Born in 1886 in Kakigaracho, Nihonbashi Ward, Tokyo, into a middle-class merchant family. He went from the Prefectural First Middle School to the First Higher School and on to the Japanese literature course of Tokyo Imperial University, but left for non-payment of tuition. In 1910 he launched the second 'Shin-shicho' coterie magazine and published his first stories 'Shisei' (The Tattooer) and 'Kirin,' winning extravagant praise from Nagai Kafu. In his early years he was known as a Western-leaning aesthete, depicting perverse longing for women and masochistic beauty in 'Naomi' (1924–25). The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 drove him to Kansai, after which he returned in earnest to Japanese classical beauty, producing 'Quicksand' (1928–30), 'Some Prefer Nettles' (1928–29), 'A Portrait of Shunkin' (1933), 'In Praise of Shadows' (1933–34), and more. From 1943 to 1948 he completed the vast novel 'The Makioka Sisters' — hailed as a pinnacle of postwar literature. He continued with 'The Key' (1956) and 'Diary of a Mad Old Man' (1961–62). He died at his Yugawara home in 1965, aged 79.

His entire work is driven by an uncompromising obsession with beauty — above all female beauty, traditional beauty, and darkness. He had the suppleness to swing from Western enthusiasm to the Japanese classical, a sensibility that deepened rather than faded with age, and a passionate heart that could catch fire in love again and again. He married three times, and his 1930 'cession of the wife' to his friend Sato Haruo also scandalized the literary world.

The summit of the aesthete and 'return to Japan' school of modern Japanese literature, whose influence on Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and later generations was decisive. 'The Makioka Sisters,' 'A Portrait of Shunkin,' 'Naomi,' and 'In Praise of Shadows' are still widely read abroad. In 1964 he was the first Japanese elected honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize. The Tanizaki Junichiro Memorial Museum in Ashiya, Hyogo, preserves his life.