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Tanizaki's main theme always seems to psychoanalyze his characters' sexual drive in every book. Sometimes it's more subdued, in The Key though it is front and center and the main point. The book follows a husband and wife, with alternating diary entries between the two. Their love life is the focus and it's clear that while they are writing this for themselves, they are also actively writing it for each other in the hopes that the other is reading (the husband literally states this in his first entry).

We get a brief history of their lives together, but the focus is on their current lives. The husband is looking for a way to excite his wife who he finds cold. The wife in contrast more than implies that it was an arranged marriage and that while she loves him in a way, she also hates him. In regards to the full plot I will say no more. This is one the reader should experience going in blind, and all that I've said thus far is pretty much outright stated within the first two or three diary entries.

This dynamic and shifting points of view makes for an uncomfortable book, but also one where the reader needs to read between the lines. You need to separate the truth from the lies. Figure out what is being written just to accommodate or infuriate the other partner in the relationship. It's short (my copy is only around 160 pages) but one you should take your time with if you want to get the full experience from it.

While never overly explicit, it should be noted that readers uncomfortable with erotic aspects in their novels may way want to avoid this one. Every page is really about sexuality to a degree, it's literally in every line. Like many of Tanizaki's works, it's the focus, but even more so here. There's not even a side-plot to use it as a metaphor, it is the plot here.

I have enjoyed everything I've read by Tanizaki thus far; he's considered one of the greats of Japanese literature for good reason. That said, I think this is a lesser work. An interesting one, but still not as good as the others I've read. Frankly I found the psychology of the characters, while at times understandable, also a little hard to deal with. I found myself actively disliking the husband and the more I read the more I suspected where things were going. 3/5 stars.