Naomi is a comic and unsettling novel set in Tokyo in the early twentieth century. Joji, a steady engineer, takes a teenage café girl named Naomi into his home, intending to educate her and shape her into an ideal modern wife. As she grows up, fond of Western fashion, dancing and fun, the balance between them begins to shift. The story, told by Joji himself, looks with irony at infatuation, vanity and Japan's enthusiasm for Western ways, and it remains one of Tanizaki's best-known early works.