BOOK REVIEW - Junichiro Tanazaki - The Makioka Sisters

I'm reaching the end of my year of Japanese novel reading. Its been a mixture of the inspiring, the informative and the frankly infuriating. When it comes to the latter The Makioka Sisters is a perfect example of a cetain type of mid-twentieth century Japanese novel.  Everything is described by its surface, emotions are restrained and reserved. Its as if the human tendency towards melodrama had flatlined. Previous works by Tanazaki I've greatly enjoyed. He has a mischievous, dry and ironic sense of the absurdities, as well as the beauties, of traditional 'Old Japan'. So if you were to skim the storyline of The Makioka Sisters you'd think this might be fertile ground for Tanazaki to find gold in. That it isn't, leaves this novel as nearly five hundred pages devoid of wit, humour, or in fact much happening at all.

Whilst not being imitative of Chekov, its clear that The Makioka Sisters is something of a Japanese homage to the spirit of The Three Sisters. Because here we too have three provincial sisters, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko. except everyone wants to stay in Osaka, no one wants to go to the big city, to dreary, dirty Tokyo.  The Makioka family used to have standing socially but has fallen on harder times. Though they are no longer able to cut the social mustard, they behave as if they still do. The modern world is passing them by, as they try not to play catch up. Of the three, only Sachiko is married, but as the eldest it falls to her to ensure the traditional process is followed and that the second eldest Yukiko is next to get married.

Unfortunately, Yukiko is now in her early thirties and they worry that she is a bit old to still be in the marraige market. If they don't find a suitable match soon, the shame of perpetual spinsterhood and dependency on the family will descend. Yukiko, has all the presence of someone who is constantly absent, her feelings and motives remaining essentially unknowable for the entire length of the novel. You neither love or hate her. Its as though she's become this empty vessel, a blank pawn in a very long game of chess. Her younger sister Taeko, by comparison is a free spirit who wants to make her own way in life, chose her own lovers and resist playing the marriage game. There are, however, tragic consequences to the choices that she makes.

That is it really as far as the storyline goes. There are passages of brilliant descriptive writing, such as the torrential rain and flooding in the centre of the story, and (spoiler alert ) a couple of death scenes. But these are brief blips, amid acres of not a lot going on of any import. I suspect there is much that could be labelled 'metaphor' in this novel, but this has not been heightened enough. The period the novel is set in is in the years leading up to Pearl Harbour.  The China Incident where Japan stages a proto-invasion of the Chinese mainland is a brief passing reference. The closeness of Nippon-Nazi relations is seen obliquely through the Stoltz family who live next door. That none of this impinges upon the Makioka obsessive pursuit of marrying Yukiko off, speaks volumes about Japanese insularity at this time.  They are literally living in another world to everyone else.

There are also countless incidences of someone in the family falling ill, or they suspect to be ill, or is a bit off colour, who then cossets themselves away until the often vaguely identified malady passes. Then there is the constant worry about that small spot above Yukiko's eye, will the appearance of this blemish spoil her marriage chances? To be followed by weeks of costly injections to eliminate, or at least reduce it in size. The body and the body politic have both become dis-eased.

Its a small fading world they live in, which is at times extremely petty, which Tanazaki relishes describing in minute detail. That the Makioka's are in some way cyphers for the Japanese malaise pre-war is pretty clear. There is, however, a difficulty for the Western reader of Japanese novels, there is frequently no sense of his characters engaging in any internal reflection.  'Internal dialogue' just doesn't happen, so you don't understand and hence never reach either hatred or empathy for these people. They are all a bit bland and featureless, with little sense for a mood or period. What's really going on within this family remains a disinteresting puzzle.

One has to remain wary when reading any Japanese novel in translation, as your impressions of its value are entirely dependent upon the skill or otherwise of the translator. Converting an ideographic script into coherent English sentence structures must be inherently an unfeasible task. Murakami, when he reads the translation of his novels writes to the translator congratulating them on the book they've written, he no longer sees it as being composed by him anymore. Tanazaki's writing style I sense may have been let down by Edward G. Seidensticker's translation of it. I may of course be wrong and this really is one of the most tedious books I've ever read. But that it maybe the translation that is at fault is, for me, indicated by the last line of The Makioka Sisters, where Yukiko has finally found herself a husband and is travelling to Tokyo for her future marriage and life. This disingenuous sentence bears something of Tanazaki's trademark wryness and sense for irony. More like this and I'd have found this an enjoyable thing to read, instead of a bit of a drag.

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

What a way to end a novel!