Junichiro Tanizaki · Kansai, Osaka

Retracing Junichiro Tanizaki's A Portrait of Shunkin to Osaka's Doshomachi: A Literary Travel Guide

Follow the real Osaka pharmacy district behind Tanizaki's A Portrait of Shunkin (Shunkin Sho) — including the shrine that still marks the novella's setting with its own stone monument.

A Portrait of Shunkin (春琴抄, Shunkin Sho) is Junichiro Tanizaki's 1933 novella about Shunkin, a blind koto and shamisen virtuoso born into a wealthy Osaka pharmaceutical-trading family, and Sasuke, the servant boy who becomes her lifelong attendant, student, and — after a disfiguring accident leaves her scarred — the one person who chooses never to see her face again. Tanizaki frames the whole story as a straight retelling of an old biographical pamphlet, Mozuya Shunkin-den ("The Life of Shunkin of the Mozuya"), complete with footnote-like asides questioning the source's reliability. The device was convincing enough that after publication, readers reportedly wrote to Tanizaki asking where they could find the two graves described near the book's end.

A fictional pamphlet set in a very real trade district

Tanizaki never claimed Shunkin was autobiographical, but he anchored it to a real, specific place. In the story, Shunkin is introduced as the second daughter of the Mozuya, medicine wholesalers of Doshomachi — and Doshomachi wasn't just a plausible-sounding backdrop. Since the Edo period it has been Osaka's actual wholesale medicine district, lined with the trading houses that supplied pharmacies across the country, and it still fills that role today. Some scholars also point to a partial real-life model for Shunkin herself: the blind daughter of the traditional jiuta shamisen teacher Tanizaki studied under.

Stop 1: Sukunahikona Shrine, Doshomachi — a stone monument to the story

Doshomachi's own guardian shrine, Sukunahikona Jinja (少彦名神社), still stands among the district's office buildings, dedicated to the gods of medicine and popularly nicknamed Shinno-san after the Chinese medicine deity Shennong. To the right of its entrance is a stone monument inscribed with the opening lines of A Portrait of Shunkin — a direct, physical link between the shrine's own neighborhood and Tanizaki's fictional Mozuya family. The Doshomachi Museum of Medicine (くすりの道修町資料館), which has displayed a facsimile of Tanizaki's manuscript, sits just to the left of the same entrance.

• Getting there: Kitahama Station (Sakaisuji Line or Keihan Main Line), Exit 6, about 5 minutes on foot; or Yodoyabashi Station (Midosuji Line), Exit 11, about 10 minutes.
• Good to know: Both the shrine and its small museum are free to visit. Doshomachi is still lined with pharmaceutical company offices today, so the "medicine street" backdrop of the novella is a working district, not a preserved relic.

Stop 2: Former Konishi Residence, Doshomachi — the merchant house the story imagines

No building is confirmed as the literal Mozuya house, but the Former Konishi Residence (旧小西家住宅), a block from the shrine, is the closest thing Doshomachi has to seeing that world firsthand. Completed in 1903 for the Konishi family's medicine business — the forerunner of today's Konishi Co. — it's one of the few merchant houses on the street to survive both wartime bombing and the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake essentially intact, and is now a nationally designated Important Cultural Property.

• Getting there: Kitahama Station, about 1 minute on foot.
• Good to know: Admission is free, but the house is viewable by advance reservation only, arranged through Konishi Co.'s own website — not a walk-in stop, so plan ahead if you want to see the interior rather than just the exterior.

Practical travel notes

• Best time to visit: Any season — both stops are compact and mostly street-level, and combine easily with a visit to nearby Kitahama or the Nakanoshima riverside.
• Base yourself in: central Osaka — Doshomachi is a few minutes' walk from both Kitahama and Yodoyabashi stations on the Midosuji Line.
• Language: shrine and street signage is Japanese-first with some English; the Konishi Residence reservation process is primarily in Japanese.
• The book itself: the standard English translation, titled A Portrait of Shunkin, is by Howard Hibbett, collected in Seven Japanese Tales.