The Bridge of Dreams (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
- First Published: 1959
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: The 1920's
- Setting: Kyoto
- Principal Characters: Otokuni Tadasu, Tsuneko, His father, Chinu, Sawako
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Incest, Women, Boys, Japan or Japanese people, Calligraphy
- Locales: Kyoto, Japan
The Story
Tadasu is a young man who loses his mother at age five. When his father remarries three years later, the boy is encouraged to rekindle his Oedipal relationship with his young new stepmother. He is both obsessed and guilt-ridden about his attraction to her, so he tries to understand his feelings in the form of a confessional memoir, which he writes years later.
Tadasu's memories of his real mother are those of a young child: her bosom and the feminine smell of hair oil. She suckles her son, as many Japanese mothers do, longer than Western mothers, and this forms...
[The entire page is 1509 words long]
