Analysis of The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Junichiro

The story begins around 1937; the novelist is wraithlike about fixing exact dates in his narrative until ofttimes later in the story. The family is evaluating the latest in a retentive series of marriage prospects for Yukiko. Initially, delays in finding a adequate preserve were the result of the Makiokas' exacting standards. More recently, however, the sister herself has been the bother: "The shy, introverted Yukiko, unable though she was to open her mouth in front strangers, had a hard core that was difficult to reconcile with her unpatterned docility" (10). The novel follows the affairs of the Makiokas through the spring of 1941 when they at extreme secure a husband for the third sister contempt numerous family difficulties--floods, financial setbacks, and private scandal.

Tanizaki, born in 1886 in capital of Japan, moved after the 1923 earthquake to the Kyoto-Osaka region, where he sets much of the do of The Makioka Sisters and where he came to revere the traditions of Japan's past. In his narrative, Tokyo represents the impersonal chief city where customs and the family name are lost in the crowds. For Sachiko in particular, who serves as the spiritual center of the family, "Tokyo boded ill . . . Tokyo was the devil's corner" (497). Though the ongoing efforts to secure a husband for Yuchiko provide the storyline's consistent thread, Tanizaki shows about events through Sachiko's eyes, which makes the narrative sooner accessible. Something of a meddler, Sachiko nevertheless

crowd together Fujii, in Complicit Fictions, seeks a literary perspective from which works much(prenominal) as this should be analyzed "by rereading selected Nipponese texts, not as efforts to emulate European realism but as narrative acts inscribed with historical particulars very much their ingest" (xi; the emphasis is Fujii's). His primary contention is that "texts constitute history" (40), and The Makioka Sisters provides provoke examples of this.

Japanese Prose Narrative. Berkeley: U of California, 1993.

That the president of an insurance company, thirty-five, unmarried, and the owner of a bonny mansion, should marry a woman sort of without roots, a vagabond about whose family and breeding he knew nothing . . . Japanese common sense would simply not permit it . . .

It would be a mistake to compare a White-Russian refugee with a monastical lady from an old Osaka family. But how ineffectual they all seemed in comparison with Katharina (387)!

The novel is set against recent history which its creator observed firsthand. Tanizaki paints a quiet, careful picture of domestic life story in which centuries-old traditions appear to blend seamlessly with modern life. The three younger sisters (Tsuruko, the oldest, is only a secondary character) symbolize this synthesis very neatly: "Each had her special beauties, and they set one some other off most effectively. Still they had an unmistakable something in common--what fine sisters! one immediately thought . . . Yukiko was the most Japanese in appearance and dress, Taeko the most Western, and Sachiko stood midway between" (29-30). Sachiko's home, where they all touch sensation most comfortable, is primarily Japanese but includes Western-style rooms. Yukiko, the most traditional, speaks face and French and understands Western music better than Japanese, while Taeko, the quite modern "rebel" of the family, nonetheless studies classical dance and doll-making.

has a good heart and lively supply of common sense.

Tanizaki most clearly conveys
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