Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In Black and White is a literary murder mystery
in which the lines between fiction and reality are blurred. The writer
Mizuno has penned a story about the perfect murder. His fictional victim
is modeled on an acquaintance, a fellow writer. When Mizuno notices just
before the story is about to be published that this man's real name has
crept into his manuscript, he attempts to correct the mistake, but it is
too late. He then becomes terrified that an actual murder will take
place--and that he will be the main suspect. Mizuno goes to great
lengths to establish an alibi, venturing into the city's underworld. But
he finds himself only more entangled as his paranoid fantasies,
including a mysterious "Shadow Man" out to entrap him, intrude into real
life. A sophisticated psychological and metafictional mystery, In Black
and White is a masterful yet little-known novel from a great writer at
the height of his powers.
The year 1928 was a remarkable one for Tanizaki. He wrote three
exquisite novels, but while two of them--Some Prefer Nettles and
Quicksand--became famous, In Black and White disappeared from view.
All three were serialized in Osaka and Tokyo newspapers and magazines,
but In Black and White was never published as an independent volume.
This translation restores it to its rightful place among Tanizaki's
works and offers a window into the author's life at a crucial point in
his career. A critical afterword explains the novel's context and
importance for Tanizaki and Japan's literary and cultural scene in the
1920s, connecting autobiographical elements with the novel's key
concerns, including Tanizaki's critique of Japanese literary culture and
fiction itself.
