The Makioka Sisters

.Wood; Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and The Remains of the Day; these are the books you’ll find lining store shelves. Every now and then, you might come across something profound, like Miyamoto Musashi’s written martial arts doctrine in The Book of Five Rings.

Though his writing has more in common with the former than the latter, Tanizaki’s name doesn’t come up often enough. Born in 1886, Junichiro Tanizaki wrote and published over two dozen books,

Facing Pages. Stock photos.

1. Book cover image of Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters.

2. Geisha in Kyoto, Japan.

Words often only have the meaning that we attribute to them. For instance, did you know that the word “gay” can mean cheerful and lively? Gay is how Tanizaki described one of the scenes in his book, The Makioka Sisters. And while it would probably puzzle most readers today, it wouldn’t have been out of place back in 1943, when the book was published. That’s nearly a thousand years after the world saw the publication of Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji at the dawn of the 11th century — one of the first novels ever written.

Despite this crowning achievement, most readers are more likely to be familiar with modern writers like Haruki Murakami and Kazuo

Ishig uro Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, and Norwegian along with numerous noteworthy poems. He penned his final one, The Maids, just a few years before his death in 1965. Tanizaki lived through both world wars and the turmoils that unfolded on his own home soil. He’s considered amongst the most prominent Japanese authors, right up there with the likes of Murasaki Shikibu and Haruki Murakami.

Had it not been for some of his later works, however, Tanizaki’s endeavors as a writer could have gone well under the radar. Known as Sasameyuki in Japanese, and translated literally as “falling snow,” The Makioka Sisters is one of the key novels to solidify Tanizaki’s status in the pantheon of great writers of the world. It centers on a once noble family who lost their fortunes after the passing of the father. Now, their greatest predicament lies in the hope of wedding the second youngest sister, Yukiko, to hopefully improve their societal standing.

While arranged marriage is shunned in most of western civilization, the practice is still prevalent in many cultures. It’s commonplace in Asia, the Middle East, and various regions in Africa. Tanizaki’s story sets the stage with the so-called miai, an arrangement between two families to introduce the prospective husband and wife. Think of it as a blind date, but in the end, you must marry the other person. Both families meet over food and drink and discuss the prospects of them joining forces, so to speak.

It’s more so a business arrangement, rather than a relationship based on feelings. One side would improve its financial standing, while the other would have the honor of adding the still-relevant Makioka name to their family tree. However, at no point is Yukiko forced to agree to a marriage, and the decision to do so rests entirely on her. Though she comes off as timid, Yukiko doesn’t hold back her disinterest, or disdain, for potential partners. Her resolute character gives the book a lighter tone during moments of utmost seriousness.

But Yukiko’s hesitancy to marry leaves room for rebellious acts by her younger sister, Taeko. Custom demands that women may only marry in order of age. Meaning, Taeko is stuck with secretive relationships for as long as Yukiko remains single. As you can probably imagine, Taeko does everything in her power to go against tradition. She indulges in constant affairs that more often than not put her and the family in hot water. Her character brings a dose of harmless youthful rebellion to the story as her actions often clash with Japanese tradition at the time.

Said tradition is represented by the eldest Makioka sister, Tsuruko, and her husband, Tatsuo, both of whom seldom make an appearance in the story. Instead, they’re more of a nagging reminder for Yukiko, as well as Taeko, that they should behave in the best interest of their family. While the book’s premise centers around Yukiko, the story doesn’t give any one character too much of a spotlight. Initially, it comes as a detriment because many characters are introduced all at once and it’s difficult to evaluate the importance of the role they play.

Thankfully, as the story progresses, Tanizaki constantly juggles between characters, giving each one a well-deserved chapter. Soon enough, you come to understand their motivations, their character and, more importantly, their intentions. Torn between duty to her family and love for her siblings, Sachiko, the second eldest sister, acts as a kind of liaison. Many events are conveyed from her perspective. She understands and respects tradition, yet often comes at odds with it due to her almost motherly demeanor toward her younger siblings.

The story takes place over five years, between 1936 and 1941. Yukiko attends multiple miai during this time, all the while being jeopardized by Taeko’s irresponsibility. Understandably, Yukiko also grows increasingly weary as time goes by without a suitable groom. She’s getting older and her “market value” in the eyes of the opposite gender is decreasing. It’s a relatable story, one that gives weight to each character’s actions and decisions. Do you sacrifice your own integrity for the sake of tradition? Or ignore tradition to maintain your sense of self?

It is easy to dismiss The Makioka Sisters as a nostalgic depiction of pre-WWII Japanese empire, celebrating the world of its females. Tanizaki’s elaborately painted details of their activities, their outfits, cooking, and hobbies would tend to suggest that. But at another level, the novel can also be taken as a political statement.

Anthony Hood Chambers, a scholar and translator of Japanese literature, finds ample protest against new Japan’s militancy in the novel. The scarecly mentioned “rustic samurai” become conspicuous by their absence. More so when other major events of the time, such as The Great Hanshin Flood of 1938, are liberally featured by Tanizaki. This goes with the sheen of nostalgic remembrance in the novel’s lush descriptions, and the theme of hanging on to, well, the hangings and leavings of a past from which his world is moving on.

Tanizaki’s detestation of the samurai is also mirrored in his open denigration of Tokyo in the novel. Instead, he finds the Kansai, Japan’s historical cultural center in the prewar era, much more attractive. Similarly, the world created around the four Makioka sisters is completely divorced from the ultranationalism that was encouraged, expected and even forcefully imposed during the time Tanizaki wrote the novel.

A delightful illustration of this is when one of the sisters is reading the newspaper at breakfast in what is wartime chronologically. But she merely looks up from the paper and says, “It is autumn.” The novel is full of such clever dismissals of everything the new Tokyo and Japan’s military were supposed to represent, so much that it did not escape the disapproval of military censors. According to their report, the novel “goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.”

In this way, the novel takes an important slot in Japan’s literature, serving as the country’s secret history between 1936 and 1941. It devises the Makioka microcosm as that cozy place undisturbed by the flood and the bigger city’s dirt and grime, a place where you can hold on to all that we best about the emperor era while also welcoming the good from the new era’s updated value system represented by Yukiko and Taeko’s personal defiances of the old system’s caginess.

Chiba Shunji, Professor Emeritus in Japanese literature at Waseda University, finds the novel structurally similar to emaki, the scroll paintings from China and Japan. Emaki, traditionally viewed, create a sense of time and episode since the panels are revealed as you roll open the scroll. Apart from a similar sense of flow of time, The Makioka Sisters is also more concerned with the episodic nature of the slowly changing lives of these sisters. There is no overarching plot leading to a particular ending here. Predicaments last only as long as the characters are prepared to endure them. And brief moments of joy are interspersed to give them a well-deserved reprieve from whatever life might be preparing them later.

Using the unique features of his language, Tanizaki creates a fluid sense of perspective, with the shadow narrator able to close in or distance from any character at whim, or shift perspectives even in a single line. Another structural similarity is to the drawing technique that shows both the interiors and exteriors of a room at the same time. Tanizaki’s able to capture a character’s interior and exterior in the same way, creating a pictorial sense of time. He began writing this novel right after his translation of The Tale of Genji, which was first noticed for employing this drawing technique. This ties the novel deeply with that prototype for novels of the world, completing the cycle of the good of the new merging with the good of the past.

“Naval mine warfare map of Imperial Japan during World War Two Naval mine warfare map of Imperial Japan during World War Two, Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Museum, Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, July 2015: The U.S. laid 10,703 mines (coded yellow) mostly in the Inland Sea and on the Japan Sea coast; while Japan laid 55,347 (coded gray) around its core empire (Japan, Korea, Taiwan).”

Image shared by Joel Abroad, Flickr, CC BY SA NC 2.0

“Utagawa Kuniyoshi 1797-1862 was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints he is associated with the Utagawa school. This print 1820 circa is the right hand side of a diptych of Actors Onoe Kikugoro (R) and Ichikawa Ebizo (L)aA aAVertical A’ban diptych; 36.5 x 50.7 cm.

There is a copy in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” Stock Photo.

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