Chelsea Stevenson
Modern History of Japan
Uchiyama
November 15, 2012
Naomi and the Changing Face of Japan
Naomi, as a character, is representative of several social trends that became Japan’s popular
culture in the 1920’s but really found their first footholds in the later Tokugawa period and early
Meiji era as Western influence began to permeate the Japanese consciousness. This permeation
would culminate in a figure called the modan garu, Japan’s Modern Girl. Naomi, being a parody
of this female characterization of the 20’s is exaggerated in her characteristics to an extreme, as
is the narrator of the novel, Joji—who is similar to the humorous and effeminate haikara
predecessor and the modan garu’s male equivalent, the mobo1. What Naomi represents is the
new version of sexuality and sexual culture which were taking precedence as well as the
movement out of the home that women embarked on at the time. She is also a representative of
the new consumer culture which dominated the rapidly modernized and increasingly westernized
Japanese population, especially those who occupied the urban centers of the country as denoted
by the cityscape the novel is set in. Most of all, Naomi is the reaction to all of these new social
developments and her portrayal as a grasping, lustful, manipulative, and lazy seductress asserts a
subtle form of Japanese identity by painting a portrait of what the author saw as the opposite.
In terms of Naomi’s representation as a female aspect of modernization, it might first be
easier to put her in context by comparing her to older versions of expected gender identity for
women. Naomi was born, had she been a real person, after the government sanctioned the law
1
Miriam Silverberg, “The Modern Girl as Militant.” 239.
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establishing compulsory schooling for both genders, which was instated in 1873. 2 This means
Naomi would have been born into a Japan that permitted all women to have, to a certain extent,
education—allowing them to be as literate as any man and, therefore, on a closer level of
intellectual equality. The education was, however, expected to be put towards raising a proper,
Japanese family rather than for the pursuit of scholarly inquiry. This was shortly after a period
which had popularized the image and idea of ryōsai kenbo, “Good Wife, Wise Mother,”3 which
sought to fit women into Japan’s society in a motherly and patriotic capacity that the government
saw as not only the most appropriate for the feminine half of the population but also the most
beneficial for the country. Of course, the government was ignoring the fact that women in the
lower economic classes of society were already in opposition to this picture, as many of them
would go to work in factories and form the basis of the newly modernized economy. The
character herself is radically different from this picture of filial perfection and domestic bliss.
One exchange between Naomi and Joji goes like this: “I’m not your maid, you know. If I do the
laundry, my fingers’ll get fat and I won’t be able to play the piano.”4 This, as unflattering as it
might be, is a picture of the modern woman during the 1920’s in Japan. Naomi was a working
girl who operated outside of the domestic sphere by holding a job, rather than marrying and
having children, and even when she entrenched herself within a household and became a wife
she neither sought to become pregnant nor transformed into a cook, maid, or seamstress for Joji.
She is a wife tempered by the phenomena of modan garu, a woman with income and an
education that is cultured but divorced from the image of a housewife. Tanizaki’s
characterization of her as a purely negative figure and influence on the weak-willed and lustful
Joji is a rejection of the idea of women as the emerging Modern Girl but also a recognition of the
Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890-1910.” 153-4.
Nolte and Hastings 152.
4
Junichirō Tanizaki, Naomi. Trans. Anthony H. Chambers. (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 73.
2
3
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change in female cultural expectations and gender identity which were prevalent at the time. Joji
might have aspired for Naomi to become his Western version of a Good Wife but her thorough
evasion of such a plan turns her instead into a cosmopolitan figure of the 1920’s who is fully
realized in her separation from the home and family.
As a personification of consumerism Naomi is easily relatable. Her insatiable appetite covers
almost everything: food, clothing, Western culture, and sex. Key to her personality is the aspect
of excess which manifests itself in her literal and figurative consumption of goods both Western
and Japanese in origin. Tanizaki did not write Naomi as only desiring Western foods and
products—she insists on being fed Japanese style cuisine and bought traditional clothing as well,
it is the sheer volume of these demands which make her appalling. If we see Naomi as a
consumer we can see her obsessed with buying into everything, or at least having Joji do it for
her. Even her promiscuity with Caucasian men can be seen as her fixation on Western products
and culture, which she not only buys with cash but with the sacrifice of her reputation as well.
The narrator’s decline and Naomi’s decay are directly in line with two things: Westernization
and a consumer lifestyle. The character gorges on a feast of cultural and material products,
distancing herself from traditional Japanese customs or social mores of the previous era. Again,
by demonstrating the ultimately destructive effects of these habits Tanizaki was emphasizing a
Japanese identity which was not tainted by foreign influence or subsistent on mass consumerism.
The last aspect of Naomi I’m going to discuss is her sexuality, more importantly what she
symbolizes as a sexual figure in the context of Modern Girl and the evolution of women in Japan
at the time her novel takes place. As Silverberg pointed out in her article on the Modern Girl, as
a male writer making observations about her clothing and sensual body—something constantly
referred to in Joji’s storytelling—Tanizaki is actually talking about her sexuality which “was to
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underscore her promiscuity”5. Naomi is blatantly sexualized by her husband, whose initial
interest in her is only in her similar physical appearance to his ideal woman, Mary Pickford. She
only grows more sexual as the novel goes on, evolving from merely an objectified beauty to one
that is actively seductive and wanton. Interestingly, she cultivates a stronger and stronger
influence over Joji as she ages and matures. Indeed, he comes to the conclusion himself: “I
believe that when Antony was conquered by Cleopatra, it happened in this way: little by little he
was stripped of his resistance and became ensnared. […] And when that happens, there’s no way
to overcome her sense of superiority. This leads to undreamed-of misfortunes” (emphasis
added).6 The fact that Tanizaki posits a sense of “superiority” with the loss of Joji’s control in the
relationship, because of his inability to resist Naomi’s physical allure, is just another reaction to
the loosening of societal standards that became part of the 1920’s norm. The author saw an
unnatural and improper development of feminine authority through the male gaze and bodily
fixation—hence why Naomi is not only a maid at a café but also apparently descended from a
line of women who have made a living selling their bodies in order to accentuate her place as a
user of men through physical consummation, if not outright painting her as a prostitute. Her hair,
dress, and openness of her licentious behavior are all markers of the Modern Girl and, in a sense,
the women of the period. That is not to say, of course, that Japanese women who lived in cities
were faithfully represented in Naomi, only that she is a parodied aspect of them and subject to an
amplification of their existing facets. In addition, in comparison to Good Wife, Good Mother
which has already been discussed, Naomi as the Modern Girl is an absolute antithesis in terms of
sexual conduct. She is contrary to the endorsed image of woman that had proceeded before and
5
6
Silverberg, 243.
Tanizaki, 54.
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in her rebellion she frees the conventional female image from its household place and reasserts it
as an independent figure outside of the male realm of authority.
By creating a character like Naomi and making her the central focal point of his novel,
Tanizaki is setting the reader up with his version of the Modern Girl. It’s not a serious figure, the
pathetic and humorous nature of its narrator as well as the outrageousness of Naomi’s descent
into decadence preclude our acceptance as readers to see the story as realistic. Despite this, it
does highlight the new cultural and gender roles that women were playing in Japan. These
women were no longer expected to stay in the home, or if they were they eschewed this
traditional portrait of womanhood in order to pursue their own single lives. In doing so they
embraced modernity: they became liberated sexually, they began to play a role in the economy as
mass consumers as they had never been before, and they popularized the consumption of foreign
culture by adopting Western dress and food and media. Western beauty became prevalent, even
an obsession if we can put any truth to Joji’s passion for transforming a sullen, vaguely Eurasian
girl into his version of Mary Pickford. Naomi is a literary avatar of sorts to this mounting series
of changes women had adopted by the 1920’s as Japan developed as a modern state. Tanizaki’s
treatment of her, which is comically ugly in its portraiture, hearkens to the idea of a time and
woman before the infection of Westernization had completely altered the face of Japan and,
more importantly, its men and women.
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Bibliography
Hastings, Sally Ann and Sharon H. Nolte. “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 18901910.”
Silverberg, Miriam “The Modern Girl as Militant.”
Tanizaki, Junichirō. Naomi. Trans. Anthony H. Chambers. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.