Tanizaki Jun'ichirō: The Makioka Sisters (Sasameyuki)

 Often I pause to wonder of the author, "I wonder what he was thinking," but I cannot recall ever before wondering, "What was he thinking?!?" in quite the way I did after finishing this book.  I was worried at first about finding myself in the midst of another Buddenbrooks, just a story of the inevitable decline of a family, the unsustainability of the status quo, and a bunch of generally unpleasant people.  Gradually I unclenched, however, and began to trust the author to do right by these charming characters.  Each had her faults, of course, but thoroughly realistic ones, subtle, forgivable, and human.  Each of them was simply being herself, inconvenient though that made life at times.  Though Sachiko was clearly the protagonist, I found myself rooting for Taeko.  No doubt my Western paradigm conditions me to applaud her pointedly Western virtues. True to his Japanese roots, Tanizaki was not telling a story so much as painting a picture, and it was lovely and comfortable.

And then things turned.  The third section so abruptly shifted in tone and trajectory that I wondered if I was missing something.  Was this even the same book?  Were these even the same people?  The pace seemed to quicken, the narration grew offhanded, and it seemed like the author had grown tired of writing it.  Yukiko's traditional virtues grew from troublesome to infuriating.  Taeko was turned from an independent, capable, modern woman into nearly a whore. The trust I had developed for the author was shattered, and I braced for a melodramatic, cynical bloodbath.  I should have been so lucky!  The only ending the reader is given is a bowel movement.  

What could possibly have happened? What on Earth could have occurred between the writing of the first two sections in 1943 and the third in 1948?  If only there were something in history that could reveal why the author so completely reversed his opinion on the various Eastern and Western qualities on display in the book.  It is conjecture, of course, to suppose that such a thing could explain the sudden shift.  Perhaps he intended all along to end by literarily shitting on everything.  Perhaps nothing changed at all in Japan during that time and I'm reading too much into it.  We may never know.