[With The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot] we begin to discern the coastline of that other Japanese archipelago, the works of Junichiro Tanizaki. The tale and the meditation … were written fifty years ago, after the publication of the author's first "Collected Works"—the twelve volumes of novels, stories, plays and essays of his first twenty years of writing. Even so, they predate the books by which he is known in the West—Some Prefer Nettles, Seven Japanese Tales, The Makioka Sisters. They stand—Arrowroot mild and maieutic, a kind of prolegomenon to any future storytelling, Secret History almost comic in its excruciating violence—as flags staking claim to a still unexplored continent, or, given the nature of the case, incontinent. Coprophilia, a curiously lyrical theme sounded in all of Tanizaki's works, constitutes one of our clues. It is hinted at in the famous...