, where he wrote the earlier part of
Sasameyuki in 1943. Tanizaki's reputation began to take off in 1923, when he moved to
Kyoto after the
Great Kanto earthquake, which destroyed his house in
Yokohama (at the time Tanizaki was on a bus in
Hakone and thus escaped injury). The loss of Tokyo's historic buildings and neighborhoods in the quake triggered a change in his enthusiasms, as he redirected his youthful love for the imagined West and modernity into a renewed interest in Japanese aesthetics and culture, particularly the culture of the
Kansai region (around the cities of
Osaka,
Kobe and
Kyoto). His first novel after the earthquake, and his first truly successful novel, was
Chijin no ai (
Naomi, 1924-25), which is a tragicomic exploration of class, sexual obsession, and cultural identity. Tanizaki made another trip to China in 1926, where he met
Guo Moruo, with whom he later maintained correspondence. He relocated from Kyoto to Kobe in 1928. Inspired by the
Osaka dialect, Tanizaki wrote
Manji (
Quicksand, 1928–1929), in which he explored lesbianism, among other themes. This was followed by the classic
Tade kuu mushi (
Some Prefer Nettles, 1928–29), which depicts the gradual self-discovery of a Tokyo man living near Osaka, in relation to Western-influenced modernization and Japanese tradition.
Yoshino kuzu (
Arrowroot, 1931) alludes to Bunraku and kabuki theater and other traditional forms even as it adapts a European narrative-within-a-narrative technique. His experimentation with narrative styles continued with
Ashikari (
The Reed Cutter, 1932),
Shunkinshō (
A Portrait of Shunkin, 1933), and many other works that combine traditional aesthetics with Tanizaki's particular obsessions. His renewed interest in classical Japanese literature culminated in his multiple translations into modern Japanese of the eleventh-century classic
The Tale of Genji and in his masterpiece
Sasameyuki (literally "A Light Snowfall," but published in English translation as
The Makioka Sisters, 1943–1948), a detailed characterization of four daughters of a wealthy Osaka merchant family who see their way of life slipping away in the early years of
World War II. The sisters live a cosmopolitan life with European neighbors and friends, without suffering the cultural-identity crises common to earlier Tanizaki characters. When he began to serialize the novel, the editors of the literary magazine
Chūō Kōron were warned that it did not contribute to the needed war spirit and, fearful of losing supplies of paper, cut off the serialization. Tanizaki relocated to the resort town of
Atami, Shizuoka in 1942, but returned to Kyoto in 1946.
poem of 1963. "This heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself."'' ==Post-war period==