The Tattooer

The Tattooer is the first publish work by Junichiro Tanizaki, one of the major authors in the modern Japanese tradition. In the story, a tattoo artist inscribes a giant spider on the body of a beautiful young woman. Afterwards, the woman’s beauty takes on a demonic, compelling power, in which eroticism is combined with sado-masochism. The story foreshadows many of the archetypes which reappear in many of Tanizaki’s later works.