Asian Literature

There are so many overlapping themes of the intimacies of human relations presented in Tanizaki Junichiro’s finest novel, The Makioka Sisters, particularly that of the portrayal of women.  To help us decipher some of the symbolic-allegorical intent of the author that will reveal some of its underlying themes, it will be of value to look into the characters of the four Makioka sisters.

Although written during World War II by Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (which in Japanese is titled Sasameyuki and translates as ‘A Light Snowfall’) was set in the early 1930s and depicts in realistic manner the tragicomic rituals and domestic trials of a deteriorating bourgeois Osaka merchant family over the five-year period leading through the exigencies of the Pacific War.  After their parents’ demise, the elder sisters Tsuruko and Sachiko attempt to find a husband for the still unmarried Yukiko, in compliance to their parents’ request to continue the family tradition.  The youngest, Taeko, an independently-minded woman and the type who is not to be restricted by customary mores, will only be able to get married once marriage is settled for the third sibling.

The third of the four siblings, Yukiko manifests an inwardly stubborn though outwardly passive persona yet with admirable strength of intention as to why she think she is doing what is right and good after all in her decision-making.  Such tension, which covers almost the whole arc of the novel, appears not likely the kind of theme that can sustain interest for a contemporary Western feminine consciousness.  Nonetheless, there is a process of identification among readers that is taking place as layers and layers of events and themes unfold.  

Appreciation of women as cultural shift to male-dominated society  
As is slowly and gradually developing in The Makioka Sisters, the four sisters’ struggles with life trials as they attempt to marry off the reticent Yukiko are embedded with a serious challenge to authority, however.  In many situations provided in the novel, the Makioka sisters each knew exactly what she aspire to achieve and went about obtaining it with compelling self-determination.  For instance, the character of Yukiko, easily considered by many to be the quintessential Japanese heroine in demeanor, dress, and artistic achievements – was unwilling to give in to the pressure set by her increasing age and obligation to enter wedlock; but determined to manipulate everyone from her shadowy retreat.  Her being silent in most occasions that her family finds a match for her, Yukiko discreetly mastered calligraphy and samisen, and even devoted time to look after her little niece.  While not relinquishing her feminine role, she expressed it when she finds that it is good and fit.  This is by all account one of Tanizaki’s symbolic approaches to hide his attempt at challenging his nation’s militaristic, male-dominated culture by parodying his country’s obsession with ritual.

Although it was assumed that Yukiko attempted not to heed with his parents’ imposed obligation for her to marry, however, near the story’s end she will finally get to release her smile of assent to the man presented to him, the kind who matches Yukiko in several aspect of his lifestyle and interests.  Apparently, she only exercised her right with admirable strong will to carry out her own definition of the good.  Through contrasting characters of the four Makioka sisters, Tanizaki projects his unequivocal and loving admiration and respect and portrayal of the world of women by writing women in all points of their femininity and psychology: weaknesses, strengths and even sexuality.  This may easily be considered Tanizaki’s approach to refute any stereotype of the Japanese women and go beyond the customary attitude espoused by traditions and culture towards women as inferior and unworthy of serious attention.  Even more surprising is the way Tanizaki have drawn not even one “obedient” woman among the major characters.

Admiration and endearment by man for a woman
Sachiko, the second oldest married sibling among three other Makioka sisters, has the feminine traits easily admired and cherished by a man.  The way her human complexity was portrayed by Tanizaki renders her above other portraits of women created by the author from among his female characters in his other body of works.  From various events and occasions in the novel, Sachiko reveals her capacity to express sympathy and affectionate feelings, respect customs, show outward sensibilities, and project intense femininity.  She is also capable, above all, to vocalizing her prejudices, her pride and her dependence on those around her.  
 
By the heap of details and information put on her character by Tanizaki, coupled with her husband’s response to her, Sachiko’s character turns out satisfying to look at because there is an air of believability in her that shows the author’s deep understanding of her as a woman.  Tanizaki understood exactly, in turn displayed a fond appreciation and acceptance for Sachiko’s domestic preoccupations – her anxieties and frantic behavior in making the matches for the reticent Yukiko, planning for the family’s dining reception out, or selecting the right kimono appropriate for the cherry blossom kimono viewing.

For all these endeavors, it easily cast no doubt that Sachiko’s determination and hard work were geared toward the building of a rich interior space, easily appreciated then by her husband in the novel.  From  these standpoint, the woman portrayed by Tanizaki is and can be truly be endeared to man, increasing any possibility that such endearment will be fair and mutual – a truly contemporary feminist ideal that may be considered.

The Pulls of Past and Present, East and West civilization
Tanizaki explores the theme of a past or civilization that people never easily let go easily.  In a deliberately-pronounced manner, before the end of the novel, when the world is leading toward the atrocities of war, the Makiokas are depicted looking back at the past when life was simple and slow however.  To preserve and to retain the old fashioned way of life, the four sisters engage in many activities that connect them to the yesterday like cherry-blossom viewing, walking for pilgrimages to Nara in spring and participating in firefly hunts.  

New or modern ideologies from the West were depicted through the character of Taeko who represents a kind of modern independent woman – whose trials Tanizaki never unsympathetically treated.  The 1930s-set era by the author was interspersed with many elements coming from the cosmopolitan West with the set of customs found from the East, such as the frequent visit by the Makiokas to Western theater apart from what they often did to Kabuki.

The ebb and flow of life from West (Tokyo) to the East (Osaka) and vice versa was realized through some literary device that brings the setting from these locations to and fro with compelling beauty.  Tokyo was also made to represent the Western present, and Osaka, the Eastern past, then circling back between the two to reconcile the struggles of the past and present on many levels.  In the novel, that struggle was represented well when the best of Yukiko’s clothes and cuisine are becoming poorer with each successive meeting with her suitors and as the war escalates, suggesting that the Makiokas can no longer to take part in the traditional cherry blossom viewing, and can hardly hold on to the ideal world they once cherished and embraced.  

As a woman evoking the image of noble ladies of the by-gone period, Yukiko and her name suggests the declining Japanese traditional culture.  When she get married to an engineer, which during that period was considered improper for the elite members of the society like the aristocracy, such event was remarkable since major social changes are occurring in Japan after the end of the war.  Then on the final scene in which she suffers from a bout of diarrhea on her way to the wedding ceremonies, such scene symbolizes Japan’s weakening and contaminated traditions and culture in the aftermath of the war.

With the yearnings of Yukiko in trying to control the progress of Taeko’s modernist inclinations, Tanizaki portrayed the clash of the past and present.  Tanizaki’s linear and traditional rendering of the world in this novel was in fact part of his idealism of a life and culture that had been destroyed. The author agonize a world that no longer existed.

Yet it is with the unbending law of time that he is able to envelop that crumbling and declining world brought about by the Pacific War.  In order to do this, he wrote The Makioka Sisters during such time when Japan is succumbed to the maddening War years of the 1940s, but setting the novel in the 1930s, completely removing the war from the concerns of this literature.  It is said that the aim for this is for Tanizaki to make the real world into a fictional one where there is no war but an ideal kind of life of esthetic sensibility that the author believed would be no more.  His patient holding up to the what-have-been was portrayed by Yukiko in spite of the ill manner by which the cultural values and norms of the war years was slowly disintegrating and leaving Japan.

In this monumental piece of work, Tanizaki impresses his resistance to a particular, dominant culture of his time.  Though the characters he created, even how contrastingly different any of the sisters from the other, they all contain a certain criticism of modern civilization, teaching a particular lesson about how the infatuation with anything Western-style or Western-like things should not be confused with the traditional, conventional Eastern civilizations, which altogether foment Tanizaki’s desire to de-emphasize the modern, Western-influenced civilizations.

The Makioka Sisters casts an extensive view of the old and new Japan projected through the many characters that populate this lengthy work of art and the situations that shape their lives.  Tanizaki’s characters, particularly the four Makiokas, are highly contrasted from whatever their modern counterparts would be, for they are more conscious and aware of their statuses and dignity in life.  
In the final analysis, the novel is Tanizaki’s ode to an era or civilization that is constantly on the brink of either being engulfed by new, more powerful traditions or cultures.  Through the female characters – both the weak and strong ones – the novel highlights the constant struggles of the modern and old times, but Tanizaki find ways to treasure the ideal life in the past and let go of the tragic and ill events that happened (e.g., flood, scandal, family dishonor, death) yet leave memories of mysterious beauty.  From the critical analysis of the themes, characters and organizational structure of one of the most important contemporary Japanese literature, this writer have been able to show that The Makioka Sisters is a rich, multi-faceted novel that is allegory-metaphorical laden that attempts at drawing the two worlds of Japan – the old and new, the Eastern and Western, through the four female characters with often contrasting attributes and personalities.  This paper significantly provides a glimpse of the kind of life lived by the early Japanese people and how the currents of the modern world may continue to alter and change the ways of this world beyond our control.