The Makioka Sisters (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki, Light Snow), first published in 1948, was written by Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965). Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters after translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and the Murasaki novel is said to have influenced his own. It tells of the declining years of the once powerful Makioka family and their last descendants, four sisters. It has been translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957. Powerfully realistic, it mourns the passing of greatness while celebrating in wonderfully evocative detail the beauty of a particular time and place, Osaka in the 1930s. In its creation of beauty out of sadness it can be compared to another family saga, The Maias (1888), by the Portuguese master E'a de Queiroz (1845-1900).

Why is this long book, largely concerned with trivial family procedures, one of the finest novels written? It is not concerned with great events, causes or philosophies. It has little concern with the war Japan was fighting with China, and then the USA, when the book was first published. Indeed its characters don't think about the war, and in a positive way, which doesn't trivialise their concerns at all (most people in fact don't think about the reasons for a war: perhaps it's better that way). This doesn't mean the book is escapist or superficial, just as the concern with women's lifestyle, dress, makeup, etiquette or social vanity make it something written just for women (books and films were once made - by men - to capitalise on what were considered women's 'little' concerns). Tanizaki does that wonderful thing a great artist can do, he finds the universal in the most exact examination of the particular, and makes a work of relevance to us all. Read another family saga, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) and my candidate for the greatest novel yet written (though I'm more than cynical about the word 'great') and marvel at the many routes artists find to the universal.

My review is impossibly partial: The Makioka Sisters is the most beautiful novel I've ever read. The language (translation) is so smooth and flowing, the characters and situations so gentle and muted, yet precise and meaningful, that reading the book is like seeing the universe in a drop of water - you see, which is moving, and awareness of where and how you see brings amazement and then a real pleasure.

In this beautiful book the characters have a greater degree of reality than many real people - Tanizaki is a great master of characterisation. I know more about them than I do about most of the people I know. It is done by the accumulation of enormous amounts of detail, but detail which, trivial though it may appear, is just right. The result is the creation of a most ethereal and delicate beauty, a lovely world crumbling to extinction yet all the more precious because of its inevitable passing away.

Sachiko, the second sister and her husband Teinosuke are that rare achievement, a convincing depiction of really good and admirable people, though in no way heroic. They are very ordinary people, but their goodness, their little troubles and worries, their faults, even weaknesses, all serve to charm and captivate. Of all the characters in the book these two are the loveliest. It is a real affirmation of humanity to have created two such kind and gentle and sensitive people, and to have made them so real and convincing.

The careworn life of Tsuruko (first sister), the hesitations of Yukiko (third sister), the unhappiness of Taeko (Koi-san, fourth sister) all gain from contrast with the stability and happiness of Sachiko and Teinosuke. And what an evocation of the old ways of Japan. Changing rapidly even as Tanizaki writes of them.

Detail by detail - Etsuko's games with the German girl Rosemarie, Itakura's leather coat, the 'old one', Koi-san's mimicry and mingled love and resentment of Yukiko...there are literally thousands of details. Teinosuke's love of Spring in his garden, the vitamin injections the sisters take, the forthrightness of Itani - all, everyone, is so precise, not random at all, chosen to evoke mood, reveal character, show milieu.

So powerful and evocative has the book been - yet nothing really happens, except to Koi-san. The war approaches, the old Japan changes, Yukiko gets married - unforgettable!

I've seen advertised a TV serialisation of The Makioka Sisters, but can't imagine how it could succeed. So much of the book's effect is through language. Visually, certain scenes stand out, such as the cherry blossom viewing or the flood. The narrative though is largely uneventful, small actions that dramatically and convincingly reveal a character's state of mind, early history or personality.

Written with love, a strong love of people and place, the book creates love in the reader. Because of Tanizaki I have loved Osaka in the late 1930s and have learned to treasure and respect its people. For those hesitating to undertake reading such a 'Japanese' work as The Makioka Sisters there is the perfect bridging novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru, 1995) by Haruki Murakami, which does mention the war - and Charlie Parker and 'hard-boiled' detective stories and Jungian archetypes and the surreal: a roller coaster of a novel and one of the best as well.

The war in Asia is already going on, and Pearl Harbor hovers on the horizon. The readers are very well aware of this, as was Tanizaki. The book was published between 1943 and 1948. To the Makioka sisters, the war is still very distant, though. The concerns that are urgent to them are of a more everyday character, not least important the matter of finding a suitable husband for Yukiko, who is past thirty. That we have this knowledge about the future will probably make the final chapters of the book seem heavy with irony to most readers.

The fortunes of the house of Makioka have been declining for some time. The junior branch, the family of Sachiko (the second sister) and her husband Teinosuke, nevertheless lead a comfortable upper middle class life near Osaka. The younger sisters prefer to stay with them. Sachiko is the center of the story, insofar as it is told mostly from her point of view. The events, however, revolve around the two younger sisters, Yukiko and Taeko. There is drama and some tragedy, but much of the book simply records fairly undramatic events in the lives of the Makiokas in the years leading up to the Pacific War. Above all, the story conjurs up a world that was already disappearing at the time of the story - and was soon to be in flames. I would describe the book as bittersweet.

To me, The Makioka Sisters was not exactly a page-turner. It took me more than a month to read all 530 pages. It was, however, a highly engaging book, beautifully told and easy too read. I never felt bored.

This story, primarily set in Osaka, spans a period of four years (from 1937 to 1941). This period, is a tumultuous period for Japan, and we view it from the perspective of one family. The Makioka is a family in decline and after the death of the parents, the husband of the eldest daughter adopts the Makioka name and becomes the head of the family. There are four sisters: the eldest is Tsuruko, married to Tetsuo (a bank employee); Sachiko, married to Teinosuke (an accountant); and the two unmarried sisters, Yukiko and Taeko, who live with Sachiko and Teinosuke.

Tradition dictates that Yukiko should be married before her younger sister, Taeko. Tradition also dictates that unmarried sisters should live with the head of the house. Some traditions, it seems, are easier to ignore than others. A number of attempts to marry off Yukiko fail: Yukiko herself, seemingly passive in many ways, exerts considerable influence from the shadows. Marriage to someone at some stage is seen as inevitable but Yukiko does not seem enthusiastic. In the meantime, Taeko is trying to live her own life.

This is an amazing novel. The shifts in fortune for the Makioka family, the changes within Japanese upper-class society, and the influences of the Western world all shape the story. On the face of it, this novel is about the minutiae of the lives of sisters during a period of four years. The turmoil of Taeko's life, the attempts to arrange a marriage for Yukiko and the challenges faced by the careworn elder sister Tsuruko with both social standing and family to maintain contrast with the comparative happiness of Sachiko's life. The detail of the lives of the sisters provides an intricate view of upper-class Osakan life immediately before World War II: tradition and obligation as well as moments of great beauty. Simply superb.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith