／24　谷崎潤一郎の懐に入る

　京都大学での研究員生活を始めて9カ月ほどたった1954年5月。ドナルド・キーンさんは、当時、京都に住んでいた谷崎潤一郎と初めて対面することになった。その後、生涯にわたって国内の多くの著名作家との交流を続けることになるが、最初に会った「大物作家」と言っていいだろう。きっかけは、米海軍時代の知り合いで、当時は東京大学で日本文学を研究していたエドワード・サイデンステッカーさん（1921～2007年）との縁によるものだった。自伝を見てみよう。

It was thanks to Seidensticker that I first met Tanizaki Junichiro. Seidensticker, at the time translating Tade kuu Mushi (Some Prefer Nettles), asked me to take a section of his manuscript to Kyoto. Of course I was overjoyed at the prospect of meeting the one Japanese writer whose works I knew well.

Strange as it may seem, even before I arrived in Japan I was capable of discussing the differences between the Nijo and Kyogoku schools of waka, or the elements of No that Chikamatsu had adopted in his joruri, or the characteristic styles of the ten disciples of Basho, but I had never even heard the names of Ishikawa Jun, Dazai Osamu or Mishima Yukio, all of whom I was to translate in a few years.

But Tanizaki sensei's name was a reality. Not only had I read Tade kuu Mushi (Some Prefer Nettles), Chijin no Ai (A Fool's Love), Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin), and many other representative pre-war works but (despite my difficulties with the Kansai dialect) I had read Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters) in the copy Tanizaki himself had sent to Arthur Waley.

When I visited Tanizaki's house in Shimogamo I was extremely nervous. His dislike of visitors was well known, and I was afraid that once I met him I would have nothing to say that could possibly engage his attention. (A few years earlier, while in Paris, I had failed to use letters of introduction to Andre Gide and Paul Claudel for the same reason.) When I actually met Tanizaki sensei, however, conversation proved not only agreeable but easy. Unlike some writers, who are reluctant to discuss their own works, he answered directly any question I asked. Bit by bit I learned, for example, how much of Sasameyuki consists of autobiographical elements, though many Japanese critics had acclaimed the novel as a rare example of true fiction.

Even in the most casual conversations, however, I felt with Tanizaki sensei, more than with any other writer I have known that I was in the presence of a master. By now he was invulnerable to criticism.

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