Reading Junichiro Tanizaki's 'A Portrait of Shunkin' and Thinking About Love and Writing.

Is the love between these two beautiful?
Is this not madness disguised as a form of love?

While this ambiguous, answerless form of love has a gentleness that seems to teach us the very material of the heart, its distortions and ugliness are kept hidden away.

It is as if Shunkin's perfected koto notes soar high into the sky like a nightingale, only to spill from one's palms.

An acquaintance handed me a book.
It was just about two months after I had experienced a heartbreak. Being an adult of a certain age, I was quite exhausted. I realized that my own sense of existence was fading, and although I thought I loved solitude, it was also a time when I desperately craved the warmth of others.

The phrase 'because it is pure love' felt quite ironic, but it would be a lie to say I didn't want to know the essence of what 'love' actually is. I remember staring at that book on the shelf many times, unable to bring myself to pick it up.

Now, quite some time after that, I picked up the book with the bright red cover adorned with plum blossoms.

If this book, wrapped in the scent of spring, had been a lukewarm romance, I would have closed the pages immediately.

Junichiro Tanizaki's 'A Portrait of Shunkin' is a story depicting the distorted love and devotion between Shunkin, a blind shamisen player, and Sasuke, who serves her.

The setting is Osaka from the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period.

Set in Osaka around the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), this story has an undeniable difficulty to it.

'If you cannot see to read, read it aloud.'

I remember my high school mentor, a modern literature teacher who was also a novelist, telling me this whenever the opportunity arose. Saying that reading is something to be felt with the five senses, she instructed me to read aloud over and over again when my grades in modern literature weren't improving as I had hoped.

I read this book aloud until I grew accustomed to the sounds. As I gradually became used to the characteristics of the prose, the trembling of my lips began to fall into a quiet silence, and I was drawn into a unique style of writing and narration that had lost both commas and paragraph breaks. The sheer volume of information woven into that long, endlessly flowing stream—which should have been difficult to read—is immense, yet it is filled with white space. That is the true thrill of the prose Tanizaki paints.

Even though it should be an objective perspective, moments that touch upon the essence of the characters 'Shunkin' and 'Sasuke' visit repeatedly, only to scatter as fleetingly as the voice of a nightingale.

The way the third-person perspective leans toward the first-person intensifies the density of the life of the 'two who play music.' The structure where the boundary between the narrator and the characters being described dissolves feels somewhat like a fiction, making one wonder if it is not Sasuke himself.

The blind Shunkin and her apprentice Sasuke. Their master-servant relationship is overflowing with violent mechanisms backed by Shunkin's fierce temperament, and Sasuke, who devotedly serves his master Shunkin, appears both painful and pure.

'You all have eyes and noses,
but in everything else, you are no match for my master.
Aren't we the ones who are disabled?'

As Sasuke states, he serves her in every aspect of life despite his own physical limitations, but the story progresses on the premise that Shunkin is always the perfect 'beauty' to him.

Time flows on with Shunkin, while hinting at intimacy, yet remaining strictly in a master-servant relationship.

Regarding whether love existed between these two, there is very little description. Perhaps the way it is depicted—that 'worship is love' and 'self-sacrifice is love'—is correct for the historical context.

Even so, I was certain from the beginning. This is a story of 'pure love.' Because the sight of Sasuke also raising his arms while playing the koto in the darkness seems like a reflection of his devotion to the blind Shunkin.

The brushwork of the prose is too beautiful. I believe the main reason for this is its 'ambiguity' and its 'unspoken nature,' which stops at mere scene description.

It vanishes before reaching the essence of emotion. The emotions derived from that are left entirely to the reader; the length of the sentences, the lack of paragraphs, and the disgrace, violence, tone, and scenery are all contained without being separated. That is the structure of this stylistic beauty, and it is linked to a love that transcends ethics, incorporating all of humanity.

In the final stages, Shunkin's fierce temperament becomes her undoing; she incurs resentment, is doused with boiling water, and her beautiful appearance is ruined, leading her to gradually withdraw into herself.

Here, too, what is noteworthy is that even the malice from others dissolves into the scenery. And, as if responding to that, Sasuke chooses the path of blindness by piercing his own eyes with needles.

'I cannot see your changed appearance, Master. I only see that nostalgic face that has been etched into the back of my eyes for thirty years. Please, continue to let me serve by your side as you always have.'

Perhaps Sasuke only wanted to keep the image of Shunkin playing the koto beautifully on his eyelids. This can also be read as a form of escapism inherent in 'blindness,' a desire to see only what one wants to see. And it reflects the sadness of trying to close off emotions, ethics, and even aesthetic consciousness within that 'blindness.'

As the two grow older, the prose gradually transforms into something softer, like scenery or the fluttering of a nightingale's wings. It is also a moment where collapse, acceptance, and the closed master-servant relationship are liberated.

To my surprise, from the moment I closed my mouth, I was shedding tears. It was a first. It wasn't because of the development of the story, but because my heart was simply shaken by the 'construction of the prose.' My heartbeat made a sound, and I thought about the preciousness of a single sheet of paper. What I had been writing until now was not prose. I felt that intuitively, and I savored the joy of obtaining a 'genuine' book. I read on as if devouring it, with a sensation of being drawn in, body and soul.

In the end, I was only barely able to grasp the outline of the true nature of this 'love.'
Even so, there is the fact that beyond the story of love from Sasuke, they are 'buried in the same place even after transcending the master-pupil relationship.' And I cannot help but feel that Shunkin, too, was offering her love to Sasuke. The truth of their love is, in the end, something only the two of them can know.

And then, as if by pure coincidence, some news fluttered into my life. It was that the ex-boyfriend I mentioned at the beginning had contracted a certain illness. It was more serious than I had thought. Even so, I told the friend who informed me to 'tell him I want him to be happy.' That was a wish for him not to give up on being happy, and at the same time, it was the moment I realized I had accepted the end of our love. And that is not love. It was the moment I clearly realized that, and it was also a true farewell.

I think that loving someone is a form of self-liberation. Even if it is a distorted love that is human and not contained within ethics alone. The resolve to offer even one's own body for that sake. The figure of dedicating one's own kind of love throughout a lifetime is the 'pure love' that Tanizaki depicts. That figure is somehow fleeting and beautiful.

For the past few months, I have faced writing quite seriously in preparation for the Creative Awards submission. This reading experience felt as if Tanizaki were teaching me that 'life is breathed into a writing style.'

Unnecessary commas, broken rhythms, inconsistent sentence structures. Unnecessary symbols. Beyond what AI suggested was unnecessary, my own thoughts were indeed embedded. I even felt despair, but in the end, I was finally able to understand that it is my own unique writing that no one else could create even if I asked them to. That is, in a way, a joy and a loneliness.

I am still seriously facing writing that will likely never be read by anyone. That is my resolve in life.

This work presents the question 'What is love?' to the reader. To love is beautiful. Respecting others, disgrace, malice, reverence, compassion—I feel as though it is blurring that pain of living as a human being into the ambiguity of the word 'love.' Even so, there is a person who thinks strongly of someone there, and I feel it is teaching me that the swaying of that heart is the truly beautiful 'value.'

The ugly figure that certainly exists within the beautiful was a certain 'love.' Just like the prose Tanizaki spins, where everything exists on the same line.

I am truly grateful to have encountered such a wonderful work. And as I close the pages, I think that the narrator's fiction is the very device that quietly protects the 'pure love' of the two.

Konishi Kinoko, who lent me this book, is a somewhat strange person. If it is the case that they lent me this book with an understanding of its very structure.

I also think that perhaps they were trying to draw me into this story as a narrator, shake my own emotions and values, and attempt to have me redefine 'love' for myself. Or perhaps they weren't thinking about anything at all.
Either way, I might have been rolled around in the palm of their hand after all. I think I will dare not look at that truth and keep it within my own heart.