SOURCE: "Arrowroot" and "Captain Shigemoto's Mother" in The Secret Window: Ideal Worlds in Tanizaki's Fiction, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard, 1994, pp. 7-15, 93-105.

In the following excerpt, Chambers maintains that the protagonists in Arrowroot and The Mother of Captain Shigemoto Mother create imaginary, idealized worlds that are revealed to the reader by means of narrative devices.

In one of the most moving plays of the Bunraku and kabuki repertory, a white fox assumes the form of a beautiful woman (a power that foxes were believed to have), marries a gentleman named Abe no Yasuna, and gives birth to a son. They are happy together until the fox's true identity comes to light, making it impossible for her to go on living with her husband and son. She slips away late at night to return to her lair; but before she goes, she lovingly tucks in her son...