The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  “And I am not going to France.”

  “Oh? That seems a shame, now that your mind is made up. But I think you are right. Tatsuo and Tsuruko have been so worried.”

  “It makes no difference about them. Mrs. Tamaki has decided not to go.”

  “Really? And why has she changed her plans?”

  “The school is opening again in January, and she says she has no time.”

  Mrs. Tamaki had meant to go to Europe while the school was being repaired. It had been found, however, that rebuilding would have to begin from the very foundations. Setting out in search of a new site—to rebuild would take both time and money with materials and manpower so short—she had been lucky enough to find at a most reasonable price a foreign-style house that could be used almost unaltered as a sewing school. She had decided that she wanted to reopen the school immediately. Her husband, worried about the tensions in Europe, had all along been opposed to the trip. Mr. Tamaki knew a military attache recently back from Europe, and had heard that Germany, France, and England, although on the surface friendly since the Munich Conference in September, had by no means reached an accord; that the English, unprepared for war, had only compromised to put the Germans off guard; and that the Germans, quite aware of this, meant to go the English one better. War could not possibly be avoided. For all these reasons, Mrs. Tamaki had decided not to go to France. Taeko too had changed her plans. But whatever the main house in Tokyo might say, she added, her plans to learn sewing were not to be changed. She would begin her lessons again when the sewing school opened in January. And since she felt more and more strongly the need to do without an allowance from the main house, she was in an even greater hurry to learn her trade.

  “That is very well for you, Koi-san, but think of us. What excuse can we make if you go on with your sewing?”

  “You can say you know nothing about it.”

  “Do you really think we can?”

  “I will make it look as though I am working on my dolls, and you can say that I seem to have stopped the sewing.”

  “Think of the trouble when they find out.”

  There was something a little threatening about Taeko’s eagerness to be independent and her determination to collect the lump sum of money from the main house even if it meant being disagreeable. Sachiko foresaw the day when she and her husband would be caught in a cross fire. Whatever Taeko said, she could only answer: “Think of the trouble.”

  24

  WHAT WERE Taeko’s real motives for setting out to become a professional woman? Did one not find certain inconsistencies if, as she said, she still hoped to marry Okubata? Married to so worthless a person, she should be prepared to support him, but he was the pampered son of a good family, a man who wanted for nothing, and the day when he might worry about his next meal seemed a very distant one indeed. The excuse was not enough to justify a course in sewing and a trip to Europe. Taeko ought rather to be planning for a home with the man she loved. Since the precocious girl had always been one to lay her plans carefully, she might well be preparing for distant eventualities, and yet Sachiko was troubled. She would find herself wondering whether Taeko did not in fact dislike Okubata, whether she was not seeking a way to break with him. The trip abroad might be her first step, and the sewing her means of supporting herself once she had made the break.

  Sachiko was becoming suspicious again.

  She was puzzled about the Itakura affair. She had seen nothing of Itakura since that short visit, and there was no sign that he telephoned or wrote to Taeko, but with Taeko away from home the better part of the day, the two of them could arrange whatever they pleased. It was most unnatural that Itakura should have disappeared. The suspicion arose that he was seeing Taeko in secret. It was the vaguest of suspicions, with no evidence to support it, but for that very reason it grew stronger as the days passed. Soon Sachiko came to feel that she could not be wrong. For one thing, Taeko’s appearance, her manner, her facial expressions, her dress, her speech were changing. Of the four sisters, Taeko had always been the most open and direct—to put her case favorably, the most modern—but lately that directness had been strangely transformed into a certain rudeness and vulgarity. It bothered her little to display herself naked, and sometimes, even before the maids, she would bare her bosom to the electric fan, or she would come from the bath looking like a tenement woman. She seldom sat with her feet tucked properly under her. She preferred to throw them out to one side, or, worse still, to sit with her legs crossed, her kimono coming open at the skirt. Quite indifferent to the prerogatives of age, she would start eating or go into or out of a room ahead of her sisters, or take a place higher at the table. Sachiko was left wondering what horror might be coming next when they went out or had guests. In April, at the Gourd Restaurant in Kyoto, Taeko went in ahead of them all, took a place higher than Yukiko, and started eating before anyone. Afterwards Sachiko whispered to Yukiko that she never again wanted to dine out with Koi-san. And in the tearoom of the Kitano Theater in the summer, Taeko sat silently by while Yukiko poured tea. She had long been guilty of such rudeness, but recently it had become worse. One evening Sachiko noticed that the door to the kitchen was half open. Through the trap door between the heater and the bath, also five or six inches open, she caught a glimpse of Taeko in the tub.

  “Would you please close the door to the bathroom, O-haru.”

  “Leave it open, leave it open!” shouted Taeko.

  “You left it open on purpose?” asked O-haru in surprise.

  “I left it open to hear the radio.”

  Taeko had left all the doors open between the parlor and the bath so that she could sit in the tub and listen to a symphony concert.

  Another time—was it in August?—Sachiko was having her afternoon tea when the young man from the Kozuchiya came to deliver kimonos. She listened to the conversation from the dining room.

  “But you are putting on weight, Miss Taeko. That kimono is almost ready to split at the hips.”

  “It may not split,” answered Taeko. “But you can be sure I will have people following me.”

  The young man roared with laughter.

  Sachiko was aghast. She had not dreamed that her sister could descend quite to that level. Since the young man was not one to sport openly with customers, there must be something in Taeko’s manner that urged him on. No doubt such exchanges were the usual thing when Sachiko was not around. With her dolls and her dancing and her sewing, Taeko was on familiar terms with a wider range of classes than her sisters, and it was natural that she should be better versed in the crude and vulgar, but Sachiko, who had to then only been amused at Taeko and her tendency to treat her shut-in sisters as children, thought that matters had finally reached a point where she must interfere. Though by no means as old-fashioned as Tsuruko, she was still distressed to think that anyone in the family could carry on such a conversation. Taeko was under the influence of someone, she was sure, and she began to note something that reminded her of Itakura’s joking manner, his general outlook, his vulgarity.

  There were reasons why Taeko should be different from the rest of them. It was not entirely fair to reprove her. She alone of the four sisters had known almost nothing of their father’s prosperous days, and she had but the dimmest memories of her mother, who had died just as the youngest daughter was starting school. Their pleasure-loving father gave the daughters everything they wanted, and yet Taeko had never really known—had never had an immediate sense of—what had been done for her. Yukiko, so little older, had vivid memories of her father, and would often recount how he had done this for her on one occasion, and that on another, but Taeko was too young, and the favors she received had never been entirely real. Although her father might have let her go on with her dancing, that too had been stopped soon after her mother died. She remembered chiefly how her father would describe her as the darkest and plainest of them all, and indeed she must have been a most untidy girl, with her face quite uncared for and her clothes so shapeless
that she could have passed for a boy. She liked to say that some day she too would finish school and dress up and go out as her sisters did. She too would buy pretty clothes. But before she had her wish, her father died, and the good days were over for the Makioka family. Very shortly afterwards came the “newspaper incident.”

  As Yukiko said, Koi-san’s behavior was natural enough for an impressionable girl who had never enjoyed the affection of her parents, and who, always at odds with her brother-in-law, was unhappy at home. Though someone was perhaps to blame for the incident, the main fault lay rather in the girl’s surroundings. Koi-san’s grades in school had been no worse than those of her sisters, Yukiko pointed out. In mathematics she had been the best of the four. Still there could be no doubt that the incident had branded her and to an extent twisted her. And Tatsuo, in the main house, had never been as good to her as to Yukiko. He did not really get along well with either of the sisters, but he had very early labelled Taeko the heretic. While showing some affection for the older sister, he hinted that he thought the younger a nuisance. In the course of time this favoritism became evident in the allowances he gave the two, and even in their clothes and accessories. Yukiko had her trousseau ready. Taeko on the other hand had virtually nothing that could be called expensive except a few things she had bought with her own money or had had Sachiko buy for her. It was true, as the people in the main house said, that since Koi-san had money of her own they must be fair and give Yukiko more. Had Taeko herself not told them that she would rather they gave more to Yukiko? As a matter of fact she was less than half the burden on the main house Yukiko was. Sachiko sometimes noted with a mixture of surprise and admiration how clever Koi-san was at saving money even while she followed the latest foreign styles—she did remarkably well, even granting that she had a sizable income. (Now and then Sachiko wondered whether a necklace or a ring might not have come from the display cases of the Okubata store.) Of the four sisters, Taeko knew best what it meant to have money. Sachiko had grown up in her father’s prosperous years, whereas Taeko had been at her most impressionable when the family fortunes were on the decline.

  Fearing that this unusual sister would sooner or later be the cause of another scandal, and that she herself and her husband might be implicated, Sachiko thought of sending Taeko off to the main house, but it was clear that Taeko would not agree to go, and it seemed likely moreover that the main house was not willing to take her. Tatsuo would have been expected, after hearing Teinosuke’s story, to say that he wanted Koi-san where he could watch her, and he had said nothing of the sort. Once so afraid of what people would think, he had overcome his resentment at having his sisters-in-law in Ashiya. Still he must also have economic reasons for his silence: he had come to look upon Taeko as semi-independent, and he only had to send her a little spending money each month. Troublesome though the youngest sister was, then, Sachiko could not but feel sorry for her.

  But they had to have an honest talk.

  The New-Year festivities passed, and Sachiko came to suspect that Taeko had taken up sewing again.

  “Has Mrs. Tamaki’s school opened?” she asked one morning as Taeko started to leave the house.

  “Yes.”

  “There is something I must talk to you about, Koi-san.” Sachiko led her sister back into the parlor, and they faced each other across the stove. “There is the sewing, of course, but there is something else I have been wanting to ask you. I hope you will not hide anything from me.”

  Taeko stared at the burning wood. Her skin glowed in the fire light, and she seemed to be holding her breath.

  “I might begin with Kei-boy. Do you still mean to marry him?”

  For the first few minutes Taeko was silent. As Sachiko tried various ways to reveal her suspicions, she saw that her sister’s eyes were filled with tears. Taeko pressed a handkerchief to her face.

  “Kei-boy has been deceiving me,” she sniffled. “You remember you said he was seeing a geisha?”

  “Yes. Teinosuke heard of it in some teahouse.”

  “It was true.”

  Led on by Sachiko’s questions, Taeko made her confession:

  When in May she had heard from Sachiko of the geisha, she had on the surface dismissed the story as no more than a rumor. As a matter of fact, it had become an issue from about then. Okubata had long been fond of the teahouses, but his excuse was that in his gloom at being unable to marry Taeko he only went out now and then in search of consolation. He hoped she would be generous with him. He wanted her to believe that he only had an innocent drink or two with the ladies, and that this in no way marred his chastity. Taeko accepted the explanation. As she had told Sachiko, Okubata’s brothers and uncles were great pleasure-lovers, and her own father had frequented the quarters. She had therefore been prepared to accept a certain amount of dissipation as inevitable. She would not make a nuisance of herself, provided that Okubata remained celibate.

  Then, from a trivial incident, she came to see that he had been quite brazenly lying to her. In addition to that geisha in the Soēmon Quarter, he had a dancer, and she had had a child. When the secret was discovered, Okubata offered a model apology: the affair with the dancer had taken place long before; the child having only been foisted on him—it was quite impossible to know who the father was—he had been relieved of his paternal responsibilities too. As for the geisha, he had no apology to offer, he could only vow that he would not see her again. But Taeko sensed from his flippant manner that he thought it a matter of little concern to have lied to her. She could never trust him again. Having actually seen the receipt for the separation money he paid the dancer, she knew that he could not be lying about at least that. There was no evidence that he had parted with the geisha, however, and Taeko could not be sure there had not been other affairs besides. Although Okubata protested that he was still determined to marry her, and that his affection for these women was not to be mentioned in the same breath with his love for her, she could not but feel that she too might be thrown away as the plaything of a moment. In sum, she began to dislike him. Even so, she did not find it easy to break the engagement. The foolish girl had trusted him, and now her own sisters would point at her and laugh. But she wanted to be away from him for a time. She wanted to think matters over quietly by herself.

  There could be no doubt that the trip abroad was a means toward that end, and, as Sachiko had guessed, Taeko meant to leam sewing so that she could support herself afterwards.

  Her distress was at its worst when the flood came. Until then she had thought of Itakura as—well, a sort of servant. With the flood, her feelings toward him underwent a very quick change. She knew that Sachiko and Yukiko would think her frivolous, but they had never known how it was to be saved when you had given yourself up for lost. Kei-boy said that Itakura had his reasons. Very well, suppose he had. He had still risked his life; and in the meantime what was Kei-boy himself doing? Far from risking his life, had he shown even a trace of real concern, of real affection? It was the flood that killed the last of her love for him. As Sachiko knew, he appeared at the Ashiya house after trains were running from Osaka. Setting out to look for her, he went only as far as Tanaka, and decided that he could not get through the little water that was running across the street there. After a time he wandered into Itakura’s house, and thereupon went back to Osaka. He arrived at Itakura’s in an immaculate blue suit and a Panama hat, a walking stick in his hand and a camera over his shoulder—it was a wonder no one gave him a cuffing for his elegance. Had it not been because he was afraid of spoiling the crease in his trousers that he turned back at Tanaka? Was the contrast not too complete with Teinosuke and Itakura and even Shōkichi, mud from head to foot? She had long known how particular Okubata was about his appearance, and she Jiad not expected him to plunge into the mud with them, but he had not even shown ordinary human sympathy. If he was really so pleased and relieved to know that she was safe, should he not have gone again to the Ashiya house? He had said that he would stop by later, and
had not Sachiko too expected him? And did he think that he had acquitted himself of his responsibilities by inquiring after her? It was at such times that one saw the real worth of people. She had been resigned to enduring his spendthrift ways, his fickleness, his general useless-ness, but she had quite lost hope when she saw that he was unwilling to sacrifice the crease in his trousers for his future wife.

  25

  TEARS STREAMED over her cheeks and she sniffled occasionally; but she had told her story thus far clearly and with great composure. Her tone became heavier as they moved on to the question of her relations with Itakura. Her replies to Sachiko’s questions being limited to affirmation or denial, Sachiko had to fill in the gaps for herself. This was the story Sachiko pieced together:

  Itakura came to seem in many ways a pleasant contrast to Okubata. Laugh though she might at the people in the main house, Taeko was not wholly unconscious of family and position, and she tried to hold herself back; but her heart worked against her conservative mind. She was not one to lose her head, whatever the crisis, and even after she fell in love with Itakura she was by no means blind to his faults. Particularly because of her failure with Okubata, she looked far into the future and weighed the profit and loss, and after examining the balance as cooly as she could, she concluded that her happiness lay in marrying Itakura. Sachiko, who had guessed a good deal of the truth without even considering that her sister might want to marry the man, was stunned. Taeko, however, had taken the man’s defects into her calculations: that he was an uneducated person who began as an apprentice, that he came from a family of tenant farmers in Okayama Prefecture, that he had the peculiar coarseness of emigrants returned from America. All that was true, said Taeko, but as a man Itakura ranked several grades higher than Okubata, the pampered child of wealth. His physique was splendid, and he would not hesitate to plunge into a fire if it seemed necessary. And best of all, he could support himself and his sister—he stood in sharp contrast to a man who lived by begging from his mother and brother. Going off to America without a cent, he had made his way with help from no one, and learned his trade—and art photography required not a little intelligence. Although his formal education left much to be desired, he had his own sort of intelligence and sensibility. He was more of a student, she had discovered, than Okubata with his university diploma. Family and inherited property and diplomas had lost their appeal for her; Okubata had been enough to show her how worthless they were. She meant now to be quite practical. She asked only that her husband satisfy three conditions: he must have a strong body, he must have a trade, and he must be willing to offer up his very life for her. In Itakura all three conditions were satisfied, and there was another point in his favor: with three brothers back on the farm, he had no family responsibilities. (The sister who kept house for him would go home once he was married.) She would have his affections to herself. Her position would be far easier than that of the wife of the oldest and wealthiest family imaginable.