Some Prefer Nettles: Nov's NHHC Book Selection

By Kevin Gardner on Tuesday, November 13, 2001.

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Sexual obsession and cultural upheaval.

Those are the dominant themes of this month's NH Humanities Council book selection, Some Prefer Nettles.

The author is Junichero Tanizaki, who has often been called "the greatest Japanese novelist of the 20th century."

During a prolific career lasting more than 40 years, he produced several classics of modern Japanese literature.

Many of them, including Some Prefer Nettles, have become renowned for their examinations of Japan's cultural clash with the west.

Humanities reporter Kevin Gardner has more.

Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki
What Is New Hampshire Reading This Month? November 2001

Suggested Host Intro: Sexual obsession and cultural upheaval are the dominant themes of the novel Some Prefer Nettles, by Junichero Tanizaki (Joo-NEE-chee-roh Tah-NEE-zah-KEE), this month?s NH Humanities Council book selection. Tanizaki has often been called ?the greatest Japanese novelist of the 20th century?. During a lengthy, prolific career, which began before World War I and continued into the 1960?s, he produced several classics of modern Japanese literature, books renowned for their examinations of the cultural quandary Japan has faced in its relations with the West. Humanities reporter Kevin Gardner has more.

Gardner: ?Every worm to his taste?, runs the old Japanese proverb from which Tanizaki takes the title of this novel, ?Some prefer to eat nettles?. In the bitter nourishment preferred by the characters of this 1928 novel, the author finds metaphors not only for the cultural condition of Japanese society before World War II, but for intensely personal questions of ambivalence and regret that haunt those forced to choose between irreconcilable traditions.

SFX: Music bed in; 20?s jazz band, under following-

Gardner: Some Prefer Nettles tells the story of Kaname and his wife Misako, a couple in their early thirties whose liberal, westernized marriage has deteriorated into loveless boredom. With Kaname?s approval, Misako has begun an affair with another man. Kaname himself seeks diversion and release in brothels run by foreigners. There is talk of separation, and divorce. Yet husband and wife cannot arrive at finality, and their paralysis becomes a heavier burden than even the marriage itself. Against this unbearably modern backdrop, Kaname finds himself drawn to the culture of Japan?s past, and to a much more traditional kind of relationship to women.

SFX: Music bed crossfades to koto-samisen instrumental, fades under following-

Gardner: It begins with a reluctant visit to a puppet theatre, where Kaname and Misako join Misako?s father and his young mistress, O-hisa. The old man is an irascible traditionalist, who chides Misako for everything from her makeup to her preference for jazz. ?I had to listen to a little of it the other day?, he growls, ?And it?s nothing more than a gang of shrine noise-makers in foreign clothes. If that?s what you want, you can find any amount in Japan without bothering to import it.? For his part, Kaname discovers a new fascination with the music and movement of the ancient Bunraku puppets, and an unexpected attraction to his father-in-law?s pliant, submissive mistress. As the novel develops, the puppets and O-hisa become inescapable obsessions.

SFX: Brief fragment of traditional Japanese melody, fading.

Gardner: ?Partly of course it was the puppet plays that had kept him on,? Tanizaki writes near the end of Some Prefer Nettles, ?But doubtless it was partly too his interest in the relationship between the old man and O-hisa. A sensitive woman, a woman with ideas, can only get more troublesome and less likable with the years. Surely, then, one does better to fall in love with the sort of woman one can cherish as a doll?..the old man?s life?seemed to suggest a profound spiritual peace reached without training and without effort.?

SFX: Traditional Japanese music returns briefly ? crossfades back to twenties jazz under following -

Gardner: Perhaps the most arresting thing about this meticulous, masterfully structured novel is not that Tanizaki makes this case ? so backward-looking that it stirred controversy even in 1928 ? but that he makes it with a clarity, skill, and passion that demand admiration on their own terms. Notwithstanding its medieval sexual politics, Some Prefer Nettles offers acutely suggestive insights about emotional inertia, cultural ambivalence, and the origins of attraction. That it was written shortly before the world-altering conflagrations of the twentieth century?s most destructive war somehow only enhances its anxious, unhappy humanity. For NHPR, I?m Kevin Gardner.

SFX: Jazz fades out?.

Host Outro: Public discussions of Some Prefer Nettles will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at Nashua?s Chandler Library; on Sunday, Nov. 18, at Warner?s Main Street Bookends; on Tuesday, Nov. 20 at Newington?s Barnes and Noble Bookstore and at the Littleton Public Library; on Wednesday, Nov. 21, at the Manchester Barnes and Noble; and on Wednesday Nov. 28, at Gorham?s Wonderland Bookstore. All discussions begin at 7pm, except for the Warner Bookends discussion, which will begin at 3pm. Humanities reports on NHPR are made possible in part by a grant from the NH Humanities Council.