The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  Since the end of July, Etsuko had again shown symptoms of nervousness and beri-beri, though not as severe as the year before, and had begun to lose her appetite and complain that she could not sleep. They thought it best to have her see a specialist in Tokyo while the symptoms were still mild. And then Etsuko, who had never seen Tokyo, spoke enviously of how this friend and that friend had bowed to the Imperial Family, and it would be a great delight for her to be shown Tokyo, and Sachiko herself had never seen the Shibuya house, and thought that this would be a good occasion to call on Tsuruko. Everything considered, then, they had decided that early in August the three of them, Sachiko and Yukiko and Etsuko, would go to Tokyo. Then came the death of the dancing teacher to interfere with their plans, and they began to wonder if they would be able to go in August at all. It would be good, however, to see Peter and his father off from Yokohama—but unfortunately the sailing came on the Festival of the Dead, and it was absolutely essential that Sachiko pay a visit in her sister’s place to the family temple in Osaka, where services were held each year.

  They had to be contented with a little farewell party on the seventeenth, to which they invited Rosemarie, Peter, and Fritz. Two days later the Stolzes gave a party at which Etsuko was the only Japanese among the friends of Rosemarie and Peter. On the twenty-first Peter came over alone to say good-bye. After shaking hands with them all, he reported that he and his father were leaving Sannomiya Station for Yokohama the next day. They expected to reach Germany from the United States early in September, and he hoped the Makiokas would find a way to visit Hamburg, where the family would be living. As he wanted to send Etsuko some- thing from America, he wondered what she would like. Etsuko, after talking the matter over with her mother, asked for shoes. Very well, answered Peter, he would borrow one of Etsuko’s shoes for size. Back almost immediately with paper, pencil, and tape measure, he said that his mother had suggested measuring Etsuko’s foot instead. He put the foot on the paper and carefully took down the dimensions.

  On the morning of the twenty-second Etsuko and Yukiko went to Sannomiya Station. That evening at dinner they told of the Stolzes, father and son. It appeared that Peter was extremely sad to be leaving. When could Etsuko be in Tokyo, he asked. Would she come to the ship? It sailed the evening of the twenty-fourth. They could meet that day. He was still repeating the invitation when the train pulled out, and he seemed very sad. How would it be, said Sachiko, if Etsuko at least were to go to Yokohama? Sachiko herself could not leave until after the twenty-fourth, but how would it be if Etsuko and Yukiko were to take the night train on the twenty-third, and, getting off in Yokohama, go directly to the ship? Sachiko would be in Tokyo on about the twenty-sixth. Etsuko could have someone show her the sights and she could wait for her mother at the Shibuya house. A fine idea, thought Etsuko.

  “Will you be able to leave tomorrow evening, Yukiko?”

  “I have all sorts of shopping to do …”

  “But with all day tomorrow… .”

  “If we take too late a train, Etsuko will be sleepy. There would still be time if we left early the following morning.”

  “Suppose you do that, then,” said Sachiko lightly. She was touched to see that Yukiko wanted to stay even one night longer.

  “What a hurry to be off.” Taeko’s tone was a little mocking. “It seems as though you just arrived.”

  “I would just as soon stay longer, of course. But if it will make Etsuko and Peter happy… .”

  When she had arrived in July, Yukiko had thought she might be allowed to stay for about two months, and no doubt she was sad to think that she had to leave even a little early. Etsuko would be with her this time, and Sachiko would follow, and it would not be as if she were returning to Tokyo alone. Sachiko and Etsuko would not be in Tokyo long, however—they would have to come back in time for school—and Yukiko would have to stay on. She saw that though she did indeed like to be near Sachiko and the others, one reason for wanting to live in Ashiya was her love for this Kobe-Osaka district, and that though one reason for disliking Tokyo was that she did not get along well with her brother-in-law, still it was the air of Osaka and Kobe that best suited her.

  Sachiko, sensing all this, said little the following day except that she left everything to Yukiko and Etsuko. Yukiko spent the morning about the house. Then, seeing how eager Etsuko was to make the trip, she dressed hastily and after a vitamin injection set out in the afternoon with O-haru—she did not say where she was going. At about six she came back with several parcels from Kobe shops.

  “I have these,” she said, taking from her obi two tickets for the Fuji Express the following morning. The Fuji left Osaka at seven and arrived in Yokohama at three, and they could thus be at the pier a little past three. That would give them two or three hours before sailing time. So the plans were made; and they flew about taking out suitcases and informing Mrs. Stolz and so on.

  Etsuko, so excited that she had no thought of sleep, was led upstairs by Yukiko—they would have to be up early the following morning. Yukiko took her time with her own packing, and talked to her sisters until after midnight. Teinosuke was at work in his study.

  “We really ought to go to bed, Yukiko,” said Taeko, with an impolitely wide yawn. Taeko, much the worst-mannered of the three; stood in sharp contrast to Yukiko, and especially in the hot months her slovenliness was really too noticeable. This evening, for instance, she had come from the bath in a cotton kimono and an undress obi, and as she talked she sometimes pulled the kimono open at the neck and fanned her bare bosom.

  “If you are sleepy, you might go on ahead.”

  “You are not sleepy?”

  “I have been too busy. I doubt if I could sleep anyway.”

  “Do you need another injection?”

  “It might be better to wait until just before I leave in the morning.”

  “It is a shame you have to go, Yukiko.” Sachiko saw that the spot over the eye, which had not appeared for some time, was faintly visible again. “I hope we can think of something to bring you down again before the end of the year. Next year is unlucky, you know.”

  The Stolzes, father and son, had left from Sannomiya, in downtown Kobe. So that they might have even a few more minutes at the house, Etsuko and Yukiko decided to take the express from Osaka instead. Even so, they had to be at Ashiya Station by six. Sachiko had meant to see them only to the door, but when it became clear that Mrs. Stolz and her children were going as far as the station, she went along, as did Taeko and O-haru.

  “I sent a telegram last night. I told them what time,” said Mrs. Stolz, while they were waiting for a local train.

  “Peter will be on deck, then?”

  “I think so. Etsuko, you are very kind. Thank you.” Mrs. Stolz turned to Rosemarie and Fritz. “Tell Etsuko thank you,” she said in German. Sachiko and the others understood only the danke schön.

  “Come as soon as you can, Mother.”

  “It will be no later than the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Hurry back, Etsuko.” Rosemarie ran after the train. “Auf Wiedersehen.”

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” said Etsuko, waving from the window.

  14

  SACHIKO planned to take the Seagull Express on the twenty-seventh. With all the presents she would have three suitcases, more than she could manage by herself. It occurred to her that she might let O-haru too see the sights of Tokyo. Taeko could keep house for Teinosuke, and there were all sorts of reasons why it would be good to have O-haru along: for one thing, Sachiko might want to send Etsuko back in time for school and stay on in Tokyo her- self. It had been so very long since her last visit, and she did not want to hurry. She might see a few plays before she came back.

  “O-haru is here too!” Etsuko was at the station with Yukiko and Teruo, Tsuruko’s oldest son.

  “That is the Marunouchi Building over there, and that is the palace,” she said when they were in the cab
. She was by now very much the old Tokyo hand. Sachiko noted how her color had improved, and thought that even in so short a time her face had become fuller.

  “Etsuko, we had a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji from the train. Tell Etsuko about it, O-haru.”

  “A really beautiful view, all the wav to the top. And not a bit of snow.”

  “It was a little cloudy when we saw it,” said Etsuko. “The top was under clouds.”

  “O-haru was luckier, then.” O-haru always referred to herself in the third person when she was talking to Etsuko.

  “Look, O-haru—the Double Bridge.” Teruo had taken off his cap, and Etsuko noticed that they were passing the bridge from which respects were paid to the Imperial Family.

  “We all got out of the car and bowed the other day,” said Yukiko.

  “We really did, Mother.”

  “When?”

  “The other day—the twenty-fourth. Mr. Stolz and Peter and Yukiko and I—we all got out and lined up there.”

  “The Stolzes came to Tokyo?”

  “Yukiko brought them.”

  “You had that much time to spare, then?”

  “Only just that much. We could hardly take our eyes off our watches.”

  Yukiko and Etsuko had rushed to the pier and found Mr. Stolz and Peter waiting impatiently on deck. They sailed at seven, Yukiko was told. That left four hours. After she considered the possibility of going to the New Grand Hotel for tea and concluded that it would still be too early, she suggested that they all go to Tokyo. They would need a half hour each way on the train, and they would have some three hours to tour the city. Yukiko knew that Peter, and even Mr. Stolz, had never seen Tokyo. Mr. Stolz seemed to hesitate a little. He agreed only after asking repeatedly whether she was quite sure they would have time. Once in Tokyo, they had tea in the Imperial Hotel, and at about four-thirty they set out in a cab, first to pay their respects at the Double Bridge, then to see the sights: the War Ministry, the Diet Building, the Prime Minister’s Residence, the Navy Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, Hibiya Park, the Imperial Theater, the Marunouchi Building. Sometimes they only looked out from the cab, sometimes they walked around for a few minutes, and by five-thirty they had made the rounds. Yukiko and Etsuko meant to see the Stolzes back to Yokohama, but Mr. Stolz insisted that that was unnecessary, and at length, afraid the excitement since early that morning might be too much for Etsuko, Yukiko decided to say good-bye at Tokyo Station.

  “Was Peter pleased?”

  “He was surprised at what a fine city Tokyo is. Remember how surprised he was, Etsuko?”

  “All the big buildings—he looked dizzy.”

  “Mr. Stolz had seen Europe, but Peter only knew Manila and Kobe and Osaka.”

  “And he thought Tokyo was every bit as good as people said.”

  “How about you, Etsuko?”

  “What do you mean? I am Japanese. I knew already.”

  “I was the only one who had been in Tokyo. I had a terrible time explaining everything.”

  “Did you explain in Japanese?” asked Teruo.

  “That was the problem. I explained in Japanese to Peter, and he interpreted to his father. But Peter had trouble with words like ‘Diet Building’ and ‘Prime Minister’s Residence.’ I had to use my English sometimes.”

  “Lucky you knew the English for Diet Building and Prime Minister’s Residence.” Teruo alone spoke with a proper Tokyo accent.

  “I only mixed in a little broken English. I remembered the Diet Building, but for ‘Prime Minister’s Residence’ I had to say: ‘This is where Prince Konoye lives.’ “

  “And I spoke German,” said Etsuko.

  “Auf Wiedersehen?”

  “Yes. I said Auf Wiedersehen several times.”

  “Mr. Stolz kept thanking us in English.”

  Yukiko, usually so retiring, hand in hand with Etsuko, the aunt , in summer kimono, the niece in Western clothes, the two of them showing a foreign gentleman and his son through the Imperial Hotel and the government buildings and office buildings—what a remarkable expedition it must have been, thought Sachiko. And how trying for Mr. Stolz, dragged along by his son, unable to understand the explanations, keeping a worried eye on his watch.

  “Have you ever been in that museum, Mother?”

  “Of course. You are not to go treating me as though I just came in from the country.”

  Sachiko did not in fact know Tokyo as well as she pretended. When she had been perhaps sixteen, she had stayed, once or twice, with her father at a downtown inn, and she had been shown the city, but that was before the earthquake. Since then she had spent only two or three nights at the Imperial Hotel on her way back from her honeymoon. She had not been in Tokyo even once in the nine years since Etsuko’s birth. Though she might tease the girl, then, she had to admit that she had been a little excited herself as for the first time in so many years she saw the grandeur of the capital, the rows of tall buildings at the heart of the city. In Osaka too, Midō Boulevard had been widened. With modern buildings all through the old Semba district south of the river, the view from the Alaska Restaurant on the tenth floor of the Asahi Building was in its way an impressive one, but in the final analysis Osaka was no match for Tokyo. The changes from the Tokyo she had last seen, only beginning to recover from the earthquake, were quite beyond what she had imagined. Those great, towering piles, and the pyramid-shaped roof of the Diet Building down the avenues to the west—she knew how long those nine years had been. She looked back over changes in the city and changes in her own life.

  Sachiko did not really like Tokyo, however. Radiant clouds might trail from His Imperial Majesty, but for Sachiko the beauty of Tokyo was the beauty of the Palace and its pine-covered grounds, and no more: the beauty of that island in the most modern part of the city, a medieval castle with mossy walls and banks along its moat, set off against the finest modern buildings. Of the Palace grounds, which had no rival in Osaka or Kyoto,

  Sachiko was sure she would never tire. But for the rest there was little in Tokyo that pleased her. Magnificent though the Ginza might be, there was something dry and harsh in the air that made her sure she would always be a stranger there. And she especially disliked the drab streets in the outlying districts. As the cab approached Shibuya, she felt somehow chilly even in the summer night. It was as though she had come to a distant, utterly foreign country. She did not know whether she had ever before been in this part of Tokyo. In any case, the streets seemed to her quite unlike those of Kyoto and Osaka and Kobe—they seemed rather like what one would expect in a frontier city farther to the north, or even in Manchuria. And this was no end-of-the-line alley; it was a busy street in the main part of Tokyo. The shops were imposing and there was considerable evidence of prosperity as they started up the hill beyond Shibuya. Why then was it so lacking in warmth; why were the faces so cold and white? Sachiko thought of her own Ashiya, and of Kyoto. If this were Kyoto, she could feel at home in a street she was seeing for the first time. She would even want to stop for a chat with someone. But in Tokyo, wherever she went and however diligently she searched, she never felt that she had ties. She was an alien. She could hardly believe that a true child of Osaka, and her own sister at that, could be living in this section of this city. It was as if, in a dream, she was walking through a strange city, suddenly to come upon the house where her mother or her sister lived, and to say to herself: “So this is where Mother is living.” How strange that Tsuruko could endure the place. Until they reached the house, Sachiko could hardly believe she was about to see her sister.

  The cab turned left into a quiet residential street, and almost immediately it was surrounded by children. The oldest was about nine.

  “Aunt Sachiko!”

  “Aunt Sachiko!”

  “Mother is waiting.”

  “There is the house, right over there.”

  “Be careful, be careful! Keep away from the cab,” said Yukiko. The cab was coming to a stop.

  “Are those really
Tsuruko’s children? The big one is Tetsuo, then?”

  “Hideo,” Teruo corrected her. “Hideo and Yoshio and Masao.”

  “How they have grown. Except for the Osaka accent, I would never have guessed who they were.”

  “They all have good Tokyo accents when they want to,” said Teruo. “They’re trying to make you feel at home.”

  15

  SACHIKO had heard about the Shibuya house from Yukiko. The wild disorder, however, the clutter that left hardly a place to stand, was far worse than she had imagined. Although it was true that the house was new and could be called bright, the pillars were thin, the floors were weak, and the whole house shook when one of the children ran up or down stairs. The paper paneling on the doors, already full of holes, looked all the shabbier for the cheap, whitish frames. Sachiko disliked the old Osaka house, so dark and inconvenient, but she had to admit that it had a certain repose quite lacking here. And then the Osaka house did have a garden, albeit a very small garden, and Sachiko had fond memories of the view from the back tea room through the court to the earth-walled storehouse. Here in Shibuya, with barely room inside the fences for a few plotted plants, there was nothing at all that could be called a garden. The children were too noisy downstairs, said Tsuruko; she had given Sachiko the room upstairs that passed for a guest room. Sachiko recognized in the alcove a painting by Seihō1—it was of trout—that had been brought from Osaka. Her father had collected Seihō paintings, and this was one of the few they had kept when they sold his collection. Sachiko recognized much besides the painting: the red-lacquer table in the alcove, the motto over the door in the handwriting of Rai Shunsui,2 the gold-lacquer cupboard by the wall, the clock on it. She could see the corner of the Osaka house where they had all been kept. No doubt Tsuruko had brought them out to help her remember the good days and to brighten up what was much too ugly to be called a guest room. But the treasures had a perverse effect: they only set off the shabbiness of the room, and for Sachiko it was strange indeed to find relics of her father in a dreary section of Tokyo. It seemed to show the depths to which Tsuruko had fallen.