The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  “I’m afraid not. It’s a French company, but the staff is almost entirely Japanese. Only two or three executives at the top are French.”

  “And you have no chance to speak French?”

  “When an M.M. ship comes in I have a little conversation practice, and that is the sum of it. Except of course for writing letters.”

  “Miss Yukiko is studying French too,” put in Itani.

  “Only to keep my sister company.”

  “And who is your teacher?” asked Itani. “Japanese? French?”

  “A French lady …”

  “… who is married to a Japanese,” Sachiko took up. Yukiko was never very talkative when she was out of the house, and she was especially helpless when the occasion demanded not the Osaka dialect, but standard Japanese. Her sentences had a way of never quite ending unless Sachiko rescued her. Sachiko herself had a little trouble bringing out exactly the right words, but she was able to disguise the more obvious features of her Osaka accent and talk with a certain fluency on almost any subject.

  “And can the lady speak Japanese?”

  “She couldn’t at first, but lately she has been learning, and now …”

  “… and now,” said Sachiko, “she is really too good. We’re forbidden to use Japanese when we’re having French lessons, but somehow we slip into it.”

  “I’ve listened to them from the next room and heard hardly a word of French,” said Teinosuke.

  “That is not true.” Sachiko slipped into the Osaka dialect in spite of herself. “We speak a great deal of French, and you cannot hear it.”

  “That’s so. Now and then you would say something in the tiniest whisper, and I suppose it was French. I doubt if you’ll improve at that rate. But I suppose that is always the way when ladies take up languages.”

  “It is very kind of you to say so. … But I do not spend all my time on French, you will remember. I learn any number of things from her when she uses Japanese—cooking and knitting and how to make French pastries and so on. You liked the cuttlefish the other day so well that you ordered me to go back to learn more. Have you forgotten?”

  Everyone was amused at this little tiff. MR. Murakami took the cuttlefish seriously, however, and Sachiko had to describe it in detail: a French way of cooking cuttlefish, she explained, with tomatoes and a touch of garlic.

  11

  SACHIKO noticed that Segoshi drank down whatever was poured for him. He was clearly a good drinker. Murakami seemed to be a teetotaler, and Igarashi, a flaming red from what little he had already drunk, waved the boy away each time he came around with a bottle. Teinosuke and Segoshi, on the other hand, were able to keep each other company. Neither showed the slightest sign of drunkenness. Itani had already told Sachiko that, while Segoshi of course did not drink every night, he liked his liquor, and, when the opportunity came, was always ready to drink his share. Sachiko was far from disapproving. She had lost her mother when she was very young, and she and her sisters had kept their father company when he had a drink with his dinner. All of them, beginning with Tsuruko, knew how to drink. Tatsuo and Teinosuke, the husbands of the two older sisters, were moreover in the habit of having a drink now and then, and it seemed to them all that a teetotaler would be a most unsatisfying husband. No one of course wanted to marry a drunkard, but a man who enjoyed an occasional drink seemed best. Although Yukiko had, it was true, never insisted that a prospective husband be a drinker, Sachiko suspected that her sister felt much as she did. Yukiko was not the sort to make her views known, and unless she had a husband who would drink with her she might well take to brooding. The husband for his part would be likely to find the silence depressing. In any case, the picture of Yukiko married to a teetotaler seemed unbearably dreary.

  “Suppose you have something to drink,” she whispered, hoping to bring Yukiko into the conversation. She motioned with her eyes to the glass of white wine, and now and then, by way of encouragement, had a sip of her own. “Would you pour her a little more, please?” she said to the boy.

  Yukiko too had noted what a good drinker Segoshi was. Thinking she should be a little more lively herself, she now and then took an unobtrusive sip of wine. Her feet were wet and cold from the rain, however, and the wine only made her dizzy.

  “You like white wine?” Segoshi asked.

  Yukiko laughed and looked at her plate.

  “One small glass or two,” said Sachiko. “But I’ve been very impressed, watching you. Do you know how much you could drink if you had to?”

  “A quart or two, I suppose, with no trouble.”

  “And do you do tricks when you’re drunk?” asked Igarashi.

  “I’m afraid I have no talents. I just talk more than usual.”

  “Miss Yukiko plays the piano,” said Itani. “They tell me the whole family likes foreign music.”

  “But not only foreign music,” Sachiko was quick to explain. “We had koto lessons when we were children, and lately I’ve been thinking I would like to learn again. Sometimes I take the koto out to see what I still remember. My youngest sister has started taking dancing lessons, you know, and I have any number of chances to hear the koto.”

  “Miss Taeko is taking dancing lessons, is she?”

  “Yes. Yamamura school. She seems so fond of foreign things, but lately she’s begun to go back to what she knew when she was a girl. She really handles herself very well—but then it’s only a matter of relearning, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know much about it,” said Igarashi, “but I think this Yamamura school is a fine thing. What we need to do is keep our Osaka arts, not imitate everything that comes in from Tokyo.”

  “The director—I’m sorry, Mr. Igarashi—Mr. Igarashi is very good at Utazawa singing. He’s been practicing for years.”

  “But the trouble with Utazawa,” interposed Teinosuke, “—of course it’s different when you are as good as Mr. Igarashi—is that when you first begin, you want an audience, and before long you’re spending your time at geisha houses where they’ll always listen to you.”

  “You’re quite right. That’s the trouble with Japanese music in general,” said Igarashi. “It isn’t for home consumption. But with me it’s different. On that point I’m as stiff and proper as the best of them. Isn’t that so, Murakami?”

  “As stiff as iron. The business is in your blood.”

  Igarashi laughed. “But there’s something I have to ask the ladies. That thing you all carry—a compact is it called. What is inside it? Just powder?”

  “Just powder,” said Itani. “Why?”

  “On a train about a week ago, the lady up wind from me—she was straight out of a fashion magazine—took out a compact and began patting away at her nose, and just then I had a fit of sneezing. Does powder do that sort of thing to you?”

  “There must have been something wrong with your nose. I’m not at all sure it was the powder.”

  “I would agree with you if it were only the one time, but I’ve had the same experience twice now.”

  “You must be right, now that I think of it,” put in Sachiko. “I’ve been sneezed at myself two or three times. The more elegant the powder the more it seems to make people sneeze.”

  “I’ve never had that experience,” said Mrs. Murakami. “I’ll have to try using more expensive powder.”

  “But it’s no laughing matter. We mustn’t let this go too far. Possibly we should have a law against powdering the nose when someone is sitting down wind. Mrs. Makioka has been kind enough to apologize, but the woman the other day ignored my sneezing.”

  “Speaking of trains,” said Sachiko. “My youngest sister says she always wants to go around yanking loose threads out of strange men’s coat lapels when she is on a crowded train.”

  Itani had felt much the same urge. “And I can remember how I used to want to pull the stuffing out of quilts when I was a girl.”

  “There’s something of that in all of us,” said Igarashi. “When I have a little to drink, I always want
to ring someone’s doorbell. Or I’m waiting for a train, and I want to press the button that says ‘Do not touch,’ and have to fight to keep myself away.”

  Itani sighed happily. “I have had fun this evening.” It seemed that even when the fruit was brought she had not yet talked enough. “Mrs. Makioka—not to change the subject, but have you noticed how young wives—of course you’re young yourself, but I mean younger wives, women in their early twenties who have only been married two or three years—have you noticed how clever and scientific young wives are these days—in managing their houses, and bringing up their children, and whatever they do? It makes me think how fast times are changing.”

  “That’s very true. The schools seem to teach them entirely different things from what I learned. I feel ages older when I talk to one of them.”

  “My niece, for instance, came in from the country, and I was told to watch over her while she was in school in Kobe. She got married not long ago, to a man who works in Osaka. He makes ninety yen a month, and with bonus and with thirty yen a month his family sends for the rent, I suppose he has, in all, a hundred fifty or sixty a month. I went to see how they were managing, and I found that as soon as they had the ninety yen they took out all sorts of envelopes marked ‘gas’ and ‘light’ and ‘clothes’ and ‘miscellaneous’ and so on, and set everything in order for the following month by dividing the money up in the envelopes. You can imagine how little they have to spare, but she was very clever about putting together a meal the night I was there. And the house is nicely furnished too, not nearly as shabby as you would expect. Of course there’s a certain amount of cheating involved. When I started home I gave her money to buy my ticket, but instead she bought a strip of tickets and kept the rest herself. I couldn’t help thinking what nonsense it was to say that I should be watching over her.”

  “Parents need more watching than children these days,” said Sachiko. “There’s a young wife near me. The other day when I stopped by to ask her something she made me come in. She had no maid, but everything was beautifully in order. I wonder if young wives all prefer Western clothes and have foreign furniture —anyway, this lady always wears foreign clothes. There was a perambulator in the middle of the room, and the baby tight inside. The mother asked me to take care of it for just a minute, and stepped out of the room. Not a minute later she was back with tea for me and warm bread and milk for the baby. And how would you like a cup of tea, she said, and no sooner had she sat down than she looked at her watch. It was time for Chopin. Did I like Chopin? She switched on the radio, and began feeding the baby. Entertaining the guest, listening to Chopin, getting the baby fed—she managed everything at once. It really seemed very clever of her.”

  “And the way they bring up children these days. That’s changed too,” said Itani.

  “The lady complained about exactly that. She said it was very nice of her mother to come to see the baby, but that just when she herself had finished teaching it not to want to be picked up, along would come the old lady to pick it up and hug it unmercifully, and the training would have to begin all over again.”

  “It does seem to be true, now that you mention it, that children cry less than they used to. I understand that once a child is old enough to get up by itself, the mother pays no attention when it falls. She walks on as though nothing had happened, and soon the child comes after her without a whimper.”

  In the lobby after dinner, Itani told Sachiko and Teinosuke that, if Yukiko did not mind, Segoshi would like to see her alone for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes. Yukiko agreed, and the others talked of nothing in particular while the two sat a little apart.

  “What did Mr. Segoshi have to say?” Sachiko asked as they were on their way home in a cab.

  “All sorts of things,” said Yukiko almost inaudibly. “And not really anything.”

  “I suppose he was testing you. He asked questions?”

  Yukiko did not answer. The rain had settled into a slow drizzle, as though the long spring rains were coming out of season. The wine seemed finally to be having its effect. She looked at the blurred confusion of headlights reflecting from the national highway.

  12

  “ITANI stopped by my office today,” Teinosuke said to Sachiko the following evening.

  “And why did she do that?”

  “She said she knew she should have gone to see you instead, but she had business in Osaka, and then she thought I might not be as slow as you.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  “It was good news for the most part. But we ought to go out where no one will hear us.” He led the way to his study.

  The others, it appeared, had stayed to talk for twenty or thirty minutes after the Makiokas left. Segoshi was extremely enthusiastic. He thought Yukiko’s appearance and manner quite as elegant as one could desire, but he also thought she looked rather delicate and he wondered if she might be ill. And when Itani’s brother had investigated Yukiko’s school record he had noticed that she was absent more often than normal. He too wondered whether Yukiko might not have been sickly in her school days. Teinosuke answered that he knew nothing about Yukiko’s bad school attendance, and that he would have to ask his wife and Yukiko herself, but he could assure Itani that in the years he had known her Yukiko had not been ill even once. It was true that she seemed delicate, that she was almost too slender, and that she could hardly be called robust. When it came to catching colds, however, he could say most positively that Yukiko had more resistance than any of her sisters. She was better able to stand a physical strain than anyone except the sister in Osaka. They were quite right, nevertheless, to suspect that her delicate appearance might be a sign of weak lungs, and indeed more than one person bad had the same misgivings before. Teinosuke would therefore talk to his wife, to Yukiko, and to the main house in Osaka, and urge them to put these doubts at rest by having a physical examination, and perhaps even an X-ray. Itani replied that his assurances were quite enough, that they need not go to such trouble. But Teinosuke insisted: it was better to have matters entirely in the open. They had not had a doctor’s report recently, and this would be a good occasion for one. They would feel better themselves, and so would the people in the main house, and Segoshi’s delight would no doubt be boundless when he had before him a photograph to show that there was not the faintest cloud on Yukiko’s lungs. Even if nothing were to come of the present negotiations, said Teinosuke to his wife, the X-ray would not be a waste of money. It would be evidence to present if similar doubts should arise in the future. He was sure the Osaka house would have no objection, and he suggested that Sachiko take Yukiko to the Osaka University Hospital the very next day.

  “But why was she absent from school so often?”

  “Schools in those days were not as fussy as they are now, and Father was always taking us to the theater when we should have been in school. I used to go too, and if you were to investigate I think you would find that I was absent even oftener than Yukiko.”

  “Will Yukiko mind being X-rayed?”

  “But why go all the way to Osaka? Dr. Kushida can do it.”

  “There was the question of that spot too.” Teinosuke pointed at his left eye. “She spoke of that. She said that she had not noticed herself, but that men seemed to be good at catching small details. Someone said after we left last night that he thought he saw just a trace of a dark spot over Yukiko’s left eye, and someone else agreed with him, and someone said that they were wrong, that it was just the way the light struck. Itani wants to know whether there really is a spot.”

  “I noticed last night that it was showing. What wretched luck —it has finally attracted attention.”

  “But she was not especially worried.”

  The spot over Yukiko’s left eye—just above the eyelid—a faint shadow that had recently begun to come and go in cycles. Teinosuke had first noticed it perhaps three to six months before. How long had Yukiko had that spot on her face, he asked Sachiko. Sachiko herself had but recent
ly noticed it, and indeed it was not always there to be noticed. Sometimes it would fade away so that it was barely visible even when one was looking for it, and sometimes it would quite disappear. Then, for a period of perhaps a week, it would suddenly be darker again. Sachiko, who had begun to notice that the spot was most in evidence at about the time of Yukiko’s periods, was much concerned about what Yukiko herself might be thinking. Yukiko would have noticed earlier than anyone. And might it not be having an unfortunate psychological effect on her? Yukiko’s personality, it was clear, had not so far been twisted by her difficulties in finding a husband, and that was perhaps because she had quiet confidence in her beauty. But what effect would this new blemish have? Unable to approach Yukiko directly, Sachiko could only watch for some change in her sister’s manner. Whether Yukiko had not yet noticed, or whether she was not particularly worried, however, she showed nothing. One day Taeko came in with a women’s magazine some two or three months old. “Have you read this?” she asked Sachiko. In the advice column was a letter from a twenty-eight-year-old woman, unmarried, who had exactly Yukiko’s trouble. She had recently discovered a mark on her face and noted how it .faded, disappeared, and came back again in a monthly cycle. The disturbance was fairly common among women who married late, the answer said, and was nothing to worry about. The mark generally disappeared when the woman married, and in any case it could usually be cured by moderate hormone injections. Sachiko was greatly relieved. As a matter of fact, she herself had had a similar experience. Some years before, shortly after her marriage, she had had a dark spot over her eye, rather like a candy smear over a child’s mouth. Her addiction to aspirin was responsible, said the doctor, and the spot would disappear of its own accord. In about a year it did indeed disappear. Perhaps, then, the sisters were particularly susceptible to such spots. Remembering how that spot of hers—it had been a far darker spot than Yukiko’s—had left her so painlessly, Sachiko was not as upset as another might have been in her place. The magazine piece put her fears completely at rest. Taeko apparently hoped that Sachiko would find some way to show it to Yukiko. Despite her apparent unconcern, Yukiko did no doubt feel a certain uneasiness. Show her this, said Taeko. Tell her there is nothing to worry about. It will clear up in no time once she is married, but it would be better to do something now. Suppose she were to have injections. Of course it is Yukiko, and she is not likely to welcome the idea, but possibly if we were to choose the right time …