The Makioka Sisters

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  Etsuko took her turn. “Spiders, Koi-san, spiders!”

  “You are right.” Tiny, rather engaging spiders about the size of grains of rice were trailing after the fireflies. Suddenly, Taeko jumped up with a shriek and dropped the can in the seat. Sachiko and Yukiko opened their eyes.

  “What is it, Koi-san?”

  “Spiders, big spiders!” There were enormous spiders among the little ones. All four were aroused by now.

  “Throw it away somewhere, Koi-san.”

  Taeko picked the can up gingerly and threw it to the floor, A grasshopper jumped out.

  “Poor fireflies.” Etsuko looked mournfully at the can.

  “Let me take care of your spiders.” A man of perhaps fifty— he had on a kimono and seemed to be from the country near by— had been watching with amusement from diagonally across the aisle. “Give me a hairpin or something.” Sachiko gave him a hairpin, and he took out each spider and stamped on it. There was a little grass mixed in with the crushed spiders, but not many fireflies escaped. “Several of them are dead, Miss,” he said, tilting the can from side to side when he had retied the gauze. “Take it to the bathroom and sprinkle it.”

  “Wash your hands while you are there, Etsuko. Fireflies are poisonous.”

  “And they smell.” Etsuko sniffed at her hands. “Like grass.”

  “Don’t throw the dead ones away, young lady. They make good medicine.”

  “For what?” asked Taeko.

  “Keep them and dry them, and then mix them with rice and put them on cuts and burns.”

  “Really? And does that help?”

  “I haven’t tried myself, but they tell me it does.”

  Sachiko and the rest had never been through this part of the country except on an express, and it bored them to have the train stop politely at little stations they had not known existed. The way from Gifu to Nagoya seemed interminable. Soon Sachiko and Yukiko had dozed off again. “Nagoya, Mother. Look at the castle, Yukiko.” Etsuko set about waking them up. Opening their eyes long enough to see the new passengers, they were asleep again before the train was out of Nagoya. They did not notice that it had begun to rain and that Yukiko had closed the window. The car being even stuffier with all the windows closed, most of the other passengers were soon dozing off with them. A young army officer across the aisle some four seats ahead began singing Schubert’s “Serenade.”

  “Softly flows my serenade

  Through the night to you . . . .”

  There was nothing boisterous about the singing. Sachiko, opening her eyes, thought someone had brought a phonograph. Though they could see only the back of the uniform and part of the face, they knew that the officer was young, still in his twenties, and shy. He had been aboard at Ogaki, and they had not yet seen his face—even when, in their troubles with the fireflies, they had the attention of the whole car. He evidently was proud of his voice. Still it was a little strained, as if he were aware of the pretty ladies behind him. When he had finished he looked at the floor for a time, and began Goethe’s “Wild Rose” to the Schubert setting.

  “A boy once found a wild, red rose.

  Rose upon the heath. . . .”

  Sachiko knew the songs from a German movie called “Unfinished Symphony.” One of the sisters, they did not know which, was soon humming with the young officer. As their voices grew louder someone joined in with the harmony. The officer’s neck was scarlet. His voice was louder, and had a distinct tremor. Their seats being a convenient distance away, the sisters sang on quite as the spirit took them. When the concert was over, a startling silence fell over the car. The officer looked bashfully at the floor, and at Okazaki he fled from the car.

  “And we never saw his face,” said Taeko.

  This was Sachiko’s first trip to Gamagōri. She had heard a great deal about the Tokiwa Inn from Teinosuke, who made a trip or two a month to Nagoya, and who often said that he must take them all to the Tokiwa some time. He was sure that Etsuko in particular would enjoy it. They had made all their plans two or three times before, but always something had come up. It was Teinosuke’s idea that they should now go to Gamagōri without him. He was always too busy to keep them company even when he was in Nagoya, he said, and this would be their chance. He telephoned for reservations. Sachiko, who had learned to travel without her husband on the trip to Tokyo the autumn before, was childishly pleased with her new boldness and most eager to make the trip. When she reached the inn, she felt even more grateful to her husband. The miai had left a bad taste that would have stayed with her had she said goodbye to Yukiko in Ogaki, and aside from her own unhappiness, it would have been too cruel to send Yukiko forlornly off to Tokyo after such an experience. Teinosuke’s idea had been a splendid one indeed. Sachiko was determined not to let herself think about what had happened, and she was greatly relieved to see that Yukiko—with Taeko and Etsuko—meant to enjoy herself. The rain had stopped, and they had a beautiful Sunday. As Teinosuke had expected, the games at the inn and the scenery along the coast, everything about the place in fact, delighted Etsuko. Still more pleasing to Sachiko, enough to make the trip really worth-while, was the bright, placid Yukiko, no longer in the least disturbed about what had happened the day before. In Gamagōri Station at about two the next afternoon, they boarded trains that passed within fifteen minutes of each other, one for Tokyo, the other for Osaka.

  Yukiko took a local train after seeing the others off. Never having travelled such a distance on a local, she expected to be bored, but it had seemed a nuisance to order an express ticket and change at Toyohashi. She had a volume of short stories by Anatole France to keep her company. Too listless to know what she was reading, she put the book down and looked absent-mindedly out the window. She was feeling the strain of the last two days, and she was suffering a reaction from the gaiety of but a short time before. And now she would have to spend several months in Tokyo. She had been so long in Ashiya that she had begun to think she might escape having to go back, and here she was, deposited by herself on a slow train in a strange country station.

  “See me off as far as Ashiya,” Etsuko had said, half jokingly. Even as she dismissed the remark with a promise to come again soon, Yukiko had for a moment thought seriously of going back with them and putting off her return to Tokyo.

  The second-class car being even emptier than the day before, she had a whole section to herself, but her neck was so stiff that she could hardly move, and she would doze off only to wake up again. In a half hour or so she was wide awake. For some time she had noticed a gentlemen across the aisle four or five seats away. She had opened her eyes because she sensed that he was staring at her. As she sat up in some confusion and slipped her feet into her sandals, the man turned to look out the window, but something seemed to be on his mind. Before long he was stealing glances at her again. At first rattier annoyed, Yukiko began to wonder if he might not have his reasons. She began to feel that she had seen him before. About forty, he was wearing an open-necked shirt and a gray suit with white stripes. He was small and thin and he had a swarthy complexion; his hair was neatly combed, and all in all his appearance suggested the rustic gentleman of means. At first he had been sitting with his chin on his hands, which were folded over the handle of the umbrella between his knees. Now he was leaning back. There was a new white Panama hat in the rack over his head. Who was he, why could she not remember? The man seemed to be asking the same questions. He would look away when she glanced in his direction and look back again when she was not watching. She could not remember knowing anyone in Toyohashi, where he had boarded the train—and then she thought of that Mr. Saigusa whom her brother-in-law had suggested as a possible husband more than ten years before. Saigusa had belonged to a well-to-do Toyohashi family, there was no doubt about it, nor could there be much doubt that this was he. Displeased with the man’s rustic appearance and what she took to be evidence of scant intelligence and learning, Yukiko had brushed aside Tatsuo’s suggestion and insisted on having her own w
ay. The man was as rustic as ever. He was not especially unattractive, and, old beyond his years even then, he had not aged much, but his country air was even more pronounced. Because of it Yukiko was able to call up that particular face from all the dimly remembered faces in all the dimly remembered miai. The man apparently began to suspect the truth at about the time she recognized him. He turned abruptly to the window. But he still did not seem convinced. Taking care to choose moments when Yukiko was not looking, he would now and then steal a sidelong glance at her. She had met him several times at the main house in Osaka, and, determined as he had been to marry her, he should not have forgotten her even if she had forgotten him. What was puzzling him, perhaps, was that she had changed so little since the miai, and that she was as youthfully dressed as she had been that day. Even so it was not pleasant to be stared at. What if he knew how many miai there had been since, what if he knew that just yesterday there had been another, and that she was on her way home from it? She shuddered at the thought. And unhappily, she was wearing a less radiant kimono than that of two days before, and she had been rather careless with her make-up. Knowing that she showed the wear of travel more than most people, she wanted to retouch her face, but she thought it would be a sign of weakness to walk down the aisle past the man, or to steal a look at the mirror in her compact. He was probably not on his way to Tokyo, since it was a local train. At each station she hoped that he would get off. At Fujieda he stood up and took his Panama hat from the rack. After a last look at her, quite open this time, he turned to leave the train.

  Thoughts of that miai and all that happened before and after chased through her tired mind. Had it been 1927? No, 1928 seemed more likely. She must have been about twenty. And was that her first miai? Why had she taken such a dislike to the man? Tatsuo tried every argument: the Saigusa family was one of the wealthiest in Toyohashi; the man was the oldest son; Yukiko would want for nothing; it was too good a match for what the Makioka family had become; and now that the discussions had come so far Tatsuo’s position would be most difficult if she were to refuse. But Yukiko went on shaking her head, and her reason was more than the man’s dull manner: though they had been told that he had been unable to go on to school because of illness, they knew that his poor record in the middle school was in fact responsible; and even as the wife of a wealthy man, Yukiko thought, it would be drear}’ to rust away in a little city like Toyohashi. Sachiko, who quite agreed with her, protested even more strongly. It would be unbearably sad to send poor Yukiko off to the back country. Then too, without saying so even to each other, they wanted to annoy Tatsuo. His foster father but recently dead, Tatsuo had begun to flex his muscles. All three sisters, Taeko with the others, had been most annoyed at the way he seemed to think he only needed to use force. They had formed a league of three to show him how mistaken he was. What angered Tatsuo most of all was Yukiko’s refusal to give a definite answer until he had gone almost beyond retreating. Then, suddenly, she became stubborn. To his reproaches, she replied that young girls preferred not to express themselves openly on such matters, and that he should have known from her manner whether or not she wanted to marry the man. Even so, she could not deny that, in part, she had been thinking of the fact that an executive in Tatsuo’s bank was acting as go-between. She purposely made her answers evasive to embarrass her brother-in-law. Through no fault of his own, the man Saigusa thus became ammunition for a family quarrel. Yukiko had neither thought nor heard of him since. No doubt he had several children by now. And what if she had married the rustic gentleman? More than sour grapes, she was sure, made her know that she would not have been happy. If he spent his life on slow trains between one out-of-the-way little station and another, she could not believe that she would have been happy with him. Her decision had been the right one.

  Reaching the Shibuya house at about ten that night, she said nothing of the encounter to either Tatsuo or Tsuruko.

  7

  SACHIKO had much to think about on the train back to Osaka. More than of pleasant things—the firefly hunt two evenings before, the night and morning in Gamagōri—she found herself thinking of the forlorn figure they had just left in Gamagōri, of that thin face, the dark spot over the eye as prominent as ever. With the face and figure came back all the impressions of the unhappy miai. She did not know how many times in the last ten years she had seen Yukiko through a miai. Counting informal meetings, she thought five or six would probably be too modest an estimate. Never before had the Makiokas been so humbled. Always they had felt that the advantage was with them, that the other side was courting their favor—always it had been their role to judge the man and find him lacking. This time their position had been weak from the start. They should have refused when the first letter came, and they had begun to retreat then, and Sachiko had retreated again when there was still some possibility of refusing. She had, in the end, gone through with the miai out of deference to Tatsuo and Mrs. Sugano. Why then had she felt so intimidated? Always before she had displayed Yukiko proudly, a sister of whom she need never be ashamed, and yesterday she had trembled each time Sawazaki looked at Yukiko. There was no evading the fact that Sawazaki had been the examiner and they the examined. That fact alone was enough to make Sachiko feel that she and Yukiko had been insulted as never before. What weighed even more on her mind, however, and quite refused to leave her was the thought that Yukiko carried a blemish. A blemish hardly worth considering, perhaps, but there it was nonetheless. They might as well forget about this miai. What of future ones? Something must be done about that mark over the eye. Could it be removed, and did it not make Yukiko’s prospects even worse? Or had the mark been especially dark yesterday, and conditions— the light, the angle—impossibly bad? One thing was certain: they would no longer enter a miai with the old feeling of superiority. From now on it would be as yesterday: Sachiko would tremble as she saw her sister exposed to the stare of the prospective husband.

  Evidently guessing that this silence was more than a sign of fatigue, Taeko gave herself up to her own thoughts.

  “What happened yesterday?” she asked in a low voice, taking advantage of a moment when Etsuko had gone to water the fireflies.

  Sachiko did not want to talk. After a minute or two, as though she suddenly remembered that a question had been put to her, she answered: “It was over in a great hurry.”

  “And what will come of it?”

  “Well, you remember how the train broke down.”

  Sachiko fell silent again, and Taeko asked no more questions.

  Though she gave Teinosuke a general account of what had happened, Sachiko did not go into all the unpleasant details. The thought of living them again was too much for her. The man was certain to refuse, said Teinosuke, and they might take the initiative and refuse first, before they were made fools of. But that was only talk. They had to think of their relations with Mrs. Sugano and the main house; and in secret Sachiko still held out a hope that somehow, perhaps …

  Before they had time to make their plans—almost as if to chase Sachiko home—a letter came from Mrs. Sugano.

  June 13

  DEAR SACHIKO:

  It was good of you to come all the way out into the country. I fear we did nothing to entertain you, and I hope you will forgive us and come again, possibly for the mushrooms this fall.

  I am enclosing a letter 1 received today from Mr. Sawazaki. Nothing but trouble has come of my feeble efforts. I have no apology, and I can only repeat that I hope you will forgive me. Upon asking an acquaintance in Nagoya to investigate, my son was yesterday informed by letter that whatever desires there might be on the other side, there was some doubt as to what you yourselves would be thinking.

  It is in any case not a particularly fine match, and I am only sorry to have brought you all this distance for nothing. Please pass this on to Miss Yukiko.

  Sincerely yours,

  SUGANO YASU

  This letter was enclosed from Sawazaki:

  June 12

 
MY DEAR MRS. SUGANO:

  I was happy to find you well in this gloomy weather. Thank you very much indeed for your troubles of day before yesterday.

  About Miss Makioka: since, upon conference, we have concluded that the answer must be negative, I should be most grateful if you would so inform her. I am answering immediately lest I cause you further trouble.

  Thank you again for your kindness.

  Sincerely yours,

  SAWAZAKI HIROSHI

  These two oddly formal notes added to the unpleasantness in a number of ways. The Makiokas were, for the first time, being told they had failed an examination. For the first time they were branded the losers. Prepared though they had been in advance, the tone of the letters annoyed them, as did Mrs. Sugano’s way of ending the negotiations. It did no good to complain, of course, but Sawazaki’s letter was written in pen and ink on a sheet of very ordinary paper (the earlier letter to Mrs. Sugano had been in brush on more elegant paper). Although he said that the decision had been reached “upon conference,” he could probably have given his answer the day of the miai. Be that as it may, he was not writing to the Makiokas, and could he not have thought of a less stiffly formal way to explain his reasons to Mrs. Sugano? Aside from the enormity of calling people a great distance only to reply that “the answer must be negative,” was it not an insult to the Sugano family not to give an explanation? “Since … we have concluded.” And what was that “since”? “Upon conference,” he said, and he seemed to mean: “I have talked the matter over with my relatives and we have decided that it is no match.” Such perhaps was the way with millionaires. That glib “since” clause made them yet unhappier. What could Mrs. Sugano have had in mind, enclosing the letter? If they had not known what Sawazaki said, it need not have worried them. Why then had she found it necessary to show them a letter that was not even addressed to them? There may have been nothing in it that disturbed her. But one could have expected of a woman her age that she quietly tuck it away and report the failure of the negotiations so as not to hurt the Makiokas. It was little comfort to have a forced explanation tacked on. “My son was yesterday informed by letter that whatever desires there might be on the other side, there was some doubt as to what you yourselves would be thinking. It is in any case not a particularly fine match.” Though without doubt Mrs. Sugano belonged to an old and well-placed family, Sachiko and Teinosuke had to conclude that she was an insensitive rustic who simply did not understand the feelings of the city-dweller. It had been their mistake to be drawn into marriage negotiations managed by such a person. And the main responsibility rested with the main house in Tokyo. The Ashiya house had gone into the negotiations because they trusted Tatsuo. Should not Tatsuo, presumably familiar with his sister’s disposition, have done a little preliminary investigating, and determined for himself just what the prospects were? The important thing was Mrs. Sugano’s kindness; to ignore it would be to put Tatsuo in a difficult position—the details would come later. So Tsuruko had said in her letter. Had it not been irresponsible of Tatsuo to have Mrs. Sugano’s message relayed to them without considering Yukiko’s position and without bothering to see whether or not Mrs. Sugano had investigated her candidate? Teinosuke and Sachiko and Yukiko had been made unhappy to no purpose whatsoever. It was possible to feel that they had all been used to save face for Tatsuo. Whatever might be the effect on Sachiko and himself, Teinosuke was secretly troubled lest the affair lead to more unpleasantness between Tatsuo and Yukiko. He could only be grateful that the two letters had been sent to Sachiko and not to the Tokyo house. Sachiko followed his suggestion and waited a couple of weeks before writing to Tsuruko. At the end of her letter she spoke casually of word from Mrs. Sugano that the negotiations with Sawazaki did not seem to be going well. She hoped her sister would tell Yukiko in a tactful way, she added, but the matter might as well be dropped.