Many of Tanizaki's contemporaries ended their stories with a question: "When and where will these two meet again?"—or as in the play by Fujimori Seikichi flashing a sign that reads "What made her do it?" But Tanizaki's questions are unvoiced, though often related to specific incidents. Just what did the prostitute do to the author in Itansha no Kanashimi? Who poured the scalding water on Shunkin and why? What is the nature of the "snake" in the untranslated Shōnen (where critics tend to focus on the presence of another cruel female—Mitsuko, the girl who frightens the other children)? Only marginally of Freudian significance, this focus of horror ultimately leaves the reader, like the boy, uncertain as to the nature of the threat. Was the snake real or carved from wood? And was the terror any less real or the domination more perverse if the beast's...