This paper is an analysis of The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Junichiro, using suggestions by James Fujii from his book Complicit Fictions as a way of examining the text, particularly as a historical chronicle and reflection. The story moves from 1937 to 1941; the novel itself was started in 1943 and finished in 1948. These were years of stunning transformation for Japan. While major historical events do not play significant parts in the much smaller personal episodes of Tanizaki's story, they provide its inescapable backdrop. Tanizaki records the radical changes occurring in Japanese society just before World War II as they affect one family, and his tale also captures his own post-war sense of longing for a past irretrievably gone.
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 head of the family. The story begins around 1937; the novelist is vague about fixing exact dates in his narrative until much later in the story. The family is evaluating the latest in a long series of marriage prospects for Yukiko. Initially, delays in finding a suitable husband were the result of the Makiokas' exacting standards. More recently, however, the sister herself has been the problem: "The shy, introverted Yukiko, unable though she was to open her...