Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is well known for employing the dramatic changes that occurred in the Taishō era in the roles of women, attitudes toward marriage and love (ai) as material for his novels. For Chijin no Ai (1926, trans. as Naomi), he based his fiction on Taishō urban culture, as seen in the relations between the Eurasian-looking Naomi and Jōji, the newly turned gentleman who was a “bumpkin at heart”.

This presentation focuses on Tanizaki’s use of Taishō fashion — both kimono and haikara — to crystallize the issues the couple is facing and to further give depth and substance to the characters, particularly Naomi.

Naomi is meshed in sartorial and behavioral preoccupations that are represented through the described outfits — conveying information about her personality, her status, her manipulative tendencies etc. Trends in Taishō fashion as seen in period materials (including magazines and film) are used to map her different transformations in detail.

May it be a hand-me-down Meisen kimono or a formal silk furisode, the mantle she sports while hanging out with her "boyfriends" or a crepe French dress, Naomi's clothes are pivotal to the narrative, forming an ever versatile image of a person oscillating between East / West, navigating between figures such as the Ginza waitress, the student, the prim Hollywood actress (Mary Pickford), the tomboy, the vamp (Priscilla Dean), the moga, and thus demonstrating the role of fashion in Tanizaki’s sensitive portrayal of the relation between fashion and character, fiction and reality.