Reading post: The Makioka Sisters

I have finished my seventh book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Junichiro, published between 1943 and 1948. I chose it to fulfill category #10: Classic that's been on your To-Be-Read list the longest. This is the book that inspired my entire list for this year's Challenge, and it is the last book I will be reading by a Japanese author, written originally in Japanese. My five remaining books will be by Japanese Americans, written in English.

I was kind of dreading this book (530 pages in very small type), and it took me a few weeks to read. But I ended up loving it.

Tanizaki is a major Japanese author, but I don't think I had read anything by him until I read Devils in Daylight to add some context to my reading of The Honjin Murders, my previous Challenge book. Devils was OK, but nothing special. It is very difficult to see how the writer of that book was able to produce (some 25 years later) The Makioka Sisters.

(I should note that there's a film of the book -- I just put a hold on it at the library and hope to watch it next week when we're home from St. Louis.)

Tanizaki was born in 1886 and published his first short story in 1910. According to Wikipedia, he began writing The Makioka Sisters in the early 1940s, as Japan was going into World War II and the old traditional life was clearly ending. It is divided into three "books," and the first 13 chapters of Book 1 (out of 29) were published in two installments in 1943. The Japanese government then decided that the story was inappropriate and cancelled it. In consequence, the entirety of Book 1 was not published until 1946, Book 2 in 1947, and Book 3 in 1948. I don't know whether Tanizaki had written the whole thing when he started publishing it. Occasionally there seem to be continuity lapses, but not many.

Although the Japanese title translates better as "Lightly Falling Snow," the English title is perfect, since this is the story of the four Makioka sisters of Osaka, from the fall of 1936 to the spring of 1941. When the book begins, Tsuruko, the eldest, is probably about 38, married to a man who has taken the Makioka name, since there were no sons to carry on the family name, and with six children. Sachiko, the second daughter and from whose perspective we view the world, is about 34, married to a man who has also taken the Makioka name, and with one daughter. Yukiko, the third daughter, is about 30, and still unmarried -- finding her a husband is one of the book's major plot points. And Taeko, the fourth daughter, is about 26, also unmarried because Yukiko must be married first, although Taeko has been involved with someone since she was 19. While Yukiko is more traditional (usually wears kimono, is shy and retiring), Taeko is a very modern young woman -- always wears Western clothes, works, smokes, and goes out with men rather than waiting for her family to find suitable suitors. The family's troubles with Taeko are the other major plot point.

The sisters go through the year, celebrating special days, going to the theater, suffering from minor ailments, entertaining guests. Suitors are found for Yukiko, thoroughly investigated, interacted with, and then rejected. Taeko causes problems in various ways. There is a flood. There are serious illnesses, occasionally resulting in death. There are conflicts between the younger sisters and Tsuruko and her husband Tatsuo, who as the eldest are considered the heads of the family. The book never "takes off," it never changes pace. Some sections are more dramatic than others, but no matter what is going on, there is always mention of what they have for dinner, how tired someone is and how they must take a nap, what people wore, how hot or cold it is. In other words, the book is about as close to "real life" as anything I've ever read, probably as close as it's possible to come in a novel.

Here is the last sentence of the book:

Yukiko's diarrhea persisted through the twenty-sixth, and was a problem on the train to Tokyo.

Have you ever read a 530-page novel that ended like that? But it's so typical of the book. No grand summing up, nothing like that. Just another minor illness. Clearly, the Makioka sisters' lives are just going to keep rolling along. It's April 1941, and their world is soon to be upended, but you know that whatever happens, they will keep on having dinner (even if they have almost no food), suffering minor illnesses (even if there are no drugs available to treat them), thinking about what they're going to wear (even if it's a choice of this rag or that one).

After 100 pages or so of the book, I was worried. How would I ever finish something so boring? But by the end I was in love. And then it's so hard to say goodbye. I wanted Tanizaki to have written a sequel. According to Wikipedia, the character of Sachiko is based on his third wife Matsuko, who apparently also had three sisters like the Makiokas. So that explains how Tanizaki was able to even conceive of such a book. I am myself the third of four sisters, and the Makiokas rang true to me -- their love for each other intertwining with their irritation, the way their views of each other change and develop through the years, their absorption with each other. There is no one I think about more than my sisters.

Terrible, world-altering events are taking place while the Makioka sisters live their lives, and they are mentioned in passing, but no one pays a lot of attention. Sachiko's next-door neighbors are Germans who return to Europe partway through the book, and later she receives letters from the wife, Hilda, indicating that life in Germany is starting to be difficult, but Hilda is sure (in February 1941) it will all work out well. When the book ends, in April, Pearl Harbor is seven and a half months away. It's so interesting that Tanizaki ended the story where he did. In March, a character called Mrs. Itani takes a ship to the United States, saying she will only stay six months or so. I found myself wondering whether she made it back in time, or whether she ended up in an internment camp.

As I mentioned above, my last five books for this year's Classics Challenge will be by Japanese Americans, and I believe they all -- or almost all -- focus on how Japanese Americans were treated because of the war, because of Pearl Harbor, the effects of the internment camps, etc. I"m so curious to make the transition to those books, to see what if any connections I can make between the two bodies of literature (Japanese and Japanese American).

Post-note: I finally finished watching the film of The Makioka Sisters today (8/19/22). It was kind of a fun accompaniment to the book. The book is much better -- the film adds a ridiculous attraction between Sachiko's husband and Yukiko, plus it naturally has to cut the story way back. It might make a better miniseries than a film. I read that it was seriously underfunded by the studio, and that shows. Anything that would have been hard/expensive to film, such as the flood, has been omitted. But the acting is pretty good, although it's always a little hard to tell with a subtitled film. There was one scene, a dinner with one of Yukiko's suitors, that I thought was excellent, very funny, but much of the rest of it seemed too abbreviated. Still, it was fun to see the four sisters -- I thought the actresses were well chosen for their parts -- and the kimonos they wear are just beautiful. I'm glad I watched it.