such Westernization was a "preposterous dream" of Jogi's (Huang 77).The modern girl was an "incarnation of the Western woman in Japan" (Huang 77) -- an idealized view of Japanese women largely propagated by Japanese men, who valued them because of (and strove to emulate in their own lives) the potential to Westernize. Thus the preoccupation with Western culture that is so profound throughout the pages of this work of Tanazaki, and Jogi's frustration at his inability to Westernize Naomi.

The most important aspect of this novel is the ending, in which it not only becomes clear that Jogi will never be able to fully model Jogi into a Western woman, but that he will never be able to mold her at all and remain "beneath her manipulative control" (Schneider). The author's portrayal of Naomi as the Modern Girl is extremely significant for the fact that Naomi fails to Westernize. She never learns to speak English well. She routinely embarrasses her patron (Jogi) by talking loudly and somewhat ignorantly in public. She never fully becomes the ideal vision of Westernization that he initially attracts him to her (she is said to have a "physical similarity" that strongly resembles a popular American silent film actress of the time) (Schneider). Her failure to Westernize, then, symbolizes that the notion of the Modern Girl will fail in that same endeavor. Regardless of how hard Jogi tries to modernize himself and his erotic love interest, he and her still remain Japanese and of that that nationality's culture.