A 55-year-old science lecturer is found naked on a university campus. His student lover has made him strip as a show of devotion ¡ª ¡°Get naked to show me your love,¡± she reportedly demanded ¡ª and then scampered off with his clothes. The lecturer resigns, apologizes for ¡°causing considerable trouble,¡± and returns to living with the student.
This real-life incident happened at Taisho University in 2014 ¡ª a testament to the fact that, on the 50-year anniversary of the death of writer Junichiro Tanizaki, there still are fools for love in Japan.
Once deemed by censors as ¡°injurious to public morals¡± and banned from publishing during World War II, Tanizaki ¡ª like no other writer ¡ª mined the realm of forbidden fantasies. From subtle eroticism to full-blown pathology, he made poetry of pleasure and torment, the confessions of men who outrageously and deliciously carry things too far.
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