The Obvious East

DIARY OF A MAD OLD MAN by Junichiro Tanizaki. 177 pages. Knopf. $3.95.

"When lovely women come to my home I get too excited to work," confessed lunichiro Tanizaki; "but lingering memories of them put me in finest form as a writer. Then I really write." When he died two weeks ago at 79, Author Tanizaki (The Makioka Sisters, The Key) had gathered his lingering memories into 119 novels that cele brate sexual pleasure and the divine loveliness of woman, established their author as Japan's leading contemporary novelist.

His final book, the Diary, is the journal of an impotent, wealthy old invalid who lives only for the pleasure of sexual stimulation. He gets more than he needs from his flashy daughter-in-law, a former chorus girl who drives an English car, buys French lace gloves, and wears her hair in an American permanent wave. She teases him, pleases him, lets him fondle her feet, peek at her in the shower, towel her back, suck on her toes. In payment for these pleasures he buys her extravagant presents and lets her run his household. At the last, the excitement proves too much and he suffers a stroke.

According to Author Tanizaki, a man's usefulness is confined solely to his function as a slave of or a glorifier of woman. It is not entirely clear, reading between the ideographs, what this book may mean to the lapanese. But for the Western reader, it is just another sex novel peppered with perversions.

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