synopsis:

The story of 'naomi' starts off with Joji, a 28 year old bachelor who falls for a pretty, quiet 15 year old girl named Naomi. Many things attact Joji to Naomi: her beauty, her Eurasian features, but the main thing is her name: Naomi. The name is written with three Chinese characters and it could also be a western name. Joji finds this very attractive. He starts to hang out with the girl going to Western restaurants and going to see Western movies. He eventually takes the girl in, wanting to make her a prop lady. He pays for her to take English and music lessons.

Naomi's english is very poor, and Joji makes her work very hard calling her an idiot when she doesn'yt understand passive voice. Naomi gets angry and very obstinate. As time goes on Joji marries Naomi, but keeps it secret from everyone else. He enjoys washing her body and playing horse with her, treating her like a play thing. They eventually go out and study dancing together, but this leads to more problems because of some of the men Naomi meets. the novel ends describing how the old weak-willed joji acts when naomi cheats on him constantly and is reduced to a submissive husband to his teenage wife, of whom he can't get enough. Ultimately, he succumbs to his innermost desires and is enslaved by it.

on this book:

Tanizaki's first successful novel, 'Naomi', is best known for its insight into Japan's emerging fascination with Western popular culture. A semi-autobiographical account of a "modern" couple who liked to dress in Western clothes, watch American movies and engage in the risqué practice of social dancing - banned in much of Japan when introduced in the early 1920s - Tanazaki's 'Naomi' played out his own infatuation with the West. Serialized in the Osaka-based Asahi newspaper, the promiscuous and socially irreverent exploits of Naomi, an aspiring flapper who wants look and live like a Hollywood movie star, was a bit much for Japan's conservative reading public and was promptly banned by the censors.

Drawing comparisons with Nabokov's Lolita, the 15-year-old Naomi portrayed in the novel displayed the sexual and psychological venom missing from Tanizaki's unhappy first marriage. In an effort to satisfy his illicit passions, Tanazaki engaged in numerous affairs, and by the end of a decidedly "active" life was married four times - usually to women much younger than himself, with his last wife 17 years his junior.