The Key
  • Published: 6 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780099289999
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99

The Key

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A seductive portrait of marriage and sexual passion.

A husband and wife each write in their diary, never knowing if it is being read by the other.

Ikuko and her husband are deeply in love but have grown physically apart, each unsure of the other’s desires. When Ikuko finds the key to her husband’s diary she ignores it, but she does begin to keep a diary of her own. Both parties start to set down in writing the evolution of their sex life and their deepest, most private desires. Who is reading whose diary? Who knows what? So begins an extended erotic game of lust, jealousy and manipulation.

‘A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover’ The Times

'Sensational and serious' New York Times
  • Published: 6 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780099289999
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past.

All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.

portrait photo of Junichiro Tanizaki

Also by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Makioka Sisters (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
The Key & Diary of a Mad Old Man
The Secret History Of The Lord Of Musashi
Naomi
Some Prefer Nettles
Diary of a Mad Old Man
The Reed Cutter and Captain Shigemoto's Mother
See all

Praise for The Key

At once sensational and serious – a middle-aged man’s last bout of sexual passion

New York Times

The outstanding Japanese novelist of this century

Edmund White

Tanizaki tells the delicate and, in the end, frightening story with great skill-this is not a book you will soon forget

Boston Herald

That this is a work of rare art can never be in doubt

New Statesman

A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover

The Times

At once sensational and serious-a middle-aged man's last bout of sexual passion - New York Times

The outstanding Japanese novelist of this century - Edmund White

Tanizaki tells the delicate and, in the end, frightening story with great skill-this is not a book you will soon forget - Boston Herald

That this is a work of rare art can never be in doubt - New Statesman

A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover

The Times
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