the two families; however, Lady Kikyō wants to avenge her father’s humiliating but secret death, and arranges for her husband to be attacked by bow and arrow in order to sever his nose. Two attacks narrowly fail: in the first Norishige is injured with an arrow in his upper lip, disfiguring him and severely affecting his speech; and in the second he loses an ear. Terakatsu discovers her plan, and sexually fantasises about the smile on her face if Norishige were to lose his nose. Norishige withdraws with his wife to the inner castle. Terakatsu, now aged eighteen, discovers a secret entrance to Lady Kikyō’s rooms under her toilet. He meets her and presents her with her father’s nose. To satisfy Lady Kikyō’s desire for revenge and Terakatsu’s lust, they conspire to sever her husband’s nose. They are successful, and become lovers. Terakatsu returns to his father’s castle, separated from Lady Kikyō. Aged twenty-one, he marries the fourteen-year old Lady Shōsetstuin. He tries to teach her and her handmaidens how to “dress the heads” and demonstrates by placing his servant Dōami so that only his head is above the floor, and forcing him to impersonate a corpse. Terakatsu fantasizes about cutting off Dōami’s nose so he looks like a “woman-head”. However, Shōsetstuin cannot satisfy Terakatsu’s weird longings or replace Lady Kikyō. Terakatsu succeeds his father as Lord of Musashi and attacks Norishige’s castle, intending to take his possessions and his wife. Norishige and Lady Kikyō are captured and confined for life but are drawn closer now her father has been avenged. She rejects Terakatsu, who subsequently “sought out new women, one after another, with whom to share his bizarre stimulus and revolting dissipation.” Background The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi was one of several of Tanizaki’s works in “essay-fiction” between 1930 and 1950, combining experimentation and tradition, including Mōmoku Monogatari (A Blind Man’s Tale, 1931), Ashikari (The Reed Cutter, 1932), Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin, 1933), and Shōshō Shigemoto no haha (Captain Shigemoto's Mother, 1949–1950). The narrative technique of The Secret History may have been inspired by Stendhal’s The Abbess of Castro, which Tanizaki translated into Japanese in 1928. Tanizaki had originally planned to write a long historical novel, and expressed a desire to include a portrayal of a real individual woman rather than one of the anonymous figures in traditional literature. In 1948 Tanizaki wrote that The