CHEAT NOTES

{What to Look For if YOU ARE Lost!}
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Key (Kagi) 1961 (b.1886-1965)
key symbolic entries: keys, diaries, writing, interpreting, cameras, etc

Ostensibly a pathological psychological novel, but what really is odd about our protagonists.

3 Novel opens with a break: new years day and a new
writing venture--change
4 Professor describes Ikuko, clue: she has a weakness for
spying.''
5 Irony 'the diary itself will bear wit-ness to its own truth.'
5 Ikuko bears sex in silence
5 Diary as monologue for an audience of one.
6. he is 55 she is 44 and 'vigorous in bed.'
7 Ikuko has a 'special gift.' nondis-closure as lure
8 Professor's fetishes--armpits and feet, but how on earth
do you tell a fetish from a desire? special kisses 31, 79 kissy
feet
9 Professor drops the key--p63 again the key is left out for
her to find
10 Ikuko lays the trap
11 the Professor comes too fast
12 Ikuko's passion is a FLAME
13 The sight of the professor makes Ikuko sick. 37 chilly
touch of eyes
14 Professor studying SANCTUARY by Faulkner
16 Toshiko is a cover for Ikuko and Kimura, 24 an assistant,
26 she dis-appears. 49 She is angry with her mother--dad will
kill you. 90 Toshiko slips out of the house. 117 Toshiko as an
instigator
17 Eyes/consider teaching Bataille with Tanizaki along with
Bu­uel's Andalusian Dog.
20 The Professor derives pleasure from PAIN
28 The Professor has a thing for flourescent lights and
reads Ikuko like a map/book
29 Her body of ink/body of flesh is flawless
32 Alcohol and DRUGS are used by the Professor to sedate
Ikuko
33 Ikuko calls Prof, 'Kimura'

THE CASE AGAINST FRANCE<symbol
15, Booze enters plus--Kimura re-sembles a WESTERN movie star;
34 The WEST as sensual lure: cour-voisier.42. TOshiko leaves home
for Madame Okada who teaches FRENCH, sexually decadent WEST.
THey embody desire--ie french kiss. 39 She likes Kimura's fair skin,
odd 47 Stendahl and Rouge el le Noir at the theater--Kimura and
Ikuko. 72 Kimura lends Toshiko a book, a french book--in it, are the
pho-tographs of her naughty mommy 107 earings and Western
clothes, 122 also------------------------------KEY 119 Sex Acts, DEsire and
Nationalism--the WESTERN BED 134 'he was stark nake, so was I
except for my earrings' On a related note: the WEST-ERN dress vs
the Ki-mono99/100

44, Kimura and the Polaroid camera 59 Now Kimura will
develop the film,
51, torn diaries, torn privacy, torn lives: the books embody
the protago-nist literally.
52, Sexual Pleasure via OBJECTI-FICation: Kimura as
Textual citation in the diary--a posed mannequin, next
photographed.
54: Ikuko (rightly) doubts her hus-bands ability to READ
56 Ikuko, the grand lie about reading his diary
58 Lie part two-- Prof denies reading her diar
y--with direct address to Ikuko.
64 Ikuko sees herself in the pictures
65 she doesn't really mind them
66 Profs mind on the fritz--connected to desire
67 Narcotics, he injects himself with male hormones--
testosterone patch
68 The eyes are not working
70 His ability to recall names not working--worried about
losing his professorship

IDEA TEACH THE KEY WITH POE'S PURLOINED LETTER

85 Bathtub motif
88/89 Key moment--his disclosure that pain eauqls pleasure
for him--also, dream which illustrates conden-sation and
overdeterminacy.
89 Ikuko first entry after having sex with Kimura
92 Kimura sees Toshiko as someone with a bit of an Iago in
them--Shake-speare allusion to Othello.
93 ikuko lies that 'you two are really one--this echoes his
dream on page 89--uses dreams as ally, her ally. 104REVEALS
THAT WHAT SHE SAID ON 93 IS A BIG FAT LIE
96 Professor show us how in the dark he is --we are all
corrupt[ing] Ikuko'...dummy
100/101 shift, tiny entries signal change, more sex
103 we begin to see more of ikuko's plotting--she is re
reading the diary already making notes and citing pas-sages
105 Compares and contrasts Hus-band and Kimura
105 Claims not to have had penetra-tion, ''the last line'
107 Akutagawa Ryunosuke reference, author of Rashomon
and early sui-cide, writer
109 The professor cannot write straight--she edits his errors
in the mail
112 Ikuko lies about being ill--she pulls out the EMma
Bovary trope--black vomit and all
127 THe april 17 entry--she fucks him to death.
133 the stroke
136 now the prof is in the ugly glare of the lights
137 The testicle test
144 Prof only wants ikuko to admin-ister the catheter
151 during convalescence of her hus-band, Kimura comes
by for an eleven o'clock fun trip euphemism central: I heard
footsteps in the garden.'
160 Toshiko''s intrigue...key
162 Toshiko reads a diary to Prof.
164 With PROF gone, she loses in-centive for writing.
168 She begins her comparative memoir analysis--key
169 Memoir as snare.
170, The lies
172, The physical enticement secret.
173 Jealousy as a lure to pleasure.
175 Writing and reading the gray
176 Toshiko as source of the cam-era.
178 Toshiko as schemer
180 The paper thin defense
182 Rusing him to death
183 The end of the novel as an alle-gory of what Freud called
the Repeti-tion compulsion