Laura ’s Reviews > The Key > Status Update

We're left wondering if Ikuko has been set up by her daughter Toshiko. The writer seems to indicate that Kimura has plotted with Toshiko. The young couple were not actually free to be together because of the husband's use of K - it's unlikely he would have consented to their marriage and Ikuko herself had been in-love with K for the longest time yet unable even to admit it to herself. Tanizaki - Incredible!!

Decided to finish this - have to work out why I am repulsed. It seems both husband and wife cannot access their sexual desires but must find covert means of being sexual - I can only guess that Japanese society is sexually repressive especially with women. Ikuka, the wife persuades herself she is only being a dutiful wife if she allows her husband to drug her, strip her naked and photograph her.

Bored with this - husband and wife - equally unlikeable. It is not erotic or titillating but merely dull - a story where sex is pursued without apparently any love on either side. A reflection on social structure - where dissolution of marriage is not productive for either partner - instead a compromise of physical sex - is achieved through forms of escapism. The key - symbolising secrecy; the opposite of intimacy.