The Makioka Sisters (Tanizaki Junichiro)

The Makioka Sisters concerns "an old and once-important family" (Tanizaki 8). The novelist writes, "The best days for the Makiokas had lasted perhaps into the mid-twenties. Their prosperity lived now only in the mind of the Osakan who knew the old days well" (8). There are four sisters; with the death of their parents, the husband of the oldest daughter has become head of the family and adopted the Makioka name. The sisters are Tsuruko (born around 1901, married to a bank employee), Sachiko (two years younger and married to Teinosuke, an accountant), Yukiko (born about 1907), and Taeko (born about 1911). The unmarried sisters live with Sachiko and Teinosuke between Osaka and Kobe, ignoring the tradition that should have kept them with the

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ead of the family, Yukiko and Taeko do not follow tradition. They, even the seemingly docile and traditional Yukiko, have minds of their own. The family attempts to bend Yukiko to its will in the choice of a husband, but she finds strength in herself to hold out for a match that is better suited to her, risking remaining unmarried (and consequently dooming Taeko to spinsterhood as well, though Taeko will try to keep to the custom that prevents her own wedding until Yukiko is wed). The "incident of the newspaper" in which Taeko's youthful indiscretion became public fodder made the Makiokas' private affairs a matter of historical record. The fact that the newspaper initially attributed the indiscretion to Yukiko increased the family's embarrassment and complicated Yukiko's marriage prospects. In the Japan of just a generation or two earlier, families could have investigated each other with much more discretion, interviewing members of the community and getting to know the potential marriage partners from firsthand witnesses. By the time of the novel, however, modern methods include hiring impersonal private investigators and researching the newspaper archives. Computer dating is only a step away. Tanizaki began his novel in th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1893
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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