Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) is one of the major figures of 20th-century Japanese literature. Born in the heart of downtown Tokyo, he studied literature and led a bohemian existence at Tokyo Imperial University. His youthful experiences are reflected in his writings, as are the influences of such Western contemporaries as Poe, Baudelaire and Wilde. Following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Tanizaki left Tokyo for the Kyoto-Osaka region, where he wrote his finest works. As a young, cosmopolitan rake he abandoned the superficial Westernization of his student days and immersed himself in Japanese tradition and history. The emotional and intellectual crisis sparked by this transition turned a fine writer into one of Japan's greatest and most-loved novelists. Junichiro Tanizaki received the Imperial Prize in Literature in 1949.