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Junichiro Tanizaki was one of Japan's greatest twentienth century novelists. Born in 1886 in Tokyo, his first published work - a one-act play - appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region and became absorbed in Japan's past. All his most important works were written after 1923, among them Some Prefer Nettles (1929), The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi (1935), several modern versions of The Tale of Genji (1941, 1954 and 1965), The Makioka Sisters, The Key (1956) and Diary of a Mad Old Man (1961). He was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949 and in 1965 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese writer to receive this honour. Tanizaki died later that same year.
On the eve of war the Makioka family, representative of an old merchant class, found themselves on the financial and social decline. Their initial refusal to recognize this is proclaimed by a finicky attitude to the marriage proposals for the hand of Yukiko, now thirty. She is the epitome of Japanese womanhood-fragile, silent and obedient. She rejects the Western mannerisms and ideals of the youngest sister, Tacko, who is waiting impatiently for Yukiko's marriage so that her own secret, unacceptable, liaison might be acknowledged. The two live at the house of Schiko, the third sister, whose concern and love prevent her from forcing them to abide by tradition and live at the house of the eldest sister, Tsuroko, who has now moved to Tokyo- away from the pressure of pretense, away from tradition and away from the responsibility of ruling the collateral branches of the Makioka family. As the nubility of Yukiko, and therefore her younger sister, decreases, desperate recuperative measures are taken at the expense of protocol and honor. A suitable man is found just as Taeko's illegitimate pregnancy threatens to invalidate the preparations. All ends well, however. Poised and perceptive, the book expresses similar themes of the previous book Some ?? Nettles - dying tradition and dying aristocracy. (Kirkus Reviews)
